Braggi

Flickering UI was in the end resolved by a simple driver update. First impression: a chatty tutorial that can not be saved (ORLY, Firaxis??). Very old issue: Lack of special resources still completely prevents combat unit production. Stupid. STUPID. My Civi immersion once died long time ago when being forced to build horse carriages instead of tanks ... Overall enough fresh ideas for someone who quit after III. Cities now grow organically over the map, no dedicated screen. Craftsmen with limited actions are ok with me, a consequence of playing on the main map only. I may tinker my own religion. There are now two trees to explore - science and culture, the second for social progress. Fine tuning your own government with policies is nice, the execution as text cards in boardgame style in not. Leaders are generated, providing small boosts but often needing very specific requirements to be triggered. Overall interesting dimensions, but too much micromanagement for the gain. There seems to be no limit to a civi's expansion, which IMO is a balance issue. Spamming settlers seems a valid strategy. Minor Civs to interact with, good. Initial survival pressure comes from barbarians roaming the lands, manageable. New techs pop up very fast from the start, especially as two trees trigger in parallel. Pacing feels strange. Treasury became an issue for me, with lots of tradeoff, felt ok. Compared to the old CIV also keept troop count lower, good. Units gain experience and may level with a small tree of improvements. AI seems stupid; sorry. Not impressed by diplomacy or war strategy yet. Overall: Tons of details, but hard to get the big picture. Will be a nice detraction to explore casually, but I don't see me spending lots of time with it.

Summary: They tried to clone the extinct MoO species from Civilisation-DNA, sadly loosing some essential traits in the process. A good deal only for casual players, or to rekindle old MoO-memories without much available play time. The game looks good and starts very accessible. If you're looking for a deep 4X experience, look elsewhere. Explore (yawn) - scouts without range limits plod through a circular galaxy to map the stars. Rarely a reward beyond some credits or a vessel. Meeting races early to reap in trading boost. Two other setup options separate sections of the galaxy until midgame. Prevents early diplomacy and stresses expansion and research. Expand - planets operate separately. Their properties matter most in the beginning. Some good, close fertile planets boost growth excessively, while hostile environments cripple colonies. Much later in midgame, solar systems may pool their production and planets specialise more. Exploit - planet food and production slots are limited, with small spread and decreasing yield. Works only well at start, in the long run technology levels out differences. Planet size matters most. This is far from the old system where the galaxy might look completely different according to your race. Exterminate - Stationary defences add initiall resillience, invasion tech is delayed. Using star lanes feels more like combat along mountain passes than in space. There's tactical decisions and challenges. Still battles failed to excite me. Went to just calculate combat in the end. Invasion looks unfinished. Conquered planets don't revolt. In mid-game, portals may connect a side's systems, specialised shipyards churn out fleet. Travel in enemy territory stays slow; mopping up a war becomes a drag. Science - Instead of independent fields of research, we get a Civi tech tree with crowded nodes. The frowned upon old choice system is consciously reduced to a few select applications. This means that more than 85% of technology can never be traded, stolen or conquered but must be researched instead. Money - main source is population tax, with trade second. This is probably the biggest design change, as the forerunner used industry for taxation. Money and production were interchangeable then. No more. All ship upgrades can no longer be produced but must be bought, and there's no alternative to a large population base to fund your buildings or excess fleet. My brand's canary chokes on several features, mechanisms and concepts that often match the forerunner just in name. UI problems pop up in midgame and with huge positions. The game increasingly reacts sluggish and information is missing. MoO2's UI could handle 100-planet empires, MoO can't. Zooming into a planet looses the strategic view. Event list can't be scrolled, when overflowing you must klick through the least important items first. Some events pop up first, ignoring your selection. Planet list can't be sorted by production type, to e.g. check fleet in construction. Planet uniformity makes sorting by resource (food, science, production) way less usefull. And the list goes on... Diplomacy is listless. Incoming offers can't be put on hold and checked, no counter offers possible. Swap charts without knowing what you trade for is the most frequent offer. Get an embassy. Trade and research deals have to be continually refreshed, with the AI later often too broke to accept. Cultivating AIs is possible to get access or alliances. Otherwise the AI is simplistic with no real grasp of reality, demanding when ready to strike, or crawling when currently involved in another war. Espionage mostly consists of offensive spy micromanagent. Some Intelligence; stealing of the 'choice' techs is best done at lowly, undefended outposts, the rest is sabotage. Sabotage works like a separate game, after succes the victim can't react, e.g. can't attack a revolting planet but must wait it out. Defense is static by race traits or expensive buildings, or dispatched spies, without a good view to coordinate. Races - Most predefined ones work, but use way more perk points though than a player gets for a custom race. Race differences are noticeable, but very timid. Ship customisation has some wellcome improvements (like scout autoupgrades or the UI layout). On the other side a convoluted system obscures this. Payload is consumed at rates differing by class by essentials. A 25% payload extension consumes part of this for itself. And so on. You can't just compare the numbers displayed. This also hurls another wave of micromanagement at the player, e.g. each new drive is slightly bigger, often forcing a ship redesign. The final result is a wasted opportunity - a good looking time waster, not without appeal - but too shallow and boring for me.

