BadIdeas

Don't listen to the haters, this is a great purchase. Some people would say they wouldn't play this game unless they were paid to, but I say, where else can you waste $70 for a good cause? Now I know what you are thinking, the game is almost 50% cutscenes, with a boring, empty world, boring combat, diversity for the sake of wokeness, without any reasonable in world explanantion, a player character you want to push out a plane without a parachute, graphics that are both dated and unoptimized, and a story that reads like it was written by a child, without any internal continuity. All that may be true. However, keep in mind the people that made this game are all in one place, and they all failed, in every aspect. If you buy this game, they won't get fired, and if they don't get fired, they will continue being in one place making more incredibly bad games. On the other hand, if you do not buy this game, many, if not all of them, will be fired, then they will go to different companies, and many games will be worse for it. Think of this as a fee you pay to keep these people together, happily making terrible games, that you will also buy in the future to keep them together even longer. Where else can you pay $70 to contain such a destructive force? On a side note, the player character made it to my top 3 most annoying player characters ever list, right up there with the whiny idiots that you have to play as for FFX and FFXII. Odd that all 3 characters came from the same publishing company.

This is an idle game. Idle games are barely games as they are designed to minimize player input. This one is a good example of minimal player input. You can just leave the game running for minutes on end without doing a single thing. If you like that sort of thing, this game is for you. From talking to the player base, most of those that responded are the type of people that "like to see numbers get bigger" and find rearranging a single formation "strategically" satisfying. Some commented on how they liked that it uses D&D characters, which it does to the extent that it uses generic 2d sprites and then attaches D&D character names to it. There is no lore or character development. I have played an idle game or two before, and got bored within a couple of days, this time I was bored within a couple minutes. It brings nothing new to the "genre", and is clearly trying to capitalize on the D&D branding. Well, it does do one thing better than any other idle game I have seen, and that is monetization. There are pages and pages and pages of store content. All ready for you to swipe your card and skip over boring idle **** get to more boring idle gameplay. Honestly the game has no appeal for me, as I like to have a certain minimal degree of player interaction, and am put off by any game so obviously using well known branding to attract people to a game so heavily monetized. The graphics are bad, "think 2005 flash game", from what I saw, the story is practically non-existent, and there is practically no gameplay. However, I wont give this a 0 because it did have active players, who seemed to enjoy the game, for those reasons, or at least despite them.

Real Review: I played for several hours, both normal matches and custom games. There is no ranked play. From what other players are saying, it just matches you randomly with anyone, at any skill level. No profiles, no way to view win/loss. Custom games are even worse. I bought it to play some of my favorite custom **** asked for a refund because only older versions of the map work, still have issues with hosting, and then desynch and kick people randomly, even the host. Large maps also have lag issues, and the lag gets worse if the graphics are turned down. Not to mention Blizzard claims all custom maps as their intellectual property now, no joke. Not even sure how that is legal because old custom maps preexisted Reforged and should be exempt from new rules, but people then edit those old maps... Regardless this game is pretty much the old game with new graphics, not as much gameplay polish, missing a ton of features, with lots of bugs, particularly in regards to custom maps. For example, on one map, the game decided a bridge did not exist and was instead an invisible ramp so units would walk up and down cliffs. It is a beta or even alpha version of what it should be. Blizzard has been releasing incomplete games at retail pricing then adding to them over time to flesh them out. Compare HotS and OW to what they were on launch and you can see what I mean. They also did that with Reforged, but what they sold was an incomplete and buggy version of the same game they sold over 15 years ago. It would have been fine if they started with that game then updated to add to it, but all they really have is the campaign, most of the multiplayer, part of the custom games support, and almost none of the online chat/interface options. I am not paying $30 for a less optimized, and incomplete version **** i can get anywhere for $15-$20. This game would get a 6 if it was released as a new title, but as a remake it gets a 0, because it is not even the complete game. Edit: I originally wrote this review a few days after release, but, if you are reading this now, it took this long to be able to submit it here, because Metacritic has blocked it this whole time.

