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This game is designed to have simplified flight controls, so the 'hardcore" Player (Laughable term), who is looking for a Microsoft flight sim in space will be COMPLETELY disappointed. (If you want to use a HOTAs or something... see ya later) This game is designed for a game-pad, and if you use a game-pad it's great. I have throttle as my mouse wheel, and all works great. This is making Wing Commander Privateer or pick your late 90's space economic game and updating it, while keeping the look and feel decidedly of the throw-back time period. The Music is GREAT too, the voice acting I also enjoy, and I love the look and feel of the game. The story starts off slow, as it should, and you can pick and choose what you want to do. Investigating every system, all points of interest, and making cash and learning the game takes some time, but it's enjoyable. You have to be careful when you start off, you may take on missions you CANNOT win, and that's intended, you start off in a glorified space-tugboat... can't take out actual heavy fighters in it. DUH. You gotta grind up, just like in the good old games this is a homage to. Getting into mining isn't something you look at right away, but it's also fun. This game is FUN. I've killed a lot of time on it so far and look forward to finishing with my work today so I can do a few more missions and check out 1 or 2 new systems. This game will lend itself to amazing DLC's, MODS and expansions!

I'll start by saying this is a really good game. It adds some great stuff over it's predecessors. Graphics are decent, sound is good, I personally find the User Interface easy to navigate, and I've played all other civ games, the differences took a few minutes to figure out. I like the new way builders work, I like the way eureka's work etc. What I say needs improvement: 1) The AI is a little predictable. It just needs to be tweaked, I can see the basics of the AI is there, but it can get stuck on some things and can be exploited. 2) A little more complexity to the Tech Tree. I'd like to see more than 1 or 2 prerequisites. 3) I NEED the ability to remove Old wonders, and Districts... If you start construction on a district THINKING it's say... campus, but you accidentally picked Holy site... and you only have a few auto-saves and notice after those are passed... you cannot remove the error by canceling production or wiping it with a worker... It's permanently incomplete. Incomplete **** from wonders/districts should be able to be removed. We should also have the ability to trash say... Stone henge in favour of a newer more powerful wonder. 4) The game needs "New Random Seed" Raging barbarians, start bias etc. 5) I want to re-roll a start position if I get a **** one on Turn 1... I've started surrounded by nothing but Tundra and I wasn't Russia... So I have to re-do my game and set all my settings from scratch... Pointless busy work... 6) I should be able to set new default settings for games.... instead of what they say are default... It saves time when starting games. Overall it's a great game... It needs a few updates to add a few over-looked things and fix a few issues though.

I start off every review with a 10/10 and work backwards. Here it is: Graphics: Pretty good. It looks and feels like the original Trilogy. There are nifty easter-eggs, and small things to go and see. You can really tell the graphics team were Star Wars fans. I am a bit spoiled with all the stuff I've done with my SLI GTX980TI rig, and the modding in games like Skyrim, but I give this game a +2 on graphics out of a possible 3. Sound: Very close to the Starwars experience. Overall very solid. Again you can tell this team are Star Wars fans. +2 Solo play: Terrible... it's shallow, and not worth doing. You can tell they made this game for Online play only and the Solo-play was an afterthought they had to tick off the checklist. A strong Solo-game is essential to building a game brand. To give a person a haven to go and enjoy a deep story that Muli-player just cannot do. Score here -3 Multiplayer: It's pretty good. Fun but shallow. There isn't enough content to drive me to want to play this game over other titles once the novelty wears off. Score +1 Game Content: REALLY pathetic. You can tell they made a full game. Took a bunch of the content per EA's request and held it back to sell to gamers later. It's blatantly obvious.... It's like getting spat in the face by EA.... They are thinking "Star Wars fans will pay anything we want them to.... lets charge them a **** The game really falls short here. Score -3 Seasons Pass: Again EA is a greedy son of a #$!@ here... $50 for content that is already made, more than likely, that they are withholding because they think Star Wars fans will easily part with their money with the upcoming movie hype. This is LOW... marketing killing a game exemplified. I have to give this a -4... This is cause enough for me to not buy any DLC and to put this game on the shelf and trade it in, while it's value is high, for another game. This Takes me to my overall score. Starting with 10+2+2-3+1-3-4 = a Score of 5/10 I think a 5/10 is proper for this game, as the corporate greed aspect and lack of attention to solo-play really justifies a score between 4 and 5... I was generous with giving it a 5.

