My favorite metroid-vania to date (displacing Metroid: Dread). The melee combat is very well realized and the enemy variety is wide enough to keep it interesting throughout the run time. The platforming is incredibly satisfying and not too difficult. The game feel here is absolutely top notch. The amount of air control, jump height and the way you can (and should) lift enemies and kick their asses in the air all feels amazing. When you complete a longer section of demanding platforming, using multiple powers, it's great. The story is surprisingly good as well! If the story was throw-away, I still would have rated this game highly because it's the least important factor in a game like this, but I'm a **** for time travel and this game handles it well. This game has all three kinds of heat and will surely be a classic in the genre for years to come. I will definitely put this on my replay list for a few years down the road.
The negativity surprises me. It runs great, looks good and to me, combines the best elements in the series. I do wish they had gone full mythological with the special units and abilities, but that's a small gripe in the scheme of things. The diplomacy is good and important. I like the resources as it gives varying importance to the difference provinces. The balance between the units feels good and the AI actually gives some fight. The heroes feel better balanced than 3K. They aren't game-winning but they are important units that can turn a close fight. If you don't care about the strategic layer, and just care about fights, Warhammer is probably a better bet. It has more unit variety. If you really like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, then that one is an obvious pick, and you will probably prefer that to this. But as someone who didn't like 3k that much bc I don't know the lore (and the game doesn't help you in that regard), this game is a nice midpoint.
It's a great pickup and play type game for an hour or two but I wouldn't want to try and go through an entire campaign in one extended sitting. Doing one or two characters' journey is just about a perfect play session. The difficulty is managed very cleverly through mission selection. Once you're familiar with the mechanics, you can start pushing hard missions right out the gate. The loot is the most interesting aspect. Lots of item variation. This is best expressed when you're under a tight time limit and you need to stretch your abilities to their maximum. Chain teleporting, grabbing keys, bouncing out and killing the captain while leaving rooms full of guards befuddled feels amazing. Concussion hammer + slipstream = a good time. I could see this being an FTL-like situation where I keep coming back to it for years to come. The basic gameplay feels that good.
Quite literally my favorite 4x game ever. I love how it respects your time by minimizing the micromanagement. This allows me to spend my time worrying about overall strategy instead of concentrating on building a barracks, granary, boatyard, etc.. on every damn planet. While not the sexiest things to concentrate on, the economy and trade systems are what really blow me away in this game. I love how you pillage resources from smaller planets to fuel (level up) the ones you care about. It really makes your lv4 homeworld feel powerful when it's connected to ~15 subordinate planets. It also gives importance to those outskirt planets. Once they start going down it can really wreak havoc on your economy. I also really like how civilian infrastructure builds itself based on economy 'pressure' (which is derived from what elements you've got). It really cuts through the majority of the bs micromanagement which is much appreciated! The same system is used on 'defense pressure' which is an easy, and micro free, way to give your planets some defense. In this way you are only ever controling a handful of fleets which keeps things elegantly manageable. The last thing I'll touch on is the diplomacy system. While 1-on-1 diplomacy is pretty rudimentary (a couple treaty options but that's about it), the galactic senate system is something I really enjoy. You basically develop a resource called 'influence' which is used to buy and activate diplomacy cards. They have a wide range of effects, some of which require a senate vote to pass. It's all very well done and I get some real enjoyment out of dominating the senate. You can annex planets and system this way, stealing them w/o going to war (or losing units). All-in-all I think it's a very cleverly designed 4x game that does some new things.
