demondred79

It's hard to put 50+ hours into a game and then give it a thumbs down. I've had some good times with the game but mostly it's been either a game that was so trivial to beat the AI (early patches), or maddening ones (patch **** while playing normal difficulty. I'm glad the devs are constantly improving and evolving the game but I think it has a critical flaw in that it has simply too broad of a surface area on ways to play it, which can easily run the casual gamer into the ground...repeatedly. Ultimately it comes down to a "secret sauce" formula, as seen on countless fan sites, where you are going to lose unless you get a certain minimum amount of objectives done in the first 20 to 100 turns or else you're destined to lose. In other words, the whole game is made in the first series of **** the rest is simply a process of going through the motions. I've played Civ1 through 5, GalCiv2, Elemental, FE, **** damn do I REALLY want to love galciv3 but it's just too screwy **** that seems to be angling more for hardcore players. I think the game needs to be focused a bit more starting with the overwhelming state of the research tree. Yep, i'm sure that's controversial but it's WAY too broad. As a player I get sick of clicking through 4 trees (sorry but it needs to be 3) and having 12+ different choices that only (for the most part) very incrementally change the game. Research alone forces a player to micromanage, when that's a turn off for a LOT of people. I could talk forever and give example after example but it's just not worth my time. GalCiv4 will need to start from scratch if it wants to win me and others back. By and large it was too similar to GC2 to start **** made worse by minutia and formulaic measures in order to win.

After hitting an initial wall in the first three hours, I initially wanted to write a scathing "F@#$ You" type negative review but I stuck with **** i'm glad. It's an incredibly well balanced game and rewarding, but you have to push the brutality to the side and just roll with it. Don't let it get personal or it's going to get you down because it took me a third restart to finally nail it. Problems: The fact that you can't cleanly save/exit when doing a night scavenge is frustrating. The fact you can't cleanly save/exit while back in your shelter is pure BS as well. And to make it worse, every time you load up the game it randomly generates a new condition in your shelter (raided, wounded, loss of bullets, theft, etc). This, oddly enough, is both a flaw and an exploit since you can exit/reload repeatedly until you get a favorable outcome. Secondly, there were times when i was hiding from bandits and they got stuck in a twitchy pathing issue and wouldn't move. This is likely to cost you a character and needs to be fixed since every scrap counts BIGTIME. These issues (and there are a few more that i'm not going to harp on) need to be fixed, and is why it got some points removed. Protip: Use a tablet or pen/paper to keep track of your nightly scavenging runs!! Upgrade and board up your shelter as a top priority. If it's too hard, choose to "write my own story" and you can setup a MUCH easier game for yourself.

INSTANTLY tedious! It also crashes if you try to set the video res any higher than 1920. Here's the synopsis: -leave compound and punch (yes, punch!) aliens -after the 4th or 5th one you need to heal -rinse, repeat a half dozen **** you can FINALLY buy your first weapon -hit **** back to heal. -hit **** back to heal. -hit **** back to heal. -by now you're getting further and further from the base, at which time you realize you have a run meter and you get tired quick. You have to STAND STILL to recover your meter! You read that **** have to stand and do nothing for your run meter to recharge. This game is pure fail. If you want a badass isometric game for free go get Path of Exile and love life again.

Very high quality game but if you're not a fan of button mashing (QTE gameplay), which I am not, you might want to look elsewhere for entertainment. The exploratory features, easter eggs, fighting elements, voice acting, character depth, etc, etc, etc, were fantastic and just the right level of difficulty. Gameplay: There are problems here. Many times I found issues where it was hard to make an obvious leap and grab spot, for reasons unknown. Some of these were wall to wall jumps where you just couldn't connect, or she would jump in a direction you were not facing. QTE.....there were MANY frustrating "F THIS!" moments where i just want to get back into the core features and fun of the game and I couldn't until I mashed the crap out of a button or had perfect timing. Maybe some enjoy this, and there are games where it was executed tastefully, but by and large I think this is a game mechanic that just needs to die and blow away. BUGS: Unfortunately two years later there are bugs, but only two I encountered. One was hilarious and annoying at the same time, which involved NPCs talking while you were hidden, and they would suddenly walk too close to a cliff and fall off screaming. This was good fun except they would either respawn back in their original location (i.e. behind you), or not respawn at all when you might desperately need their loot. The final bug is literally the absolute last encounter in the game which involves QTE **** and it's a doozy. There are multiple forum complaints about this one where people had to go to extreme limits to try and resolve an issue where button mashing would not allow you to progress....resulting in playing that sequence dozens (apparently hundreds for some folks) of times. NOT OK! Overall, it's fun and don't regret playing it but the annoying gameplay and QTE nonsense eventually made me want to just B-line my way through the game instead of immerse myself in finding all the goodies. -death to QTE