Every game I evaluate starts with a 10/10 and I work backwards to the final score. First I'm evaluating this game for what it is. A browser based game. This means I put less emphasis on Graphics, depth of play and Sound. The reason: It's a browser based game.... Nuff said. Graphics: Again It's a browser based game. I've seen slightly better and worse in browser games. Effect on score 0 Sound. Not too bad actually. I had the sound on for a while when I started playing before I set it to mute (Because I play this game while I do boring paper work in my home office) Score +1 Gameplay: This game is quite good. There is a PvP aspect but it is optional. There's a significant singleplayer part which is awesome. You can't lose everything you sunk your time into to another player and the game doesn't reset. +1 Progression: The Pay-wall... Always a negative. It's not as bad as in other games, but the limited space and how the game kinda sorta wants to force you to use (diamonds) to pay to get extra space... I saw this as a kind of negative... It **** to be in an age and literally run out of the ability to build stuff because you don't have enough space to make it work.. also a REALLY frustrating part is getting Blueprints for Great Buildings. There's a RNG component to it and it seems rigged.... You need 1 of each copy of 9 to build the building... and through the RNG I've had 6-9 of each copy except 1 is at ZERO... I've had this happen to 3 Great Buildings... So the frustration of this is a -3 to the score all things considered. Social. Not so good... The messaging system is kinda poorly designed. You can't tell who is actively online unless they send a message or talk and they can't see if you're online. The Live-chat is ok... but kinda limited as well. Score -2 Design: The game is well designed and flows well. It's unique in the Browser based games : Score +1 It's worth playing. It does kill time, and paying isn't ABSOLUTELY necessary but the RNG is frustrating. They could work on the social aspect a little as it's a draw back and even with good IRL friends we end up talking on Facebook and not in the game

This game is TRASH. All the DLC in steam is priced at CAD $180. On Steam it has this quote from the developers “The game has been in development by a small team since it was conceived back in 2009. It is fully self-funded by our small studio. As such, we don't have the benefit of the team size required to playtest a game of this scope; an MMO no less" This literally means they will probably not play-test it, they will probably not work on the game anymore, and if you don't like playing it as is then.. "Screw off" This game is BUGGY as hell. The graphics are Terrible. I mean Terrible! There are random mechanical... People? I guess? standing in levels that don't do anything but stand there. Your bullets pass through other people, your automatic gun fires SLOW. The UI is buggy at best. There is NO tutorial, NO new player introduction. There is NO music. The sound is abysmal... When you walk it sounds like some person was saying "chew chew chew chew" into a mic and they modified the sound a bit. The game crashes all the time. I mean ALL the time. The players I encountered were immune to my bullets... My cross hairs went 'red' on some targets.. Were these enemies? nope. they were.. I don't know what they were. There is no purpose to the.. levels? I guess... ramps to empty rooms, platforms that don't do anything. Doors that don't lead anywhere.... The planetside terrain looks like it was just slapped together randomly with nothing having a real function. The economy seems to be 'point' based. Not only that you can't do anything without points.. which makes no sense. When you finally figure out how to get missions, you can mess them up by pressing the wrong key.. I've read this is a direct tablet port. I can't even see how this would be fun on a tablet. It seems it's just a cash grab by a developer with no skills or ability. The positive reviews here must be the developer and the other people who worked on the game or the devs family. First 3 reviews.. kinda gives it away. "Lucky enough to get a copy of the game" from the positive review... ROFL. This game isn't even worth it if it were free.

This is a TERRIBLE GAME. I mean Wholly crap this is a Terrible game. Boring world, horrible interface, buggy as hell, terrible design, controls are horrible... There is not one redeeming quality of this game. It's horrible.

