Thazari

Yay, I finally got a nice unique item to drop! *Connection lost* *Server rolls back an hour*

Fallout 76 feels like a sandbox without any sand. There is no direction, nothing to do, nothing to achieve or discover. A big empty boring world, as your copy of the world is instanced and only contains a handful of people. Nothing you do is persistent or has any impact. Interaction with other players is very limited. On the technical side it has problems too, with frequent server issues, a massive day 1 patch and annoying controls. Fallout 76 is a game that tries to do a little bit of everything, but lacks cohesion and doesn't do anything right.

95/100 Summary: Solid turn based empire building strategy game with amazing real time battles. Great quality of life improvements over its predecessor. Better UI and better graphics (campaign map and monster animations in particular), more city management thanks to being able to settle all regions and getting more buildings and building slots, bigger more impressive creatures to fight with. Has an objective-based campaign, with a few cutscenes thrown in. Biggest negative are the less-than-stellar siege battles. First the positives: * Nice combination of sandbox and story/objective based gameplay on the campaign * 4 characterful races, each with their own unique mechanics and 2 different starting positions each * Expanded building system with more building slots, more building chains and better rewards for having resource buildings * Lots of region-specific special wonder buildings (temples, wizard-towers, special ports, palaces, etc) * Capture and build cities anywhere, but with race-specific climate preferences * Campaign map looks amazing, many different areas of the game, making conquest feel fresh * Better skill trees with more unique skills for legendary lords * Very complete army rosters, none of the iconic big monster stuff held back (dragons, phoenixes, hydra, dinos, hellpit, doomwheel) * Most magic spells feel much more powerful * More variation in battle maps (river battles, chokepoint battles, slightly more variation in sieges, more terrain features such as cliffs inside the playable area) * Battles seem to play slightly slower, allowing for more tactics * Music has improved a lot * Performance is very good * Additional free mega campaign map for owners of warhammer 1 to be released soon * Hopefully lots of free content, like in warhammer 1 The negatives aren't too huge an issue, but I'll list everything that bothered me at some point: * Siege battle maps are still small and even with more variation, these maps are still rather similar * Campaign camera perspective has changed for the worse, with camera aimed at the sky and not zooming out very far, battle camera doesn't zoom out far enough and view is often obstructed by trees * Still blobbing going on in battles * Can't really tell how good units REALLY perform in battle as stats don't tell everything (like attack speed) * Having multiple armies increases upkeep of each army, so having 10+ armies like in historical TW games is prohibitively expensive * All playable factions are non-human and you might not like all the factions' playstyle/theme * Magic-specialized races High Elves and Dark Elves lack a lord-level wizard and can access fewer spells than the human faction in Warhammer 1 * Treasure hunts seems bugged and mostly gives penalties instead of rewards * Unit stats are not always in line with what the units have in the warhammer tabletop game and what you'd expect

Ok, just stop 2017 already because we already have an unbeatable winner for the worst game of the year. This is some top down shooter, but the collision detection is total garbage and the controls and game mechanics look as if they have been coded by a 5 year old... for a 1970's console or something. The game is completely linear in that you have to walk from one map to the next, but this is buggy and unclear, you can get stuck in levels with the game not detecting you walked into a door or off the edge of the map and other weird garbage like that. You can only shoot in certain directions, but the collision doesnt always work so your projectiles just miss. Don't buy it as you'll have to go through the hassle of getting a refund!

Seriously one of the best medieval strategy games ever. Very streamlined and accessible, but great gameplay and lots of fun. Each city on the map has different resources and local special units to recruit, giving you something cool and new with every city you conquer. You get a limited amount of heroes which you have to split between army generals and various dignitaries. There are some good diplomacy mechanics in place and the real time battles are intuitive and lots of fun.

Amazing RPG with a crazily good story and massive open world. While the story is more or less linear, there are lots of side quests and you're free to roam around most of the world. There are many different characters to accompany you, some of which have their own story and voice acting. The stat/skill system is deep and really influences the outcome of conversations and the story, as characters may respond differently or quest resolve in different ways based on which skills you chose to unlock. Throughout it all is the duality between technology and magic, but there's more subtle things going on as well. And the overall plot is original and surprising. The game lasts very long too, you probably need at least 100 hours to get through it. Graphics are a bit grim though and the combat is quirky and better played in turn based mode as it is way too fast and buggy otherwise.