This game is very bad. It is easier to say what they do right then what they do wrong. For example, there is a tutorial. However it is very basic, unskippable, involves a lot of walking, and more unskippable dialogue than combat. Combat is as basic as it gets, and is boring, uninteresting, and clunky. Most of the game is walking around, with no movement skills, and large empty areas. There is nothing to explore, just large empty areas. Drops appear to be meaningless and while there are levels they also appear to be meaningless. I could go on and on, but honestly it would take me longer to write up what is bad with the game, if I wanted to be thorough, than the amount of time I spent playing. Literally nothing is done properly, form the MTG theme implantation, to voice acting, to questing, to combat, ****, and they call it a "beta" while having an in game real money store store, and their fundamental game design is utter trash. It is a pretty obvious cash grab, and I would recommend playing warcraft 3 reforged instead, because if your standards are low enough to enjoy this, you would probably enjoy that more.

A 6 Is probably more than it deserves. The game seems to be hugely flawed where one long round means, even if you win that round, you lose based on draw luck. If the other player draws combos and you don't, you lose. On top of that matchmaking appears to be garbage. My first dozen or so matches were against players so bad I thought they might be AI's programmed to lose (I still suspect that). Then after winning all but 2 where I got RNG'ed with bad draw, All I get matched against is people that obviously sunk time into the **** I am stuck with a starter deck. Unless ofc I want to pay a bunch of money to buy packs of 5 cards at a time. The power curve isn't even close between starter decks and decks belonging to experienced players, and consistently being matched against them just means constant losses. It very much feels like a mini game that should never have been developed into a full fledged standalone title, but was. I have played just about every digital card game available, probably close to 2 dozen at this point, and this one feels better than average, but with much less potential for improvement than most other DCG's.

The Best Civ game ever, bar none. Yes, the graphics are dated. Yes, the AI fails at the late game. Yes, there are some balance issues. However, the shear level of customization that was available makes modern Civ games look simple by comparison. The game had something like a million plus possible unit variations. Terrain can be lowered/raised in game using formers (builder unit). Factions were distinct and interesting. Wonder cutscenes were incredible, and there was a storyline that wasn't too bad.

What a terrible game. i played it for about 5 hours, then ran out of things to do. "sandbox" means they didn't bother to put quests in after the starter quests. "You choose how your adventure evolves" means you can choose between which thing you want to grind crazy amounts of. It feels like the game you would play if you don't have the talent for WoW. I almost died twice in the 5 hours I played. once because i aggroed 3 higher tiered enemies and then aggroed 4 more immediately without healing, and another time because i wandered into a higher tiered dungeon. They market themselves as some great new innovative game, but its the same f2p grindfest bs with a top down perspective instead of over the shoulder cam that have been out there for forever. With that paywall, that makes slightly more content available if you pay them money. Kill 1,000 enemies, rank up, get your new set of gear, now go kill 10,000 **** without quests, storyline, or any interesting content. Or you can gather items, which is even more grindy and boring. I don't really know what to say, it's not even a good pay to win game, because even if you pay, there is still a huge lack of content. I reached tier 3, rode out of the starter area in search of things to **** realized there wasn't anything. It was just more of the exact same thing I was doing. It feels a lot like **** you took away all the quests, and most of the professions, and made the map interconnected procedurally generated zones. I think runescape is boring, albion online wishes it was half as good as **** it isn't.

Terrible balance, cards range from useless to cards that have crazy value. Even if you play arena which is draft mode the game is unpleasant to play at best. It uses extremely lengthy play animations that countdown the turn timer, and can not be disabled...then sometimes will randomly lag on top of that. I played about 100 draft games, and lost about 20 for no other reason than timing out as I tried to drop a 3-4 card combo and couldn't complete game winning actions because the animations took stupidly long.