I'll start off with the 10/10 rating I give everything and work backwards to my score of a 4. The Interface is not mouse driven in menus. You have to use keyboard controls which is not intuitive seeing how you used the mouse to navigate the menus before the game launched. The interface has to be instinctual and natural to the majority of PC users. This means the Mouse. The interface is a Vital component as it should be background and thoughtless. Just a smooth interraction to get through so you can play the game. It isn't... It's awkward. You cannot use your mouse in the various menus. When you are in the system map and click on a station you do not get options like "set destination" or anything. You have to use your keyboard as if you were playing an old 286 computer computer game. The galaxy map you can click on things and a pop-up menu does come up but it is so sensitive that trying to mouse over to the options closes it more often than successfully choosing an option. Interface -3 Graphics are pretty good. They are by no means Amazing. I have settings on Ultra and run it on a 60hz 4k monitor. They never made me go "WOW" they were just pleasing. Score: +2 the ships are kind blah. Just wedges that look kind of dated. Put up against the environmental graphics the ships look drab... Score: +0 Controls: They are complicated. This is a steep learning curve. If you have just a mouse and keyboard you have to fool around with the controls for quite some time to get anything resembling intuitive controls to fly with. Score:-1 Manual everything: Docking is a pain in the butt. Apparently after you play the game for a while you can buy a computer to automatically dock... but if you have played the game long enough you may just like manual docking and not want the computer to do it for you... I don't know why the auto-dock computer isn't a starting item and you can save ship resources by taking it out later on... It's easy to miss the spot you have to land on, you get warnings by the station to MOVE NOW OR YOU WILL BE SHOT, you accidentally press a button to deploy hard-points and your guns deploy. You were just fined. Score: -1 Navigation: It's ok, you have to adjust the mouse sensitivity and dead-zones to improve this, and if you don't know what these are because you're new to games like this.. You're SOL. Some planets don't even show up on the system map because they are tethered to another planet.. Nothing explains this, you have to figure it out on your own. The ships seem sluggish, and you have to fool around with Pitch, Yaw and roll to get something you like, again if you are unfamiliar with what this means, you're again, SOL. Score -1 Tutorials: Not very helpful at all. This game assumes you are experienced before you play. It assumes you're an existing backer. It assumes you've played the original game. It seems that without a HOTAS or Joystick set-up the game puts you at an initial disadvantage. Buying a new HID before you experience the game is asking a lot. New Player experience Score -2 I tried going back to this game, and I couldn't... It's just so boring. I had to drop my score by another point. -1 I really want space games on the PC to make a come-back. I didn't back the game, and I wanted to try it once it was released. I bought the game, and my experience has not been that positive at all. I showed the game to some friends. they were not that interested in picking it up after seeing how much micro-management is required at the start of the game. I can see micro-management of all the details giving efficiencies and advantages once you become more familiar with the game, but it seems that you have to deal with all this right out of the box and can earn money and buy stuff later to reduce the micromanagement..... Strange..... The community generally says "we want a complex game. So get out of here" I'm sure I'd want a more complex game as well, once I have sunk my teeth into it... but not right out of the box... I can't in good conscience recommend this game to anyone other than the initial backers.

This is a great city game. Design, flow, all of it. Solid from the bottom up. I do have to take away a mark because it doesn't take advantage of half decent rigs and up. You're limited in how many zones you can take, and all that stuff, because they didn't want the game to be unplayable on POS computers. I should have an option in the game where my system specs let me do more. I have a 6 core I7, with 16 gigs of ram, with a total of 8 Gigs of video ram on two cards. I would be taking off 2 points here but modding lets people bypass this limitation to a degree. I strongly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys city games.

Full Disclosure: I was a Fan of the previous games in this franchise. I also was an Alpha backer. I didn't participate much past the first two builds, and checked back in with the game with the last Beta. That being said... This is a really good game. It isn't light-years different visually or structurally than the previous game, but why fix what wasn't broken? The graphics got more polishing, the game-play expanded upon, the ship designer was drastically improved, and the AI was made a LOT better. The game can also handle a lot more. It's programmed in 64Bit. This means they won't have limitations like they had with the previous 32 bit game. The music is better, you can zoom all the way in and see your ships the way you designed them on the map, in their own fleets. The sounds are better. Galactic Civilizations 2 was amazing in my books, and this game is a worthy successor. I am not giving it a 10 because I don't yet know what kind of expansions they will have and what content it will bring.

