Latrec

After my senses came down from the inital hype of this game, I came to write this off as Terrible. This is why: -Terrible UI: Both within the campaign map and battle screens, the UI is simply too complex to easily understand and remember. I handled RTW1's UI within seconds of playing it. No such luck in RTW2; buttons are randomly placed, look alike, and are hidden out of the way. I'm spending too much time wondering what a button does again, rather than actually you know playing. -Stupid Character/abilities: a) WTF is cunning? Authority? What does it affect specifically? I cannot seem to find this information anywhere, EVEN IN THE ENCYCLOPYDEA! WTF? b) The Rally troops ability used to be a button to keep wavering units from routing... Now it just buffs a single unit instead... And the second wind button? wtf? RTW1 was an attempt at being historical while keeping the game balanced and fun.. RTW2 is the exact opposite. Fail. c) The lack of a family tree is a bit of a letdown, but there are other features that have been implemented to continue to make things somewhat interesting. Enemy AI: On the campaign map the enemy is simply TOO defensinve (and even incompetent at that, sometimes). I've sent small armies as map scouts before, only to spot an army three times the size within reach of me, BUT because I wasn't yet near the city, that army never attacked my scouting party. It just sat there, waiting. I've also marched towards a city (while suffering from a plague/-20% morale) only to have the army garrisoning it run away, wait until I conquer the city, then return to reclaim their city. Their reconquista fails and they get destroyed but they could've potentially defended their town had they simply stayed put in it. Protraits: They are ugly. Confusing. ****. Lag: I can run Shogun 2 on ultra. I can run Skyrim with 4k texture mods, ultra settings, ENB presets, extended LODS, and a ton of other graphic mods, just fine. Hell... My computer will start to overheat before I really see a hit to my FPS. But this game... It lagged with 500 units total on the battlefield. It lagged again on a lower setting with a less detailed map. And it lagged again on High setting with a similar map. Clearly EA needs to fix this aspect of the game. On the plus side the map is more detailed than before. No more barbarian cities; all cities are owned by a faction. I believe the dev team may have also fixed the glitch/ability to make 500,000gpt conquering only mediterranean coastal cities, but I'm as of today unsure, as I've only played the Suebi so far. And last but not least, a word to EA: I truly understand the marketing/financing impact of DLCs, but developping a DLC alongside the game itself is just wrong. It's like buying a house and realising you need to spend another $xxx on the garage attached to it. Wtf?

I recently bought and played the expansion. I will give you a rundown of what I experience. This should tell you what the game is all about. I'll list advertised features, what I thought were pros and cons (after playing), and a rundown of my one and only game. Advertised Features (copy/paste from steam): -A brand new Faction called “the Harmony” with a single objective in mind: Annihilate Dust! -New Fighter and Bomber units that will completely change the shape of combats, especially with the new Battle Formation and Targeting systems -A complete rework of the Ship Design interface, including an improved Weapon System that provides family types for modules (melee, medium range and long range) -New Invasion mechanics have been added: Prepare your population for Bombardments, Sieges and land Invasions! Expect to face a real challenge when playing against AI opponents with the New Adaptive Multi-Agent System (AMAS) Many other additions and features voted or requested by the community including: Four new Heroes A new option to disable Exchange of Technologies, as a request from the Multiplayer community! Pros: -Revamped techs (no more upgrading ships every 5-10 turns) -New weapons such as fighter/bomber squads (is cool) -New ship classes -Strategic control during battles Cons (Gameplay breakdown will illustrate them all): -Broken AI -Broken Diplomacy -Custom races still better than presets -Broken Gameplay -Overpowered buildings, hero abilities -Bad ship designing (this one will probably be fixed early with patches) Game Breakdown: Race: Custom United Empire Affinity Traits: Scientists 2, Huygens Rings, Optimal Builders 2, Dust Impaired 2, Dust Starved. Optimistic Map: Small, Disk, Normal Difficulty, 4 Players including myself. I quickly started by building food, researching production, science, and gold. My only neighbour was Hissho, a militant civ. I teched a few weapons and made 4 ships (Starship 1) level 2 general. The Hissho felt me weak and attacked, failed, and were counter-attacked. I blockaded a minor colony (1/4 systems they owned) and waited until I got siege weapons to conquer them. Apparently you need siege to take systems. I conquered the system without ever having my forces counter-attacked... By the militant Hissho... So I scouted them and besieged their capital. They had 1 fleet surrounding their capital, and 2-3 ships were scouts. Somehow I unlocked wormhole-travelling before all other civs and found Automatons, and Harmony. I had 3 fleets at this point, only one of which comprised of Starship 2s. I opened diplomacy for ceasefire and realised I could extort the ceasefire for techs and gpt (50, 30). I destroyed the Hissho, with my general reaching level 11. Remaining civs no longer provided gpt, so I attacked them simultaneously. Both civs had considerably more ships, but nothing that compared to Starship 1. My general skyrocketed to level 22 after annexing 1 system. Despite fighting about 3 fleets per turn, none of their ships had missiles, and none of them did over 200 damage (compared to my 500 dmg Starship 1). Most of their ships had kinetic weapons with some lasers. I designed better ships with upgraded weaponry. Harmony died before I had a new fleet. Automatons finally produced ships dealing 1,000+ dmg... all kinetic, yet at this point my ships dealt 3,000+ dmg. My general was still in Starship 1 fleet and winning everytime (due to op bonuses). I won by expansion. Obviously the game is broken that I could constantly out-tech, out-militarise, and out-colonise everyone amost simultaenously. The Hissho were a joke, Harmony was powerless, and Automatons spammed garbage hoping it would deter me. My biggest issue in the original game was gpt, but when I finished this game I had 2,500+ gpt. I actually ignore gpt after I saw I was making 500+. I also ignored ship upgrading, and lost 2 fleets due to neglect and pushing out stronger ships. Maybe playing "Normal Difficulty" was just far too below my level, but I didn't even get a feel for the other races' strength/weaknesses. Compare that to Civ5 where you know, you see, Japan is military inclined, while Egpyt is cultural. ES: Disharmony is just bad.