Clear and intuitive gameplay and UI, nice pacing and loving the concept of monster lairs allover the land to give your heroes and armies something to do in the early game. Turn based battles play smoothly and are fun. I like how heroes can lead your armies and have various classes with a huge amount of skills to unlock. Graphics are appealing and the game has a nice atmosphere. The downsides are that there isn't that much to build in cities so your cities max out relatively soon and don't have any variety (although the tiles around the city make your city better in certain aspects over others). And there aren't that many different races to play, unlike Age of Wonders 2.

Huge disappointment. When you start the game, you have almost no building options for structures and units, and everything just takes a zillion turns to get unlocked or constructed. Diplomacy and AI are a mess and graphics look unclear and unappealing. After 4 hours of playing I still didn't feel I had accomplished anything, so I stopped as I have way better games to spend my time on. The only good thing is the city management with the tiles surrounding the city having different benefits, which makes city planning a bit more interactive, although this is not always very balanced.

Easily one of the most extensive DLCs, Realm of the Wood Elves has way more content than the expansion packs of old. All the Wood Elf units from the tabletop are present, a set of new magic spells has been introduced and Wood Elves have a whole set of new play mechanics on the campaign map, making them very distinct when compared to all the races that have come before. Overall the difficulty has been ramped up a bit as you'll now have to manage a new strategic resource called amber which is needed everywhere: buildings, tech, units and even your progression towards victory all rely on it. In the battles, Wood Elves need quite a bit more micro management than other races, but when you master them, they become very powerful indeed. The building trees and character skill trees are also more complicated than you'd be used to. But if you've already been playing the game with all the other races for many months, the challenge is more than welcome and the addition of Wood Elves gives Total War Warhammer a fresh feeling and adds a lots more hours of enjoyment.

Initially it looks quite interesting, but unfortunately the game remains very linear without offering meaningful choices. There is a complicated spell crafting system and item upgrade system, but by the time I started to use these, the game was already almost over. It just feels like the initial part of the game has a lot of work to it while the mid and endgame is completely rushed. There are nice dungeons in the early part of the game, but for the last part, you can just walk into the areas you want to conquer and there's no dungeon at all, just walk in and get what you want. There are very few sidequests so you're bored very quickly with nothing to do. There aren't even any random encounters to test your new items/abilities on besides the few scripted groups that you are meant to encounter on the road. The combat is sluggies and unresponsive, skills have very weird ways to activate them, which often make you think your character is going to perform an a skill you want, only to wait for 10 seconds to see them do nothing because the order wasn't processed because you didn't click the icons and targets in the way you're supposed to do (it doesn't inform you that you did it wrong either). In the early/mid game all items ****, and in the end game you get many artifacts and other cool stuff, however there's noone left to fight to actually put these cool items to any use. All in all I finished the game in less than 8 hours and don't feel the need to replay it, making it poor value for money.

Warhammer is the first Total War game in a fantasy setting, so it was the question whether CA could pull this off. I believe they did. Then you may ask "Is this another Rome 2 fail launch?" and I'd say no, for me, the game is fine on launch and there are no obvious game breaking issues. TW Warhammer offers the choice of 5 distinct races. Each of the races plays quite differently and has some unique mechanics going for them. Character customization is better than any TW game before, with lots of magic items, skills and followers to tailor them to your needs. The campaign map looks spectacular, with lots of awesome-looking landmarks such as skull mountains, volcanoes and unique structures allover the place and when the evil factions Chaos or Vampires get hold of a province, the terrain changes to a hellish landscape, which is a nice touch. The battles run a lot smoother than Rome 2 and the the variation in units is massive. Each race starts with some basic stuff like spearmen and archers, but as you progress in the game you start to unlock the creatures that make them unique, such as demigryph riding knights, flame cannons, boar-riding orcs towering giants or undead dragons. Bringing your customized generals and heroes into the fray feels really rewarding, as they send lesser warriors flying just like Sauron did in the Lord of the Rings movie. Overall the game seems somewhat easier to play. In Rome 2 and Attila in particular you had to juggle food, squalor, sanitation and all that, but in Warhammer the buildings have no penalties so you can just build whatever you want. Some regions have unique buildings or resources so there is some variation and not every province will be a carbon copy. Since the Campaign part of the game is turn based, the time it takes to resolve rounds is important, and I have to say they are REALLY quick, roughly 15-20 seconds with the movement of enemy characters turned off, which is a breather since Attila would take up to a minute which is really frustrating sometimes. There are two negatives I can point out so far. First, in battles, the magic spells are not completely balanced yet; magic is a limited resource so you can only cast so many spells, but magic missiles seem to miss all the time and do less damage than a cannonball if they do hit while the recharge of magic spells is so fast that you wonder why they even have a recharge time, as you're waiting for mana anyway. The second is the lack of variety in battle maps. The battles in the field have a lot of variation, but siege maps are mostly the same. And there is not really any other type of battle (no river battle, no minor village battle), which is a bit of a shame if you're in it for the multiplayer battles and you want to play a different type of battle. So, overall, 9/10, good performance, beautiful fantasy setting, lots of unit variation, nicely distinct races to play, but it lost a point because of no good balancing on magic and they should have put in more different battle maps.