I'll start off with a 10/10 and work backwards to the score. Graphics: Pretty good for this type of game. I've played other MOBAS. Dota 2's graphics are the best out of the bunch. They have a relatively higher degree of fidelity than the others. +2 (Not pushing the limits) Score: +2 Community: The Community is intense. This results in a lot of negativity directed towards those who are learning the game, trying new things etc. You also get very positive interactions due to the intensity, but it’s hit or miss. You also get a fair number of people who troll a game. This is common amongst all online games, but, due to the competitive nature, it really stands out. This game seems to bring out the best and worst of people. It is arguable that this is part of the fun. Score-3 Mechanics/controls: The Game Mechanics are Simple and easy to grasp. Mouse driven, only a few hotkeys to use in order to perform the majority of tasks and the more detailed functions are easily identifiable, and customizable. Score: +2 Complexity: Dota 2 is relatively complex compared to the other MOBAS. The trees are destructible so you can carve paths that do not normally exist, and create optimal angles for certain abilities, You can use them to escape to; the multitude of existing paths create varied and numerous ‘juking’ possibilities. You have to last hit and deny, Heroes also interact with the map in different ways, some gain vision, others have map-wide abilities etc. The degree of complexity is not for everyone. Other games cut back on complexity. It’s a play-style preference, but if you enjoy a high degree of competitiveness the complexity (you ease into it over time) is beneficial. Score +1 Content: The best thing about Dota 2 is all content that affects gameplay is free to everyone, and stays free. All pay-content or grind content is cosmetic. Sound, effects, textures, graphical aspect etc. Other games have you pay for this or grind for hundreds of hours. The WHOLE game of Dota 2 is free from the start. This is a big benefit. If one player didn’t have access to some heroes then that would be a HUGE disadvantage. Score +2 Balance: The game is very balanced. The balancing has literally taken place since 2003 when it was a mod for Warcraft 3. Many minds have balanced this. Even still, changes are made, and the game continues to improve Score +0 (Games must be balanced only negative scores possible) Valve: The parent company is a detractor in how they police the community. It assumes players are dumb and cannot police their own experience. The first time you have a muted player on your team, and you cannot properly interact with them, and lose the game you’ll understand why I bring this up as a negative. Just because other people said he’s a rude dude; doesn’t mean I would have, but I do not have the choice. I have to put up with the handicap on my team. Sure a person may just be a jerk; this should be up to me, not Valve. It is also difficult to get customer support for the game. The company is also slow to improve old hero models, and adding in missing heroes… I’m sure this is intentional to decrease their ongoing development costs. Score -3 Player base: Hit or miss, the game has dedicated roles with the various heroes. When others ignore them you’ll likely lose the match. This can be one of the most frustrating aspects about the game. You just learn to live with it, and find another game. Score -3 Heroes/items: MOBAS generally have heroes. In other games there isn’t much real difference between them. Sure they have some different abilities, but Dota 2 really differentiates these abilities, and has an added element of early/mid/late game heroes. If your team selection focuses on early play you have to do sufficient damage to the enemy early on before the other team can push into the later game where your selections are weaker. If you picked a lategame mix of heroes you have to delay the game to get to the stage of the game where your composition shines. You can also have a balanced team and that poses its own challenges. I played LOL and heroes generally scale much more consistently to the later stage of the game, where in Dota your selection plays a bigger role. Items are pretty much a universal aspect in MOBAS, and nothing any of them really stands out, so items don’t play into my score. +1 Conclusion: This is a great game. It could be a 10/10 if Valve did a little less parenting of its players, and gave us more options to police our own experiences by ourselves. Communities will always be what they are. It’s too many variables to control, and valve has tried to do this and, in my opinion, failed. This game is a LOT of fun, has tremendous replay value, and is constantly being adjusted, updated, tweaked etc. You will need patience to get past the initial harshness of the community, but when you do it’s worth it.

