Truth_

I played it both under Creative Assembly directly, and when it re-released under Wargaming. It was something special, which brought Total War out of massive 20v20 unit battles of two players to a dozen players with three units each, forcing people to work together (to be honest, most didn't anyway) across interesting maps. It was supposed to cover all eras of history, but being too ambitious, it limited itself only to the popular Rome II unit set. In classic Wargaming fashion, it featured a massive grind to go through the tiers of units, and boring unit upgrades with little to no choice along the way. It also had unbalanced commanders and even factions, although perhaps that eventually would have been fixed. Regardless, it was fairly simple, but entertaining. It was fun. It had a huge grind. It had interesting maps. The limited options really started to get stale. It had interesting units. It had a lot of generic units. It had all the flaws of a Wargaming-like game, but I will remember it fondly.

The Council is a great example of a narrative game done right. Solving an interesting mystery from the start while uncovering the true nature of what's going on and its substantive side-plots keeps you engaged and intrigued by the results. You have a healthy cast of characters to slowly glean information and begin to gain their trust (or lose it) and play politics, mixed with a bit of intrigue (really trespassing and theft, let's be honest), and lots of sleuthing for clues and information. The setting is combined with its interesting characters, tantalizing lore (including real-world occult lore), and plot-twists makes this the best narrative game I have played. Learning information to make informed decisions or put your verbal opponents on their back foot is satisfying. Learning the other characters' weaknesses and immunities is fun if a little gamey sometimes. I hate puzzles, but many of them were interesting if not fun, although some were very easy and others quite hard. Unlocking talents and hidden traits is also fun and adds a bit of depth to your character and your choices. Certain skills are more useful than others, but you earn enough points throughout the game for that not to matter too much. Thankfully the story itself is well-paced and overall quite interesting. Most importantly, I totally appreciate it that your choices truly matter. Not just for the next dialogue or some superficial automatic background comment by an NPC later, but totally changing the way you need to approach future encounters with that character and even others. While the game never lets you reload (rare in games), you may start a new game at the start of any episode or chapter, which saves a ton of time if you simply want to try specific different narrative paths and endings. It all comes together well, but does have a few hiccoughs. Re-searching every room in the mansion every single chapter for newly-revealed items is simply tedious, especially when many are locked but you have no way of knowing ahead of time, forcing you to do even more running around when your path is unexpectedly blocked with no provided reasoning. Additionally, while the characters are each unique, some matter far more than others, and they are the more interesting ones. The others are fairly shallow, preventing you from much caring about what happens to them or gaining their opinion. The dialogues are overall good, but there are many mistakes in the voice acting compared to the subtitles, as well as several spelling, grammar, or typo mistakes. I only saw a single missed translation, however. Overall the voice-acting is also good... except for the main character of all people. His voice itself is good, but he slurs fairly often, awkwardly pauses between certain words, reads a word wrong, or uses the wrong emotion (sometimes using no emotion at all). Why wouldn't this actor listen to his own recording and simply redo it immediately? It's also strange that most characters use an accent for their country of origin, except the main character, his mother, and Peru, all of which are French but use an American accent, ruining immersion (thankfully the main character's voice actor is decent at pronouncing words in other languages). Additionally, the mother sounds middle-aged yet her character is clearly elderly - it doesn't fit at all and was constantly distracting. Finally, not being able to skip certain voiced lines, especially repeatable ones, was annoying. There are certain complaints about the endings, but I thought they were each satisfying and logical. I absolutely would recommend this game for anyone interested in social-based narrative games. I really hope they make a new game that expands on the setting, involves exploring different environments, and really dives into the different factions and characters of the world with choices that continue to really matter. (Since first writing this, they made Call of Cthulhu, a social-based narrative game that was okay, but far inferior to The Council). Mmm... royal jelly. Playtime: 24 hours Rating: 8/10