Just when you think you've seen them all, here comes a fresh new idea! After playing the tutorial you get the impression this is base building with a trading twist - far off the mark! Players found coporations on Mars - chosing a location, trying to make a fortune supplying the central colony, and buy out the competition. These corporations produce and consume 13 resources; a handful tutorials explain the basics. There are 4 different corporation types with specific advantages and resource needs. Robots are a solid, simple start for new players. Nearby material deposits, hopefully rich (or surface ice) determine the quality of a founding location. A Black Market is offering different rogue services each game. Recurring auctions have a set of unique offers. Five advanced buildings branch into mid- and endgame, and last there are company stock to trade... Central shortage are land claims, to build production sites on. Fastest road to get more claims is upgrade headquarters, up to level 5. (Lower difficulty also adds claims, and some funds.) Sometimes only a few resource and building claims are auctioned, in some matches there's a glut of free claims by Black Market and auctions. Initial demand stems from corporation upgrade needs and existing types of colony buildings. If there's e.g. 50% robots, there will be price pressure on electronics and energy, while life support is less in demand. Adjacent factories of a type get a huge production bonus, so it makes sense to start with one or two products and buy the rest, especially processed goods at first. Basic factories are free or cheap, while advanced production sites may cost dearly. Around level 3 mid game starts. Players select promising goods to maximise cash flow, and keep growing. Cash is needed for covert actions and production materials. Auctions, lifesupport, energy and fuel can be bought on credit, preserving cash keeps a company operational. Attack opponents to damage them and boost your earnings; try to take them over (especially in 1:1) or just keep growing and secure your shares. Players constantly watch prices and competitors actions, markets they are about to enter or leave. Even if it's expensive, production plants are constantly rebuilt to adjust. Black market offers different sets of actions each game; from spying, attacks on competition to defence and boosts. Like the random maps, composition differs each game and makes for very different courses of game play. There's an option to switch off direct attacks for the more peaceful when creating matches. Which is good, because some setups can simply destroy a weaker player. If the match reaches late game, advanced buildings gain importance: from affordable Hacker Arrays to manipulate prices, exclusive tech, production optimisation or selling on Offworld Markets for huge profits. The ultimate target is to buy out competitors. Earn more faster, and don't drown in debt that will destroy your share prices. A match takes 10-20 minutes 1:1 to around 30 min for 4 players. Playing single, time can be slowed down or even stopped at will, leaving enough time for contemplation and decisions. Besides a few tutorial scenarios and the skirmishes is also a campaign mode, working slightly different and linking 7 matches. Optional matches end after a fixed time to prevent tedious buyout battles. Difficulty is per player, determining upgrade cost, debt thresholds and starting money. So it can be used to even skill levels in MP matches. The UI is very polished, allowing control over fluid, rapidly changing situations. Market price system and its representation is especially impressive; you see price trends, actual price and spikes. Corporations and events can be reached by a click; an auction halts game progression. Even when the game is stopped, players can still give orders. Founding has special mechanics, rewarding the lagging founders with less debt, more claims or earlier access to BM in exchange for the "less desirable" spot. Still founding is one of the most complex decisions of the game, not only deciding where to found, but also which type of corporation. It overwhelms a beginner and can ruin his complete match from start. Plus: very cool, innovative mechanics clever, functional UI good looking graphics short crisp gameplay Minus Steep learning curve, especially game start New concepts not intuitive (but official videos, e.g. youtube: Zultar) Some balance issues with BM One mistake can decisively lose a game random generation of matches and campaigns sometimes feels arbitrary