I give this game a 9/10. I do this after reading all the reviews, and I disagree with them and will say why. Why I disagree: People wanted an entirely different game? Like Alpha Centuari was to Civilization? Everyone I know hated Alpha Centuari. It differentiated itself from Civ too much, and over-all was meh. Then when they make a extra-planetary Civ and keep many of the mechanics that worked VERY well people complain... Can't make people happy I guess. Review: Graphics: I'm happy with them. I like them. They are an improvement over Civ V, and keep graphics that work well. Now on some planets It can be a bit tough to differentiate Tundra and plains at a glance, but it's an alien world and the terrain, flora and fauna are different than that of earth. It just makes sense. Sound: Again, I like the sound. It's a slight improvement over Civ V. Less traditional music but that's the case, it's the future and you left tradition behind. Game Mechanics: (the big part) 1) Cities. LOVE THEM. Build buildings, then get a choice of customization on their function/abilities through a choice. Perfect! I can play differently, plan out what I want to. The Unit customization based on what you do and how you do it is great. I can make an army designed to kill other units or attack cities, heal quickly etc. I like the new espionage functions. It's an improvement over Civ V's. The Level gain is also better, and if you're in the lead there is actually something your Spies can do. Especially since Technology isn't linear anymore, it's a web. The Tech Web: Love it. Linear tech isn't realistic the future, decisions, Values, Philosophy, Play-style all should and can play a part in how you advance. Once I got used to it, I say it's the best part of the game. Diplomacy: Meh. It's the same as Civ V except you can trade with people who have nothing to give to you with "favours" I can trade Titanium I'm not using and don't plan on using for a while to Civ's that may or may not need it for Favours. I can effectively bank them for later. I do like this. In Civ games I usually ignore diplomacy, not because It's a bad feature, but because I could care less about my opponents. I play to crush them not work with them. For my play-styles I just wish some of the phrases the AI used in the screen were more varied and different than Civ V when I refuse 100% of the time to aid them in war, and I always refuse all requests to stop settling near them etc. I'm sure there are people who play civ, and by the comments I can see it, that like diplomacy... I find that it's the same as liking the garnish in a 6 course meal. I don't play to interact diplomatically with AI's. I toss them and their wants/needs aside. War, movement, is all the same as CIv V but with the added unit complexity. And I like this. Resources are a little hard to figure out at first. I know what Wheat does, but what about Chitin? Or Fibre? all it takes is a few games to get this as 2nd nature. A Alien Life: They could have done a bit better job of taking advantage of this, and it's why this game gets a 9 and not a 10. You can kill the roaming aliens but still 'preserve' Life on the planet and that makes sense. Some life is hostile, you deal with it, and the rest isn't. As tech advances I'd have liked to see alien life not interrupt your use of a tile for resources, or even try to attack you, and they get small (graphic wise) and become part of the background animations. Or you can keep killing them. I like the ideology of Purity, supremacy and harmony. I also like how virtues replace several key racial bonuses or wonder bonuses of Civ V that were mandatory and you needed to RUSH to have a given play-style. Wonders: they are there, just a tad hidden, and when you look for them on the tech tree you're uncertain if it is or not until you figure it out and just remember it. They also could have done a bit more art-work on the wonders graphics... they are all whiteboxed... Overall this is a great game. Some SIMPLE fixes they should put in and then this game is a 10/10.