There are thousands of reviews and thus I do not expect this to be seen. And there is little to nothing I can say that wasn't said, or wasn't said better, elsewhere. I am simply posting to add my score. I was mad just the same as everyone else. The difference, however, is that I was expecting it. I was expecting graphical and technical glitches galore. I was expecting bad AI. And I even expected, although hoped against, the game's mechanics that weren't pulled out in Shogun 2 weren't further widdled or dumbed down. And I got what I expected. There is little variety to troops between factions, there's little variety to the gameworld, there's no role-playing/story elements like was promised, economy is incredibly simple and easy, AI is horrible on the campaign map and in battle, and multiplayer did not work for the longest time. In all, it seems all facets of the game are worse. If only the probably hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars spent on motion capture, that doesn't even seem that great or functional, was spent on making a better game. Note: Kudos for releasing free factions with each DLC expansion. And kudos for patching the game constantly (although that wins little points as there should have been fewer problems to begin with). Objectively I want to rate this game a "5" as it's playable and has fun elements of other Total War games I've enjoyed... but for some reason I just can't have fun playing this game. Unfortunately I must give it a "4". The game is clearly inferior to prior titles. I do not expect this to change. My only wonder is if this will affect future sales of new titles.

The hype train, again, left me disappointed - although expectedly so. In all, the combat was amusing but extremely easy, even on harder difficulties. The abilities you unlock are either very situational or overpowered. The AI is typical for an FPS, meaning predictable and incapable of being a threat without large numbers. The pacing, however, felt fine to me. The world and the story was a refreshing change away from Rapture, and the few tie-ins felt good. However, it all felt shallower than Rapture, in how and why it was built, the occurrences in the people, how it continued to function, etc. Additionally, it was stereotypically racist, classist, etc to a point that was simply uninteresting. It would have benefited from a subtler approach, even at the cost of certain players not understanding. Many people at the time of launch were unsatisfied with the ending. I did not feel it took away from the game and found it instead inspired and unique. Ultimately I feel BioShock Infinite did little to surpass its predecessors and in fact stagnated or went backward. It was an okay experience.

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect 3. When all is said in done, I found it to be a fairly solid game. It's combat was not great, but not awful, either. Similarly, the story was excellent at times, and weak at others. Acquiring a crew, learning the lore of new and old, exploring the galaxy, and upgrading you and your teammates was a fulfilling experience, however, little was improved from Mass Effect 2 to 3. Combat was simple with predictable and unintelligent AI (for the most part). Your companions are not particularly useful and can be /very/ powerful if used well and used often. I played on Hard and it was quite easy, like most shooters. Luckily it wasn't too tedious, however. There are enough breaks inbetween combat, exploration, and dialogue which kept a good pace and felt organic. I thought the story was quite good, and I loved so many of the lines and conversations in the game. A+. Obviously there were some cheesy and not so good ones, but all in all I enjoyed it very much. However, I felt some of the dialogue choices were a bit wonky, some didn't make sense, some gave poor options, and some had silly responses that either Shepherd or the other person didn't make sense to me. In combat, some characters seemed to have a lot more unique/useful/interesting things to say than others, which I largely based my party picks off of (EDI, Garrus, and Liara always have interesting or useful comments or observations). Finally, I'm not a huge fan of being forced to pick one reputation type and sticking with it. I feel unless you do 90%+ in one or the other, you miss out on the best dialogue choices, dialogue results, and other things. Mixing and matching your choices, even if you feel they're the best ones logically or in your own role-play playthrough, give you a worse result and worse game. Note: I cannot comment on Day 1 DLC (which is these days quite common) since I only just got it. I also can't comment on the old ending, as I've only experienced the new one. Lastly, I cannot comment on the multiplayer as I have not played it (but I've heard good things). On the whole I was satisfied with the game, but happy I did not buy it on release.