This game is said to be the spiritual successor to to Alpha Centauri. That is a fair assessment, because in order for Beyond Earth to be a true successor it would need to be more than a ghost of Alpha Centauri. Let us compare it to Alpha Centauri, a game released 15 years before it by the same studio. What BE has that SMAC lacks: Hex tiles instead of square tiles Much better graphics Visible research web instead of more linear hidden research web Better artifact system Marginally better AI? I think that is it. Now let us look at what SMAC had that was better than BE: Better story line, what little there was in each Much better factions/faction distinction Voice overs from all faction leaders, not just one generic voice reading quotes Unit customization, that gave a few dozen core designs, hundreds of specialized designs, and literally hundreds of thousands of possible variants. Wonder videos, not just panning over a blueprint. Terraforming, as in raising/lowering terrain, and the sea level as a whole. A chart in the UI that tracked your relative strength. Atrocities such as planet busters, nerve stapling, and nerve gas. The ability to manage social policies as actual policies you could change That is just off the top of my head. That is what we get after 15 years, a watered down Civ 5/SMAC hybrid, that dumbs down, or completely removes some of the best aspects of SMAC. The only reason to play this instead of SMAC, is you may have played SMAC a million billion times, and want something new, even if it is the kiddy version with limited depth.

I really tried to like this game. I was given Alpha access by a friend at Blizzard, and played it for the last two years. Tonight I uninstalled it though. I realized I get more upset, frustrated, and angry when playing than I enjoy it. It is a nice clean, polished game. Unfortunately, that is the graphics. Gameplay is and always has been lacking. It is simple and faster, or at least shorter than other Moba's, but it has no real depth. Also there are some gameplay design flaws that I pointed out were terrible decisions in Alpha, but because they are core concepts they stay in the game. One of these things is the shared XP. Unlike other Moba's where you have your own level, your whole team shares a level. So if one player is not contributing, it hamstrings the entire team even more than it does in a regular moba. Another issue is roles are very set, you can't compensate for a bad healer by taking heal items, because you dont have any. So basically one bad team member destroys your chance of winning a match. thanks to a horrible matchmaking system, once you lose a match, you are more likely to get bad team members. Basically, what happens, is if you start winning games, winning is pretty easy and you can keep winning. Start losing and the same thing happens in reverse. What happens though Is you will get leavers, maybe not the first season you start playing, but sooner or later it will happen in your placement games for a ranked season. At which point you will be fed bad teammates until you start winning more than your losing. As the other team is also bad, it eventually averages out. However, if you get unlucky and have the worse player in the match on your team, you will lose. Because of the way it is designed, it does not matter how good you play, it simply matters who has the worst overall player, or in some cases the most bad players. This makes for a frustrating and miserable experience. I would like to add that i have been on both sides of the teeter-totter when winning you get matched with winners and games are enjoyable even if you lose. When losing you get matched with losers and games are frustrating even when you win. Because of all the horrible design choices the ranks are near meaningless. I saw someone that was playing at top tier rank 1 on the old ranking system, then Blizzard revamped the ranking system and he ended up at silver 2 with is the 8th rank from the bottom with 25 ranks plus master and grand master. After dozens of games he was silver 5 which was 3 ranks lower. This is someone that was playing in top tier matches before. TL:DR. HOTS is a polished turd due to intentional design choices by Blizzard compounded by their poor match making system.

Let me first start by saying I am 29 years old, and gen one pokemon came out when I was 8. This game has only the gen one pokemon, which I personally think is great because some of the pokemon that came later where, for lack of a better word, stupid. Vanillish anyone? The thing is, other then only gen one pokemon, an innovative use of the real world, and the use of AR, this game has nothing going for it. So here are my personal suggestions to turn this travesty **** into something enjoyable. -Fix server issues (of course) -Make the AR option available on phones without gyroscopes, or at least a simplified version of AR -Implement generation one battle system across the board (flicking should be restricted to throwing pokeballs, and rocks.) -Implement the gen one leveling system. Current leveling system screams cash grab. -Allow users to suggest/vote on better locations for poke stops, gyms, etc. (Nearest stop location for me is a church...) -Allow users to vote for additional pokemon being added, and don't add any more until the game play is decent. Mark as helpful please, so someone who can do something to make this game enjoyable sees it.