Thumbs down. It seems to be a fairly balanced game, except for loot, but there are far superior rogue-likes out there. If you're more towards roguelikes and loot drop and less towards tower ****'re not going to like this one. Go for FTL and TOME and walk past this title. Managing became a hassle mid way through the game when you have to zoom in and out of the sprawling map a billion times to handle all hell breaking loose. The ability to pause doesn't make this any less annoying. This ultimately killed it for me despite the near addictive "what's behind the door" type crawl. I get the appeal for some but it's not for me.

I never give a 10 score out but this one is deserving. After 400 hours of play and a constant urge to replay over and over again.....what's not to like. There are too many reviews to waste my time adding a 5000 character review so I'll jump to what matters: Bethesda.....please make an inventory system that doesn't ****. Make SkyUI part of your future games. Your welcome!

I feel terrible for anyone that paid $40 for this game. Voice acting was good, graphics are fair, there seems to be some depth and strategy, but that's where the good stuff ends. CONS: - very difficult to compare item upgrades - questing interface in towns is barebones - work vs reward doesn't balance. In other words, if you're in an encounter fighting 3 enemies and more get summoned or spawned you don't get xp (AP) payout. It's very frustrating fighting a simple and fast encounter for 25 xp **** then the next encounter you work your butt off in a brutal and slow fight and also get only 25xp. - ability points are ridiculous. It's far too easy to unbalance your character and go down the wrong path skilling yourself up. This is a clunky miserable mess for tuning up your character with a billion moving parts to navigate. - Cinematic and cut scene animations (particularly mouth movement) are hideous. While not a major detriment, it's still a low quality blemish that deserves a call out. There are plenty of gamers that can look past these flaws and have a fun time but I'm not one of them. Good effort but falls really short.

Let me sum this up in one word: CUMBERSOME! After 35 hours of single and co-op play with a friend (both of us old school RPG players) we just couldn't take it anymore. It's a very polarizing game which explains why there are so many 0/10 and 10/10 scores on this one. Ambitious? Yes. Deep? Yes. Overwhelming amount of loot (and NOT in a good way), poor crafting, bugs, poor camera angles, UI issues in co-op mode, frequently getting lost in quest dead ****. The bottomline is this one hell of a frankenstein's monster ****. We wanted SOOO badly to love this game and the first 15 to 20 hours we were addicted after a steep learning curve. But ultimately it's the overwhelming amount of moving parts that sum to a bogged down adventure that forces you to overthink and slog rather than enjoy.

Bought two licenses for myself and a friend and we didn't make it more than 2 or 3 hours through before uninstalling. Graphics are good, voice acting is good, tutorial is solid....hence the 5 **** it loses the rest of the points because the scoring mechanic (not overall gameplay mind you) is frustrating and not fun at all for either of us. Some folks will find the scoring mechanic a breath of fresh air along with the PROS mentioned above, but many will find a poor experience with this one. Can't recommend.

After 10 hours you'll be all done with this simulator. All the buildings you can make will be **** the challenges you can face will be faced. Quickly you'll punch up the speed to x10 and it just becomes a trivial rinse/repeat "groundhog day" adventure. I ruined my first town trying to figure out how the game behaves (despite going thru full tutorial), which was to be expected. The second town I built very carefully, and apparently I more or less mastered the game because all it devolved into was a series of moving numbers up and down on tiny GUI buttons. Assign peasants to tasks, unassign them......raise building quotas....lower them. There's no end to this game that I am aware of. No upgrading of buildings. No new "era" to be born into. The game is all about creating an equilibrium and trying to maintain it while people either die of old age or from (more often than not) dying in a quarry or mine. That's it. That's the game..... It had addictive qualities but ultimately it's a time waster ****. Do NOT buy this for full price ($20) wait for it to go for $5 and then it's a fair purchase.