I have had Destiny for about 2 Months. My main guy is level 29. I have completed the campaign (if you can call it that). I have a bunch of exotics. I do the Nightfall strikes solo, and have done everything except the Vault Raid. The Review: Indepth Story: Extremely poor.. It's disjointed, and doesn't make any sense. Spontaneously after ages of being sieged by the "darkness" (whatever that is) all the stuff is going down now? I mean seriously... The enemy has just suddenly decided to steal some info they've had in their territory for ages... The story line is filled with this stuff. It's as if it was written at the last minute by the programmers themselves.... You can tell they wrote it in reverse. "We want the players to kill 3 waves of enemies lets have them defend a computer (which cannot be destroyed).. Wait we used that 3 times... Ok lets have the players defend a alien computer! GOOD IDEA GUYS. *High Five's all around. * The story is poorly scripted. I feel bad for Peter Dinklage. He's told to say "It's just past all those Devils" when there is only one Devil... Not plural... singular.... "I'm picking up a signal and it's not Cabal" When all you face next is Cabal.... The alien races fight each other and you, but there is no reason why they do this. You just have to accept it as is. Most of the story is basically just noise that plays as you do the same missions over and over. Then you finish, and then replay the missions over and over to earn Levels of Vanguard/cryptarch/Dread Orbit... etc. for no reason at all. You get full access to everything at level 2/3 so my level 30 Cryptarch is simply to get the 'level up bonus' which are items I scrap. The Loot: Meh... Some of it is fun, but most of it is just junk to scrap. Infact I scrap 99+% of everything I find. It's hard to find amour that gives you the bonus you want in Ammo carry capacity for the guns you use. Sure you have boots that give you Scout rifle ammo increase but then it comes with Shotgun... You don't use a shotgun.. So you find one that gives you sniper ammo, but the other one is auto rifle... and the 'aesthetic' items.. cloaks for hunter. Sash, or bonds do nothing. a level 15 one that is common is the same as a rare one at level 20... Not even the ability to infuse a style you like with anything... A wasted slot. the shaders... Neon ones... Sure works well for multiplayer to stand out like a beacon... I have 2 that resemble cammo **** and green variety. I get hit less using them. So they are the only ones I use. I scrap the rest. MultiPlayer: The strikes are not bad, but repetitive. On the PS4 I have 6 it rotates between. You may or may not talk to the people on your team but there is no reason for it. You are just rushing it as fast as you can. Most of my friends don't play Console games, the few that do either have Xbox One or don't have Destiny on the PS4. So I have to solo everything where there isn't matchmaking. I tried to find a few groups to do the Vault Raid with, but to no avail. If you make it clear you want to do it you may get invited to the groups throwing out invites on a 3rd party website, but you have a better chance of being kicked from the fire team that being on it. So I haven't even tried to do the Vault except for the early stages when I could exploit to the 3rd area. Missions: Why even bother with them... It's only Kill X monsters, Travel to Y position and stand still for 10 seconds, or Deploy ghost and let it take a snapshot. That's it. Nothing else. Group Special Missions are: Kill Monster X, or Kill Groups of monsters at Location Y. That's it... Music: Awesome music. Really. They did a great job. Visuals: Really good. Levels and environment are the best, vehicles, and aliens are so-so. Your hunter... Faces look so-so. Controls: Excellent. Very intuitive, smooth and glitch free. I give the game a 6 because of the last few points. Otherwise it would be a 4 or lower. The last few points really save the day. You don't get frustrated by the basic mechanics, just with the story/repetitiveness of it.

I played the War of Magic game and was disapointed because I saw what the game could have been. FE fixed most of what was wrong, and has become a stronger game. I got the game for free because I bought War of Magic, and I also played a bit of the Beta. I was nervous on how the game would come out, but I was pleasantly suprised. I keep clicking the turns to get that one more quest, finish the next building, fight that next monster or finish that one tech. I enjoy the game, and what it is. There are a few things which could be improved. The AI, on harder difficulty settings, has employed tactics to delay my armies through the creation of obsticles, throw-away units to delay me etc. so the AI could muster a defense. I was happy with this. However, the AI doesn't seem to do much with the diplomacy options. It could be that I play against too many factions that are naturally aligned against me. Who knows. I also wish the buildings stood out more in the cities, or you could zoom in more to see them. The major buildings and larger ones stand out. I would like to select each one and see what I spent time on building. I find that heros are too few and far between for my liking, and being able to select enemy units during combat to view stats, vulnerabilities and strengths would be good. You can see this on the main map, but if you forgot to or forget what you read, you can't see it during combat. There still exists a few smaller bugs, or improvements the game can get through patches, but that will just further polish the game. I would say this game is definately worth a try. I'm actually going to submit this review and play a new game with something I just thought about doing!

I really enjoy the game. I will start off talking about what I like. 1) the feel of being the underdog, battling for survival (I play on a harder difficulty) 2) the look of the game 3) The customization options for your base, troops, interceptors etc. 4) The tech tree and how you go about doing it 5) overall game-play is addictive 6) sound is good 7) combat is streamlined and fun What could use improvement: 1) the ability to change your soilders Nationality/gender. Everyone would enjoy naming soilders after friends, significant others, people you know or characters you've created and played in the past in other games. Some people say every soilder would be from the same country if they allowed this... I feel sorry for their homogenous social structure. 2) other than explosives, your choices of how to kill/maim the aliens affects the artifacts, and you actually see the pieces around the ground, highlighted for later salvage. 3) Having to build a prototype after the researchis over, before you can manufacture for deployment 4) Random maps/more maps What the game is missing: 1) for what it is, and was intended to be, not much.... maybe some more variation in the mission start sequences so you don't feel inclined to click past the mission briefing. Overall I would recommend this game as a definate go-get