The game features a "you vs you vs world" scenario: build and manage two empires that attempt to destroy each other at every turn while dealing with such things as floods, bandits, etc. To win, you must achieve a pre-determined score that requires your two empire to destroy each of their bases while you build new ones for them. The game concept is interesting enough, but does get quite tedious at time. Strategy here is not in-depth and you can quite easily climb the difficulty ladder without really focusing on planning and effeciency. Only two races are present for you to choose from, and both are required. This leads you feeling underpowered in terms of choice and flexibility. It will always ever be "you vs you vs world", and never "you vs you vs you vs you vs world" or something to that extent. The game was worth buying for just under $5, however, logging more than 10 hours will probably be impossible for me.

I can understand why people like this game; the concept is great and the interface is simple. It took me 1 game to figure it out and 2 to get bored. Unfortunately the focus on warfare has led the developpers to miss out on several key strategy game concepts. 1) Poor AI: the computers in this game simply ****. They have little strategic concept and will suicide powerful units to take out basic footman. The diplomacy **** as well, and the ai will break an alliance multiple times, only to renew it again 2-3 turns later (offering you gold/magic each time). Stupid AI. 2) Empire building/planning: theres honestly no real point in planning your empire at all. Little city placement is required and it doesnt matter really what you build in your cities. You focus on a resource and focus on a unit type requiring that resource. Thats about it. Theres macromanagement or micromanagement required when building cities. Oh... I almost forgot: most cities are already randomly placed as neutral cities, meaning you dont have much freedom of expansion. You only conquer them. 3) Research: There are no techs in this game, only spells. You research them and use your magick resource to cast them. Problem is that 1/2 to 3/4 of these spells are just plain USELESS! Honestly why even bother researching something I'll never use EVER? Early-mid to mid game my spell book just becomes cluttered with useless or outdated spells. Frustrating. 4)Unit commands/strategies: Unit commands are non-existant; move, disband, wait 1 turn, or wait until enemy is spotted. The game spawns enough monsters/ai enemies/levels up ur unit that you find yourself issueing wait commands every 2-5 turns at best. It makes for a fairly boring turn. Theres also little strategic value to units other than their strength (spears do not get bonus vs cav, theres no flank bonuses, etc). Therefore the only useful strategy is to mass and swarm. Somewhat tedious after a few turns (and some 50 units on your side remember to make the inactice ones wait!) Overall, the game concept is great! A fantasy Civ! Unfortunately, the strategy game mechanics are severily lacking and make this game come way short of the actual Civ franchise. I got bored of this game after logging 9-10 hours on steam (as opposed to my 150+ on Civ 5). Its just not a quality game...

Look, unless you liked empire at war, you probably wont like fall of the samurai. But even then, why get fall of the samurai when you can just play empire? Empire is much more indepth and ecompasses more territory than japan. I strongly prefer Rise of the Samurai as mobilising Samurai armies is much more satisfying than musket-wielding noobs.

An cap of a space rts game, if only to fall short on the mark.. This game features ruling ruling solar systems, space fleets, and heroes. Unfortunately the lack of random events, indepth diplomacy or strategic battleplay or actual planetary system management makes this game somewhat bland. You'll find urself ignoring food production or public happiness and seeking merely to boost production/economic output. Your space battles will be fun at first, but will quickly turn to a repetitive "damn i have to sit through another one..." as it is purely cinematic, unskippeable and there is a lack of tactical mobility. You'll find yourself trying more to figure out/research your tech tree than actually playing an rts game. With a few patches this game could quite likely become something to talk about, but up to this point its not.

Overall a disappointment. I've notched off a rating for everything I found wrong. 1) ****: You know what I liked most to do when I was tired of gaming, or searching for a new one? I sat in chat rooms. I joined clans, I talked, trash talked, or watched other people have their own conversations. It was great, I possibly had more fun in chat rooms than in the actual game. **** 2.0 has removed this, and otherwise killed that part which I liked best. 2) Originality: There is surprisingly very little which is original in sc2. If you played wc2, and then wc3, you will understand. I mean, sure they added reapers and queens and stuff, but honestly, they added about as many units when frozen throne came out, and that was just an expansion! SC2 just seems like a $50 SC expansion with very little new. I would have loved to see more play within the environment, or an added race, or even totally revamped races, but no... you just get reapers. 4. Graphics: Face it, sc2 graphics are the same as wc3 graphics. Don't get me wrong, I love wc3 graphics, but it's 10 years old! Man, when I first got sc1, I couldn't believe how bloody and dark that game was, so I expected sc2 would be similar. Instead I see these cartoonish units with this fake blood, in a children's atmosphere! Terrible. 5. Noob-Friendly: This is an issue Blizzard really wanted to solve. As I see it there are two ways to handle it: a) Provide in-depth help explaining all the features and game mechanics, allowing the player to review this easily whenever he/she desires. Also could have given scenarios with computer scripted responses based on real players so that noobs could learn what a rush is or fast expand, and which is good for which. OR b) do what blizzard did and make guys like me dislike the game further.