Szlomka

**** 2 isn't innovative and does not pretend to be. It aims to deliver the Master of Orion II experience. The idea, the main premise of the game is taken fully from a successful past title. So can't really praise for creativity here. We all know this type of game. First off the game requires the terrible invasive steam drm, at the time fo writing this it's not available on any drm free sites. The AI in game as is right now buries it, time and again poking You in the eye with it's blatantly one dimensional choices, breaking immersion by constantly reminding that You are up against an algorithm. Get ready for non stop war, arbitrary visible values that force diplomacy into the ground. You will constantly have irrational AI requests, always leading to war, somewhat understandable in a game that has only domination through conquest as a victory condition, You will always have silly brackets preventing You from doing large exchanges of tech and/or resources, on the one hand preventing You from breaking the system by effectively benefiting from say 2 races research.. but on the other hand preventing You also from effectively using a more relaxed mechanic to stop the "strong starter" races dominating Your game. There are longish periods to it where chain clicking "next turn" is pretty much the only recourse. Again the AI is such an insult to the otherwise finely done space combat... where once You learn the enemy ships attack in the same pattern .. never taking advantage of the numerous possible ship-builds.. You will quickly figure out designs to benefit the terrible lack of I in the AI. Content.. there is so little of it.. the GNN messages just don't spice it up enough, nor are they witty enough (especially read for the umpteenth time). So much more fun fluff could be added here. There are some good ideas: the Rambowl springs to mind, whose little storyline was quite refreshingly fun, the little touches of references say "Zapp Groening - daring idiot" or the "Goonswarm" - perk on a planet. These are good, but there just isn't enough of them to fill the game. Maybe **** 3 will be worthy of recommendation. I'll certainly take a look. SD2, so far, is just a skeleton. Judging by some angry reviewers pointing at SD1... it will remain this way.

Yet another abortion. Those following the franchise will remember the small scandal with some executive blathering on about how they aimed to get a metacritic rating with rome 2 and look what we have today... , at the time of writing this, 50 "professional" reviews totalling the previously aimed at mark... and oh... look just 50 player reviews.. doesn't that tell a tale right there (almost more "pros" with sizzlin pens lining up to give praise to the same turd we have been sold only 5 times before). Fear not though, Szlomo is here to deliver the soundest advice possible: Option 1 for those who never played any totalwar game... BUY ROME 1 or if You really must try the newer gfx engine try the broken but playable Shogun 2. Option 2 for those who are avid followers of the franchise and have played the previous titles to death... GO PLAY TETRIS! Plenty more strategy in the russian grandaddy of games than in this steaming pile of rotten, promoted to the point of vomiting, bile. Delivered in an excruciatingly expensive package (think of buying all the DLC for a complete game) coupled with taxing requirements, unwarranted by anything You might experience. Up yours blokes at CA! Doubt your laughing all the way to the bank.

An interesting idea and an equally interesting art style. It does have all the tell tale signs of an unfinished unpolished product, yet it still intrigues and pulls in. Sometimes corny sometimes dramatic, one feels the creators could have swerved more toward the comical satirical side. You never seem to run out of new heroes coming in, ready to step into the meat grinder. Slowly but surely You start memorising their skills, quirks and synergies as decisions need to be made on saving the ones that Your playstyle prefers. The basics are well known, by now everyone has stumbled on one type of roguelike or another. By constantly staring a mission then winning, winning partially or not completely failing You gain resources used to gradually upgrade a base camp which allows for many flavours of developing Your hero stable which You then again throw against even harder missions. The gameplay itself could be called turn based, though out of combat there are elements that grant the illusion of real time. Well worthy of recommendation even in it's current state. It sadly requires the terrible Steam... so perhaps if You are patient... wait a half year and get it DRM - free somewhere...hopefully ironed out by then.