I have been playing Civilization since the first game was released back in 1991. I can only give this game 9/10 with all the expansions installed. Without the expansions and without the patches that have been released to day it is a 7/10 at best. I am a fan. I avoid multi-player because I ONLY play Marathon game-length. The AI is pretty stupid and predictable, but I play to win! It is an enjoyable game, and I am a fan of no unit stacking. I always hated that I could make an invincible stack that would move around the game as a stack of death razing every city I came accross until I won. Combat is great in this game! It requires strat. You have to move an army into place before-hand, plan your routes, use land and sea, you need to send in reinforcements to areas which are wearing down... and none of the pathetic click and win RTS style. I am a Big fan of this game.

This game got my curiosity going, and I purchased it thinking it would be an improvement over Dungeon Keeper. It was presented well, they put some effort into graphics, but you can see the lack of ability/knowledge from the company once you get into the game. You cannot experience what the game purports. You cannot create a gorgeous, sexy dungeon where heros search through and explore, and monsters/you interract with in a fun and imaginative way. You simply cannot do it!!! The game degernates quickly down to this... make one huge room where all the Hero access points funnel into. Jam the path to your dungeon heart full of monsters/traps. making attacking it impossible for any group of heros. Put all the decorations along the straight pointless paths from the hero spawn points and fill the main room with the armour, weapons, gold, and monsters the heros want, and have them all die there or at the traps. Then you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning with TONS of everything... Not my idea of fun, being able to win a game while being asleep!! To get to this stage you have to deal with the HORRIBLE play balancing where the heros do nothing but walk in and out the same way they came in... Basically you cannot pick out a satisfied hero and turn him/her into profit. You have to slaughter every hero in your dungeon to get to that one that is profitable, turning all the other empty heros into wasted effort. This game had potential, but failed to deliver. Basic problem solving and logistics were not thought out. Major decorations could have served as pathing anchors, there could have been Entrances and Exits for heros... smaller access holes could have been used for your workers (a seperate set of tunnels), transport pads for heros to use... So many things could have been added in if the company simply cared about the product they tried to make money off of... Failure!

This game is single-player only. I loved shogun Total war, Medievil total war etc. when, and so I bought this sequal. It was pretty much the same game with some minor tweaks. capturing the European ship = complete sea control. Combat is the same. Graphics are a tad better. You can use questionable strategies, but vs the computer AI you win 100% of the time. Even when greatly outnumbered. I could fight off an army of thousands of enemies with mearly 4-5 groups of units inside a basic fortification. I also found it odd that any upgrade to your fort beyond the 3rd upgrade made it harder to defend... So I never bothered to upgrade past a certain point. What a waste! Multi-player is botched, and the company does not listen to customer feed-back and churns out DLC until it's not longer profitable once they've alienated enough of their customers. I bought a DLC, I never received it though an error,and the customer support was LACKING! They agreed I bought it, but the content was not in my game once installed through some glitch. they basically said.. too bad. Not our problem. I will not be purchasing anything from this company ever again.

I enjoyed this game. It was fun, and as long as you don't Kite enemies (self discipline), there is not much I'd knock about this game for what it was trying to do. It's a great time killer, pleasant graphics. I really enjoyed it. Late game I got a little over-powered, but I like that feeling. The only detractor I can think of is you can encounter fairly tough guys early on, but you get to deal with them later. Also if you play like an idiot you can mess up your game and may have to start again. Overall I really liked this game