Pokemon with fusion mechanics and a really interesting combat system, nicely animated. Good learning curve while plodding through the scenarios, guided by a somewhat chatty quest. Your summoned fighters (monsters) are a wild mix of monsters and manga characters, works surprisingly well. There are lots of things to do - scenariaos, later dungeons, lots of events, arena fights, guild fights, a PvE challenge. Especially on starting difficulty, players are showered with rewards and energy kickbacks, there are rarely limits to playing. Attribute advantage (wind>water>fire>wind) is the first thing a player learns and uses, later light and dark join the mix. Monsters have up to 3 active combat skills and maybe a passive or team bonus. Single target, aoe or chained; ressurection and heal; buffs and protection or debuffs and dots, lots of options to chose from. A well balanced team supports each other and will rip unrelated monsters apart. The player always attacks, enemy monsters are controlled by the AI. Even attacking can be done on autoplay, with the player focusing targets if need be. Beware the AI is somewhat dumb when using AOE spells or ressurections; some fights with very distinct tactical ideas must be handled manually. After reaching the volcano in the middle of the map, the player steps down into the valley of grind. Level monsters, level food to fuse your monsters to the next star level (6 in all, and the 6th is really tedious while you're weak), grind essences to awaken your keepers, grind runes (which make all the difference) to equip and improve your monsters, grind scrolls of different quality to get chances for better monsters, grind guild and arena fights to use their better shops. Monsters have different minimum stars, where they first appear. The best and rarest are natural 5 stars, but there are enough moderate and farmable alternatives to build a good team. The (fusion) star system keeps level numbers small (max 40), but masks that each star also equals several levels of base strength. Unlike pokemon, where I usually train what I want to use, the fusion system also makes players fatten tons of fodder monsters, just to upgrade the team. More grind. The game can be played successfully without spending. Use friends' monsters once a day to boost your rewards and reach; currency and event rewards are freely distributed just to keep players busy. But this cannot conceal that the late midgame and endgame is just grinding and more grinding, more expensive and with less energy kickback on hardest difficulty. Currently a bug randomly crashes the game when starting fights, eating energy and even one of three guild fight markers. Still, 5-10 crashes a day (=missed or lost fights) are just annoying for a heavy player in grind mode, which explains the relative quite even after 2 weeks without a note.

As with other reviewers, I'm torn. The game starts great with heavy metal, combat, puzzles and racing. The characters and humor are great, the story and visuals captivating. If they had kept it at this, the game would be an easy 9-10 for me. Sadly as soon as I hit the RTS part the gameplay unravels, and with it my motivation to keep playing.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Decent casual CCG with a simple mechanic and a steep learning curve. It can keep you entertained for a long time and offers constant short play sessions, perfect for mobile. Besides some computer trainers and dungeons, the main game is PvP with some matchmaking issues. First hurdle for new players are the 9 classes to play and to fight. You must unlock their basic cards first, and get a grip on their special action and their specific class cards. Quests urge you to try out an owerflow of options - play all classes, against the computer, normal and ranked games, arena and now dungeons. New cards flood in, and you'll find yourself constantly adapting your decks without really knowing what you do, especially when not spending money early to afford vanilla decks. After this you're on your own. There are enough guides for basic decks and economic starter decks. There are even a few good generic deck building guides out there. With a good grip on the game (ouch) you can cash your tutorial rewards for some card packs and get a competitive deck going with a few magic cards. Even a casual player can harvest decent quest rewards with limited, regular effort, with 3 quests in parallel. Rewards accumulate to about 250-300 gold in 4 days, which is 3 packs of new cards or 2 arena fees. Even play maniacs can only raise this amount slowly, and get rewards with bragging rights instead. Perception of fairness is something else completely. Losing unranked games vs decks 10 times more expensive than your own feels broken, and makes you question the game's matchmaking. In that respect ranked games are actually better, as the pros are sorted to the high ranks here. But - even playing a perfect deck, I will lose 50% of my games against a mirror of my deck. In the short run random bad draws may leave me without chance more often than that (as does being a less than perfect player...). Can my deck consistently beat the NPC? On normal and hard? Does it have tempo issues, good card resupply? Do I have a consistent win idea, or do I try to do too much at once, and nothing right? With many decks it also makes a big difference which class I fight, as they all have special actions and removals available. Which cards to keep at start against whom? What to prepare for? Few guides care to explain this, and unexperienced players rarely have a clue about it. If you're still here at this time, you're hooked and try to hack the metagame. Arena is nice as you randomly select your deck from all cards, but you better have a grasp on deck building or it is a waste of resources. Dungeons (Naxramas) add more (distant) cards, something a beginner can do without. For some time the game had some annoying connectivity issues, atm it runs smoothely. Can play my account from both Pad and PC, which is fine.