You saw the nice launch cinematics? Well then, You still have a Chance to walk away with profit! Since that's probably as much pleasure as You can walk away with, once You buy the game You will have thrown money in the furnace. The whole game is a re-skinned civ 5 with some additional focus on barbarians. Sadly, the interaction with these barbarians - aliens does not create the feeling of being in a galaxy far far away, instead You receive familiar burdens from civ 5 that must be overcome and annoyingly irrational opponents... judging by whose behavior they probably should be alien themselves as logic and sensibility don't figure prominently in their stratagems. The whole thing makes me completely lose any sense of immersion. The glitches and bugs from civ 5 are still there, however I don't have the stamina to bear through a large world campaign to confirm the return of the onset of sluggishness post around turn 150 or so - which used to be attributed to memory leaks in civ 5 - that's how bad it is. Tried multiplayer twice - game crashed for one of us at turn 47 and 65 the second time around. The solo campaign felt obscurely lifeless with no sense of accomplishment. The graphics are fine. The glitches I guess could be lived with (knowing that they never do get fixed), but the simple offering of a change of colours and names on a previous title doesn't merit this price nor this publicity. So in summary...; Dear Sid, please when You release Beyond Earth II ( and I have no doubts You will - as there always will be people who blindly pre-order or buy on impulse based on 50+ super positive "professional" reviews) take the time to take a page from Your own book. Marry civ 1-4 with Master of Orion 1-2 and snap on a mini tactical component that Master of Magic had. Stop the dumbing down and promoting mundane clicks in place of rewarding planning ahead and tactical flavour.

Wholeheartedly recommended. Quite a multi-layered "spass-wagen" we have here. There is a galaxy to explore, a story to follow and an addicting arcade shoot-'em up. The replay value is amazing as I've been going back to this game for a few days every half year. The allocation of skill points coupled with different available ships give a lot of working combinations that play altogether differently. There is considerable attention to detail in the somewhat simple but "get the point across" graphics.

This is a marketing ploy aimed at selling the same broken product at full price, a year after release for the jolly price of a working AAA title. I assume some lazy folks might fall for this expecting to get the game and the plethora of DLC's released since launch. CAVEAT EMPTOR! Expect to pay an additional hefty fee of 60-ish euros or whatever steam deems the dollar equivalent for the DLC's You "thought" were included. The emperor campaign could have safely been released as DLC with yet another letter of apology from CA for the state of the game. Instead the inventive folks at SEGA (probably?) decided to go with this re-release of sorts. At best, awarding 1 point here might be warranted for actually releasing content instead of letting the broken code just die. Which of course I won't award. I'm personally awaiting a divorce between CA and SEGA and certainly a new engine for the next title, seeing as the current one is beyond redemption. In summary, this is not a fixed ROME 2 with DLC included. It's the same old broken rome 2 that was laughed at and belittled by anyone who doesn't take getting robbed and spat on in stride.

The development of this game ended somewhere in closed beta. Hence as expected it's a completely broken mess, including the utter lack of optimisation causing stutters, crashes to desktop and nauseating gfx effects, design decisions alienating BOTH the mainstream user, who never heard of the mechwarrior franchise and treats this as a different type of World of Tanks game, and the die hard fan. I could leave it at that, **** blatant scam taking place since the so cold launch up until now deserves some additional comments. The only development taking place post launch is the tweaking of stats, churning out expensive pay to play mech variants at jaw-droppingly steep prices and the rearranging of forums with the obvious aim of hiding any criticism. There are no regional servers, meaning playing from anywhere outside of the US is an exercise in "Guess where the mech will be in 10 seconds!". IGP and Piranha Games are at this time trying to milk as much as possible from a complete TURD and blatantly so. Don't fall for this, I treat my founder's account as money spent to remember not to buy things blindly and on impulse. You Dear Reader can just download it and try for free, It will be a waste of Your valuable time however. I'm still quite sad having spent cash and am of the opinion that people still running this should be flogged.