I am writing this to alert people once again at how bad this game is. Never mind how bad it was at launch, I will tell you my experience as of the last CA patch, when they announced they would no longer be patching this game. I played the campaign long enough to play a single battle. I was defending a fort from an enemy assault. Mere seconds after the battle started the opposing AI ran his general out, sweeping across his front lines, and opened fire on my fort with his cannons....directly through his general's unit, thereby killing his own general within about 15 seconds from the battle start. Probably trying to cut around my fort at my reinforcements behind and to the left of the fort. That was the start, then about a minute later I had moved my two reinforcing units up to flank the attacking force, when the AI decided it would meet my reinforcements head on with a cavalry charge. I had elephant cavalry and some sort of hybrid ranged/melee unit, so I switched my ranged unit into melee mode, and counter charged, relying on the elephant cavalry to break the enemy charge and my other unit to overwhelm them. Then I switched back to manage the assault on my fort, which was going well for me, only to switch back to the conflict outside my fort to find that while my elephant cavalry had charged, my other unit had not. At first I thought I had misclicked, but come to find out, when I had put the unit in melee mode, it froze in place. I couldn't move it. I had to toggle it back in forth multiple times before it "fixed itself" and I could move it again, but only in ranged mode. As my general was part of the now gutted elephant cavalry, I was actually at risk of being routed. I held the fort, but the AI was reforming for another attack, and all I had to stop his cavalry outside the fort was a unit that I couldn't switch from ranged mode or it would stop moving. Meanwhile his cannon had done serious damage to my wall. Reviewing the damage I realized his cannon were no longer firing, why not? Well, that is because the AI decided to abandon his cannons, which still had plenty of ammo, and charge the fort with his cannoneers, while his other units stood and watched. The marched right up to the walls, where I had local number superiority, then broke and ran, as did the rest of the forces. Giving me the victory. Realizing battles where not a test of skill, but a test of whether the gameplay crippling bugs the player experiences are worse than the horrible, suicidal. AI, I stopped playing then and there and have not touched the game since. i honestly think anyone who rates this game a 10/10 is either being paid, is not a gamer at all, or is playing on such easy difficulties they don't really notice how terrible things are. keep in mind, my experience, was post the last CA update, after they had "fixed" the game. TLDR: As of final patch, game was still broken with massive bugs and a non functional AI. Not worth playing, not to mention paying for.

No, I didn't play it, just counter balancing all their paid for voters. Also still upset at the BS they released that was called empire total war. I said I would never purchase a total war game again after I got that half off, and felt cheated out of my money. Only played it an hour or two tops and in one battle, I saw the ai kill its own general with its first barrage of canon fire, then had a unit completely freeze, and then watched the ai abandon its cannons to charge my fort with its cannoneers. Well, I did buy shogun total war, when it was 85% off, and still felt it wasn't worth it. Within 10 turns I had by far the strongest faction, and within 30 I controlled a quarter of japan, and I wasn't playing on easy. Diplomacy was completely broken, I would attack a faction, then make then pay me insane amounts of tribute for peace, then rinse and repeat. It was supposed to be their best release in the last few years, and yet I found it boring, easy, and less complex than the original shogun total war. I felt it wasn't worth it, at 85% off. IMHO, Creative Assembly needs to rename their total war series Total CRAP, which would be more fitting for their dumbed down glitchfests, which they try to sell for triple A prices after they pay for positive reviews. They managed to keep empire at an average of 90 from critic review, which has told me a lot about who not to trust for accurate reviews.

Free to play, and very much pay to win. Starter cards are bland, with little control, while better cards, that you can reliably get only by spending cash, easily dominate the battlefield. Tournaments are open to all players of all skill levels, and they bring their decks with them, making it near impossible for anyone not investing large amounts of money to rank and gain any rewards as you will likely have 2 or 3 top end players in every tournament. Avoid, unless you want to spend at least $50 to be competitive, and well over $100 to dominate.

This game was better than most people gave it credit for. Definitely enjoyable for the time I spent playing it. That being said, it was very underwhelming. Short campaign, no multi-player, bad ai, broken achievements, broken victory conditions, no ability to make your own decks, and no replay value. Even the expansion was almost pointless. However, if all its short comings were fixed it could form a core of a very good turn based tactics game. It just isn't there at this time.