It's about what I, and so many others, were expecting: A Civ V reskin with little to offer than Civ V had, and taking nearly nothing from its inspiration, Alpha Centauri. There was quite the crowd of complainers that Civilization V was lacking compared to IV, however, an at least somewhat valid excuse was that Firaxis had to design and create a new engine as well as update all the graphics. What was the excuse this time? It is the same engine, and the graphics and art style have not been changed. It looks like many assets were slightly altered and plugged back in, too. So what did we get in exchange for this time savings? Exploration, aliens/barbarians, the tech tree, factions, and unit upgrades were changed. But the exploration is still largely bland, the aliens are uninspired and otherwise in fact worse functionally than barbarians, the tech tree is refreshing yet convoluted and seemingly random (as opposed to Endless Space's themed branches), the factions have no character, and unit upgrades are simple, boring, and unbalanced. Adding in quests like Endless Legend and a bit of story was nice, but the choices are the same every game and lead to nothing in the future. Additionally, the strategic resources were made irrelevant until the late game, luxury goods were removed, health was made easy to manage, and the UI is missing critical options and information (that existed in Civ V). Finally, the AI is incredibly passive and dumber than a sack of potatoes. Again Civ V's removal of the Giant Stack of Death meets its flaws: inability to move armies and attack cities as well as the AI's inability to functionally attack in most instances. I wrote a large essay on another website that exceeds my limit here, and plenty of other reviews go into detail about many of my points and more. All I would like to add is that although I was not expecting much, Civilization: Beyond Earth is still a disappointment. It is somehow worse than its predecessor, Civilization V, takes nothing from Alpha Centauri (a game lauded by a loving fanbase), and puts no effort into a truly interesting and fun science-fiction setting (no creativity in units, aliens, resources, terrain types, map effects, map design, factions, or mechanics). Ultimately the game is okay from an objective, stand-alone perspective. But when I know it's from a long-standing series and was inspired by Alpha Centauri, and now has competitors like Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space, and others... I can't help but rate the game poorly. I have little doubt interesting things will be sold later as DLC, but it disheartens me greatly to think we must pay extra to get a game we wanted in the first place. Perhaps next time, Firaxis... but I doubt it.

KOEI is not afraid shake it up. Although definitely still a strong new addition to the series, RotTK11 falls back from its previous line of focus on character development toward its much older games where the focus is on the kingdom (and hopefully empire!). This by no means makes it worse, and in fact it's a masterpiece for what it is: an epic and deep strategic period game. Yet again, this game could be even deeper and more complex, however, it is great for the scope KOEI wanted to capture. Deep with solid strategy and macro and micromanagement, but not too deep with too much micromanagement (at least forced upon you). The city-building takes on a brand new element and the battle map system is changed completely (by merging battles from a battle map to the game's map itself, in a newly 3D setting). The art and music is again stylized and excellent. The city-building and battles are fun and rarely tedious. The problem, however, lies in the missed potential for story-building through events and hard-coded goals, as well as a lack of explanation for the setting other than the basic text the player can read at the beginning of each map timeline-based campaign. Finally, the AI can be foolish on occasion, and it is also difficult for friends to play with one another as each player must be a ruler of a faction. RotTK11 is, ultimately, a great addition to the series. Hopefully KOEI learns from their experiments to continue making even better games.

A fantastic strategy game with solid RPG elements as well as a perfect period piece. RotTK8 has good stylized graphics, a great and memorable music score, and deep strategy elements on many levels (character, city, empire). Although the others in this series are good as well, the scope of VIII is greater than all others as you work your way up as a lowly rank 9 officer to anything you desire - warlord, viceroy, or emperor. Character-building, social relationships, city-building, economy, diplomacy, intrigue, tactical warfare.... There is nothing like it. In all areas the game could be more complex and more deep, however, it is in a snug place. Also, grinding your way up through the ranks or ordering around your minions can become tedious. And although there are random events to keep things interesting, other events or options or systems could be in place to tide the tedium or boredom, although with that also comes more micromanagement, the love and bane of different groups of gamers everywhere. The major fault in the game is with a new player's ability to immerse themselves in the grand adventure that is RotTK8 should they have not played a previous installment or the much more accessible series Dynasty Warriors. Although there is some story-telling in the beginning of each map campaign and even an in-game encyclopedia for nearly everything, more could have been done in this regard if the developers had wanted the game to appeal to a wider audience of Three Kingdom's newbies.