But ...****...Szlomo! why would You give this such a positive review?!?! Hmm.. well. I must admit I'm slightly shocked as well. Whenever I see my dear Esther, or anyone for that matter, in the claws of a match three game ( which this certainly is, supposedly derived from "Shariki" thought up in the ancient times of "Tetris") I cry a little inside thinking of the mind numbing torments the unfortunate is undergoing. These torments are the illusion of logical strategy while in fact being subjected to constant dice rolls (represented by the randomness of the type of stones filling the ones that were removed from the playing board). The inventive folks at Namco however have delivered this rare marriage of mild rpg and match three allowing me to spend quite a few fun evenings, wine, music, indulging in enjoyable recollection of past events with dearest Rachel whom never fancies being excited with my pastimes, opting instead at playing the usually terrible match 3. This unique experience of bringing two nigh separate worlds together merits a laurel wreath. Expect some adequate artwork, quite an intricate system of skills/equipment changing how the otherwise beaten to death premise of match three plays and a somewhat infantile but passable story. Let me underline the main strength here, Puzzle Quest 2 will allow You to find common ground with someone who happens to spend a lot of time on this type of games.

The story and voice overs facing the silent protagonist here will keep You forcing Yourself long past midnight solving "just one more" puzzle. Very inspired work. Even the fact of it being on steam cannot justify subtracting points from such a polished product. Once done enjoying the excellent solo experience, which delivers laughter in spades and even a tear at times, You can embark on smaller separate story with a friend for a duo-romp, fun will be had as well.

The cradle has truly fallen here. A year has passed, numerous obnoxious DLC's have been released and more money has been asked for, yet we are still left with BUGS THAT ARE HERE NOT EVEN SINCE THE RELEASE BUT SINCE EMPIRE TOTAL WAR. I suppose they are called "features" these days. Ever since SEGA took over as publisher the series has been in decline, by my standards, culminating in this sinking of Rome. The theme here is: release a product with content withheld, then force the saddened customer to be drip fed all the proper parts of the game via DLC. The series before SEGA stepped in , lacked only proper multiplayer servers, the rest worked and was a pleasure to play, a work of love. Post SEGA... multiplayer stability is as always not here but the single player experience has been destroyed as well, particularly in this release. The multiplayer campaign suffers from the exact same problems in all it's iterations starting with the beta in empire and throughout Napoleon, Shogun II and now Rome II. There are no bugs in Total War: Rome II, the game itself is a giant Scolopendra on Your hdd.

This GEM delivers on all fronts. You are cunningly slinked into this beautiful imaginary world, where even though in reality You may be a wizened old fart, here You feel a true hero, rogue or obi wan type neutral balance the world jester of wisdom. People spending days on "match three" games need not apply here, everyone else should buy. Frankly I'm so dazzled by this game that it's difficult to even begin explaining the amount of things done right, it's all there: fantastic music, great voice overs, intricate lore, stunning graphics, plethora of side quests, captivating main storyline (which can by the way be completely ignored to enjoy other stuff which by my estimate dwarfs the main storyline 1 to 10 in terms of content), giant LIVING world. Tempted to say I'm speechless given today's undercooked, bug ridden, craptastic releases that such a wonderful product came to fruition.

Wow! The cold war is far from over I see. The cardinal sins here re the terrible story that might only satisfy the brain dead who readily subscribe to propaganda and the lack of optimisation causing the game to stutter, besides it being more of the same old same old. There used to be a game "Soldiers" back in the day... used to be pretty decent, then they released "Soldiers 2" which was pure terrible wrapped in crap, at the same time the first COH appeared, which was in the same WWII niche doing everything better than "Soldiers 2", actually looking a lot better and running on any PC configuration I had flawlessly as opposed to the aforementioned. COH 2 is lucky there's no other company delivering a similar product.

An excellent game. It delivers fun and satisfaction. The repetitive shortcomings of rogue likes are there but within the genre it shines brightly as THE best proposition. Now if only the authors would proceed to turn this into a fully fledged star-trek like exploration that is somewhat open ended... there might be room here for a sequel.

Steer clear! Severely unoptimised game, gfx card heats up as if the visuals were something exceptional which they certainly are not. Crashes to desktop every once in a while. When it works, it feels as if someone went and butchered a fallout game by throwing away all the fun fluff and left you a single threaded storyline , slaughtered 1 character into four mock ups which should probably bear the names of skills they will be using. The rpg element might be there if someone has an imagination that will cover up the bland sadness delivered here. Tactics are completely missing, nothing to consider, nothing to plan on, no synergy between skills, weapons, no influence from environments, no real cover mechanics to speak of. Unintuitive UI that feels a deliberate time sink. Invest Your pleasure time and money elsewhere.