Ridiculous downvote campaign with 0s and 1s; I'd rate this 8, +2 to offset the angry joes. Traditional PB customs make you start with a blank, frail character, without skill or good weapon, and train him to fit your playstyle. Risen 3 is an old-school RPG - decisions matter, live or die. Pick your fights carefully, especially at the beginning. Character divergency is therefore slower than with a class based system, but markedly faster than with the first Risen. A small boat, a single companion and 6-8 coasts to explore give an open world feeling. Day/night cycle has impact on monster behaviour and quests. Locations range from vulcanic to moderate to tropical, graphics are ok. You will eventually hire more crew, with special abilities and some quests, and get a bigger ship from your choosen faction. There are again 3 factions to join, for spells, equipment and tuition. PB specific, you'll explore the NPCs and their stories like the locations, questing for teachers, traders and supplies. Unlike the "pirates of the carribbean" rip-off risen 2, the game is back to high fantasy. There's still pirates though; and more scripted sea battles and sea monster fights than other bosses. Main weapon choices are melee with 3 subclasses, or guns and spells. Close combat is a rare mix of stats (weapon, skills, perks) and actual personal skill; and feels like fencing. As your character grows, he will learn more perks like counterattack, faster attacks or some spells that allow him to better regain and keep the initiative. Better weapons and skills cause more damage per hit. Enemy animations signal if they're about to attack or hard-hit or cast. This allows an experienced player to go on hard where a casual player struggles on easy. Enemy patterns can be exploited, too. Playing casually is still possible if you accept that you lack the fighting edge and play carefully. Guns and spells as main weapons can't block attacks, so you must hit hard, evade and use a meat shield. Only mage guardians seem to offer a main spell from the start. Story is fine; you don't know what is actually going on for a long, long time... I prefer english over german voice acting, even though the fist companion's voice is annoyingly doddery. + open, diverse world + extremely immersive gameplay + I actually like the combat :P - sea fight balance (got over with some on easy) - character planning issues

Beware the time sink! This is more a simulation than a game, but paradox has done a lot with the UI to make it accessible. The core theme is european expansion and colonisation from 15th to 19th century. Different tech groups pace the speed of research, with the western group fastest and nomads at the bottom. Countries will eventually specialize in subgroups for military, exploration and so on according to their needs. You can play any country, and the monarch point system, diplomacy and alliances make small countries playable, coalitions hold aggressive monarchs in check. Overall it does a great job here. Spain at the fringes of Europe feels different from a continental power or the Ottomans, a western nation poses different tasks than an asian realm. The game starts slow, with almost no options except diplomacy and military at first. It takes some time until other options unfold. Even losing a war once in a while is usually not the end. Slowly your reach and power expand, and new challenges and opportulities unfold. Scripted events according to actual history change the map. Religion plays a big role. With religious ideas and laws, evangelising your whole realm is possible in a short time. (cultural conversion costs monarch points, so you usually leave this be). This feels somewhat unrealistic in an otherwise exceptionally balanced system; on the other hand you need a social tech group that could also improve military, expansion or trade. The Wealth of Nations expansion added some trade improvements and closed an expansion loophole (integrating vassals was too cheap). The new rival and power projection system is also neat. I tried and dropped the first eu versions very fast - too complex and lost in detail. eu IV still hast tons of detail and depth, but is actually easily operated.