CaptainScrubby

The controls are TERRIBLE... Ok I had to start with that, not enough are saying it. The first mission of the game seems custom designed to illustrate just how restrictive the camera controls are and just how bad of a decision having wall running and jumping on the same button can be. Good luck exploring in this game, it's got lots of really bad platforming... ============================================================================= Targeting units in battle is also a mess, which is to be expected in games like these so it's hard to take points off, but if an enemy so much as taps it breaks your attack combos, leaving the massively overpowered move I like to call 'jump hammer smash' as your best option in most combat situations. The TERRIBLE controls aside, the game looks pretty good. The textures are ported poorly and there's a serious lack of options (I'm playing PC), but aside from a few textures the game is gorgeous. The story isn't great, but it's fairly well presented and interesting enough to keep you playing. The music is fantastic, and the in game cutscenes and cinematic are well presented. The game plays much like TLoZ: Twilight Princess combined with elements of LoK: Soul Eater, the puzzles are often straight forward and sometimes poorly thought out with no indication of how to proceed, but the game can be enjoyable once you get into it. ============================================================================= If not for the TERRIBLE controls this game would be very easy to recommend. Unfortunately, as previously stated, the controls in this game are TERRIBLE, we're talking accidentally jumping to your death trying to run on walls, fighting with your camera to get a good view of a collectable you're trying to reach, not being able to see where you're supposed to jump to, hard to target enemies, poorly thought out contextual dodging (effected by camera over directions, TERRIBLE idea). The Terribad controls in general are the only reason I can't give this an 8.0, if not for the controls this game would be great.

Could this game have been better? Definitely. Did it deserve the 4.0 on Gamespot because Namco didn't pay for a review? Absolutely not. This game is a generic Cover Based Shooter, the Sci Fi Twist works within the context of the alternate reality this game is set in, the multiplayer is fun, King of Gravity is intentionally unbalanced that's the point, and the story is better than most shooters though the acting is at times a little hammy. Overall this game is average, it's not great but it's not bad either. It's an average game that deserves an average score. When the price goes down if you have nothing else to play this is worth buying and it's absolutely worth a rental.

User scores have been removed from GameSpot, showing only professional metacritic scores which were probably paid for or in house. =============================================================================== How this is sold as a stand alone expansion is beyond me, not much has changed and practically nothing has been improved, this is the same stale boring game that the "Critically Acclaimed" Dungeons was. You decorate the various hall ways with props, heroes come in through a hero gate, after they're done looking at the props you kill them. That's pretty much the whole game, the props can be chests of gold that need to be refilled for heroes to loot, or useless monsters anchored to a spawn location that don't do much of anything other than sit there waiting for heroes to come kill them. ================================================================================ Bottom line is, if you want to play the same boring game that only passed as "ok" even among it's fans, go ahead and pick this up, but my advice is to save your money. This game would be just fine as an iPad ap or Facebook social game, but as a PC game it's not worth your time.

The Good: The Game is a classic turn based strategy game with an interesting unit progression system. The game also happens to be a great time sync, and is enjoyable to play once you get into it. ================================================================================ The Bad: The game tries to be epic, and fails at being epic pretty badly due to the horrible voice acting. There's really just no excuse for the voice acting to have turned out this badly. Werewolves sound like Fred Fredburger, the heroes sound goofy, and the narrator reads his script with such an obvious lack of professionalism that players may want to turn the sound off and simply read it themselves. The cut scenes are unimmersive and unenjoyably as anything other than comedy because of the horrendous and hilarious voice acting. There are also a few bugs, and units and objects are sometimes visually poorly represented on the campaign map so it may be hard to see what you're interacting with until you get used to it. ================================================================================ Once you get past the game's flaws though, you'll find that underneath the ridiculously horrible voice acting and somewhat buggy gameplay is an enjoyable turn based strategy game that you can easily play for days

Click Expand for Full Review ================================================================================ A Comment on the Game, and Paradox's Vote Rigging: Some of the negative reviews are well deserved, and some of the positive reviews are bogus upvotes by people sent here by Paradox directly from their Forums (pathetic Paradox, you've sunk to a new low). Paradox may be telling it's fanboys to upvote this game, but it has many inherent flaws most notably in it's interface. This isn't a case of the wrong person reviewing the game, and a lot of the negativity isn't because the game isn't "dumbed down enough". This is a case of bad choices being made in designing the game. ================================================================================ The Positive: The game shines in it's intrigue and diplomacy, though the diplomacy itself is somewhat lacking in personality, it presents a variety of options and allows for lots of interesting scenarios. The limited number of provinces that can be effectively governed also paves the way for a vassal system that gets increasingly complex and intriguing as you progress through the game. ================================================================================ The Negative: The interface is unintuitive, and there are a lot of simple things they could have done to make the interface more user friendly. Because of how the interface is set up, the game is practically inaccessible to anyone who hasn't already invested massive amounts of time in it. Improving the interface wouldn't be "dumbing it down" it would be improving the interface, which has needed doing for several GSG's now. Other problems include the cities and armies being poorly represented on the map (technically an interface issue, but I distinguish it from the general UI). Between resigning and reloading there also appears to be a bug that causes the resignation and load times to get longer and longer. In terms of military might, more troops = victory 99% of the time, making the military aspects of strategy a mere numbers and deployment game. ================================================================================ Closing Comment: Behind the many flaws there's a great game, but the flaws should not be ignored by an objective reviewer. The fact is that most will not even be able to access the game, not because they're unintelligent as many Paradox Fanboys arrogantly like to delude themselves into believing, but because the unintuitive interface and lack of tool tips creates a prohibitive learning curve and most just don't have the patience or the time. Paradox doesn't need to dumb down it's games but it does need to learn to improve how it displays information, a side bar displaying information under various tabs would help a lot, as would mouse over tool tips to explain options better would be an improvement, and a better display of troops and cities on the map with more defined borders, and easier to distinguish clans on the normal map view. Paradox can't expect to get positive reviews when it makes games that are virtually unplayable without prior experience, and no amount of shameful vote rigging will negate the flaws with this game