Game starts out fun for the first few days, but quickly turns into a sloggy grind. There are only 4 classes and the game suffers from serious balance issues so that 2 of those classes are inferior to the rest. While you can play for free, the upgrading of items (so basically all your endgame progression) is money based and reaching the higher item tiers is pretty much impossible without paying hundreds of dollars. The dungeoncrawling aspect is nice but unfortunately the dungeon layouts are not randomized, so with the amount of grinding and repetition you need to get anywhere, things get tiring really really fast.

This mobile strategy game has some interesting features such as terraforming your map to optimize resource production, but all in all, it quickly turns into a frustrating waiting game with very little to do. It is also pay to win, because waiting times can be circumvented with money and the best military units are behind a paywall. Not recommended.

This party-based mmo has a very interesting and original round-based combat system that is really revolutionary and lots of fun in PVP and multiplayer battles, but unfortunately the grind and pay to win aspects ruin it.

Diablo style action RPG with awesome graphics, Interesting classes, challenging monsters and smooth gameplay. Loot is rewarding and skill trees are solid. The only big downside is that the whole map is completely static, greatly diminishing replay value.

This game is basically a poor version of Baldur's Gate (uses the same engine). This game lacks the open world and is much more on rails. The story is linear and feels uninspired and the environments don't really feel alive either.

I remember getting this game and being so intensely disappointed. I spent months on Dungeon Keeper 1, but this second installment is rather dumbed down, making it easy to get powerful characters fast thus rendering most characters useless. I finished the game in just a single day and it doesn't offer any replay value at all, because in multiplayer people just rush to the most powerful characters in minutes, destroying the whole pacing of the game.

I greatly enjoyed this party-based action RPG, it has a nice loot system and the characters are nice and diverse. You can craft your own items with components you find which is really awesome, and the way the computer controls your other party members is decent. The game takes place in a dark version of samurai-ruled Japan with undead roaming the lands which feels fresh and unique. The only downside is the game isn't perfectly balanced and the skill trees do not make much sense.

Overall its not bad, but the game's story is rather boring and it just doesn't feel like there is much to do. The online aspect of the game would have been awesome if done right, but sadly feels like an arbitrary grind for cash and, ways of getting cash are limited and not very fun and the things you can buy for cash aren't really that rewarding anyway. There also doesn't seem to be any security on it whatsoever, so cheating is rampant and ruins the game.

The good: * Non-instanced player-owned housing * Extremely deep harvest/craft/trade system * Hardcore PVP * Triple-class character system The bad: * Combat system feels dated * Pay-to-win and heavy RNG based item system

The concept of the game is good, a bit of a hack and slash RPG playing like a strategy game, but the game suffers from serious balance issues making monsters either too strong or too weak (which coupled with heavy XP and item loss upon death is really frustrating) and lacks any real character customization.

Lacks all the features that made diablo 2 great. Hardly any randomization in levels, boring stat system where only one stat per character class is important, no real character builds with skills and so on, dumb boss fights with cutscenes, no nice loot runs and it had a stupid real money auction house at launch as well which is just moneygrubbing.

RTS game featuring the assembly and customization of giant robots. It also has 3 levels on the map (air, surface, underground) to fight on simultaneously. All in all it is a unique approach for a strategy game not seen elsewhere. Robot graphics, sounds and animations are nice, but the terrain is unfortunately rather dull. The interface is also a bit clunky and the game does have some bugs that never got patched, but overall it is still a great game.

Certainly the best RPG of the nineties with an interesting story, beautiful graphics and solid gameplay. Has aged well, it's still worth playing decades later. The game has a mix of sci-fi and fantasy aspects and this tragic clash of cultures vibe. The story is compartmentalized into several islands, and every time you move from one island to the next you will encounter a new environment, new characters and new monsters to fight, keeping the game fresh and interesting from beginning to end.