I have to break this review into two parts. #1 Pre-modding, and #2 Post Modding. (be sure to read the post-modding part!!) Pre-modding: 6/10 Cons: 1) The interface was crap for the PC. 2) The item naming was poorly done 3) There were MANY poorly done textures, models of both the 2-D and 3-D. 4) Many models which were supposed to be 3-D were made 2-D etc. etc. 5) DRAGONS... My biggest PEVE!!! They were weak flying lizards that I once beat to death with my bare fists!!!! This was almost a deal-breaker for me! 6) MANY errors in skills, items, game-play etc. 7) many details you wish were in the game but knew they'd just be wishes weren't in the game. 7) decent, but not over-the-top voice acting. They could have used a few more actors in this department.. especially in the common interactions. Pros: 1) Great music 2) Great Story 3) Awesome Lore depth 4) Respect for the consumer 5) timely updates 6) High level of pre-mod character customization 7) Plenty to explore and open-ended... and the ultimate thing 8) the ability to make your own changes or to use other people's changes MODDING!!!! Modding leads me into the next part: POST-MODDING POST MODDING - 10/10!!! every negative in the previous section has been fixed by the players! Pros: OMG! with everyone out there solving every bug, glitch, error, fixing every plot hole, graphical error, improving textures, models... Making dragons powerful... I cannot say with enough emphasis that the modidng has made this game beyond EPIC. The pure level of customization you can choose is amazing!! New User-interface, new item naming, people add houses, dungeons, animals, fish, fishing, horses, seals on ingots, new hair, better animations, more or less blood, improve all graphics from apples to trees, to the whole world itself, change the lighting to make it more real, new weapons, more food, new spells, better bookshelves.... If you found something/anything irritating, or had a wish for something someone else has had it and made the mod for it, or you can request it. Or by browsing the mods you will find stuff and think... OMG That's an AWESOME IDEA!!! download it and using Nexus it's in the game! Nexus Mod Manager is to this game what Chocolate is to Peanut Butter. I will be playing this game for ages. I put this game as a VERY CLOSE SECOND when compared to my all-time favorite game Ultima 7 parts 1 and 2. You simply cannot go wrong with this game. Modders are already making Castle-Defense, tower Defense mini-games inside the actual game! This game has re-defined the RPG genre

This review starts off at 10/10, and I'll explain the deductions... (I tried my best to not have spoilers of any kind) DRM: I personally wouldn't play offline, as I want my character to progress, and to play with my friends; BUT being required to only play online just pisses me off as a consumer. Make it so single player characters that are offline can NEVER go online. Problem solved! ( -3 ) Connectivity: Under normal games this is not an issue. Server crashes, you get a 10 second time-out. If you die, so what repair your stuff for a marginal amount of gold and continue. I however play Hard-core. If the server craps out on my character may be permanently deleted through no fault of my own. ( -1) Auction House: I've seen stuff available for sale in Game-gold (which is fine) I would never pay any cash for anything. I won't knock the game for that. ( No Effect ) Game-play: It is somewhat fun, you have to play with other people or it will become boring as hell in no time. The inclusion of lore, and side stories helps to add emersion, but the story is predictable, and very linear. I was expecting a better story out of this game, as they had 12 years to make it and a litany of novels written about the world to draw off of. ( +1 ) I wish this was higher like a +4 :( but no way can I rate it anything other than ( +1 ) The fact I can only customize my hero through items is a bit disappointing, but it has it's upside as well. No worries about misplacing a skill point, or a Patch coming along ruining my build, but It's all cookie cutter. It's a + and a - in my books. ( No Effect ) Graphics: The cinematic are gorgeous, but there are soo few!!! The rest are drawn graphic-novel style with not much in the way of colour. They can argue they did this for effect, but I found it disappointing, and skip them the second time through. A waste I say... The world is nicely done to a degree, there is depth along the sides of the map so it feels bigger than Diablo 2, but the trees, rocks, chests, and all objects are poorly textured, and have rather piss poor Poll- counts. The characters look their best, and I use this word reluctantly, at the log-in screen. Even here the textures are very poor, and the overall models weak. This game looks like it was released in 2004-2005. ( -2 ) Sound: Awesome! Voice acting: Really good. ( +1 ) Environment: The game is too colourful and pleasant for the story line it purports. The game is about death, sacrifice, evil, horror, terror etc. Sure have the parts colourful when this emphasises the nature of the level, but when you are in the midst of a supposed living nightmare. It doesn't fly. ( - 1 ) Interface: easy to navigate, they think of all the little things that could make life annoying and didn't commit those sins, but these are little things and spit/polish, so can't earn a lot of points. ( +1 ) Skills: Some skills are simply useless compared to others, there is very little in the description to the exact numerical effect on damage, evasion, resistance, etc. So you have to activate a skill with your stat menu open to see exactly how good or pathetic a skill is. It should be as simple as putting your mouse cursor over a skill and see (grants a +7.87% evasion at your current level... for example). (-1 ) If my math serves me right this is an aggregate of -5 to the original starting score of 10. So I rank this game a 5/10.