Dark Souls: Prepare to be Pissed at the worst PC port mankind has ever witnessed. As if the difficulty of the game itself isn't enough to make you consider bolo-whipping your controller through your family's **** get the fun experience of trying to make this gd thing even barely function. Lady's and Gents....this is what you call a "cash grab" where the devs saw an opportunity to jam their console game through a bit-grinder and call it a PC game, and then laugh as they rub their nipples with dollar bills. So if you want to get this thing to run with mouse support, xbox gamepad support, and video graphics that don't look like donkey diarrhea, then be prepared to witness and experience the following: 1. Remove **** of your USB devices 2. Try to use your xbox controller. If that doesn't work, too bad I guess you don't have an "official MS gamepad" so you'll have to work harder. 3. Install x360ce and go through a million hoops to get it to properly behave. 4. Oh you wanted to leave your N52te gamepad plugged in? Well you'll have to unplug it, erase the x360ce config file, then disable multiple devices in your device manager, and then re-init x360ce, and then plug in your gamepad, and then pray to baby jesus it works. 5. Oh **** you have a framerate **** **** intro cinematics are glitchy... 6. Wow the graphics look like **** we have to install Nexus Mod Manager and install the DSfix tool and a billion other mods. 7. Ok screw the ****'s go to the **** man.....moving the mouse around is super glitchy and the camera studders so much you can't play it.... 8. Rage quit and then vent on Metacritic. True story. The End. Seriously though, the issues/events described above are littered all over multiple forums where people are having massive issues with mice, gamepads, USB devices interfering with the game, graphics issues, refresh issues, you name it. While I don't think it would be worth an actual court battle over $30, it is however worth it to post these grievances on metacritic to strike their pocketbook as much as possible. Never again will I make the mistake of buying a late-term PC port. Do NOT buy this for PC.

I just can't do it. I'm a turn based player through and through, from board games, to CIV, to **** this just doesn't cut it. I never ran into the bugs that people reported, so I'm thinking most of this is patched up, but I am leaving because it's boring. There is absolutely zero "just one more turn" feeling to this game whatsoever. "Exploring" has no intrigue unless you like sitting in a hex square and exploring that tile 50 times only to find tons of encounters you can't defeat and have to retreat from. When you do actually fight battles, after a few hours you'll be hitting the F10 button to autocomplete the battle so you can try and understand where they have actually buried the fun factor of this game. This game is just pretty graphics with a dull, bland, boring, repetitive core and a UI that needs to be tweaked a bit more. I had some pretty harsh criticism of Fallen Enchantress, but it's an utterly superior game to this oddball.

After 6 or so hours….i’ve gotta throw in the towel on this one. I appreciate the attempt at a worthwhile game but this thing is lacking so much usability and polish that it’s baffling to me. Magic this seems to have some genuinely good features and mechanics Graphics pretty good. I REALLY like the foliage effects. They’re superior to Skyrim. Camera angle I really like the wobbly camera affect when you move and pan around. Crafting this looked really promising and I was starting to tinker with it. Lockpicking annoying Horse riding absolutely obnoxious (rapid clicking RMB to keep speed up???? Seriously? And if you overdo it the horse kicks you off) Looting sloooow, imprecise Jumping sluggish and **** to pair it with the loot action button Enemies impossible to judge if they’re going to royally cornhole you until it’s nearly too late. You can't tell what their level is, their weakness/resistance, nothing. There are too many clustered too densely in too many areas. NPCs voice acting is disjointed but ok. Questing/Map/Teleporting this…..this is the killer. It’s absolutely painful to no end just simply following a quest, tagging my map, figuring out a destination, following it on my minimap, losing my DAMN HORSE and stealing another one, just zooming in and out on the goddamn map is a lesson in madness, I could go on forever on this one. Why didn’t they integrate the map/quest/teleporting into a single comprehensible tool instead of three disassociated menus? This is so impossibly maddening to simply navigate the game as a whole that it was the absolute deal breaker. Uninstalled. The End.

Another ridiculous and utterly unwarranted game critic love affair! Avoid this hype-bomb at all costs. Speaking of costs, I wouldn't even play this for free. I was excited about this "game" based on critic reviews, and jumped at the humble bundle chance to grab it. What a miserable disappointment. You will be absolutely done and bored mindless within 30 minutes flat, and all I could think of is "but why? this had such a cool concept." And that ladies and gents is exactly what this ****'s basically a proof of concept, or rough sketch of what this title should have been. So I assumed I was overly harsh, despite having a leveled expectation of what i was to experience, and turned my 7 yr old girl onto it, thinking that her patience and creative mind would find redeeming value in it. Nope! About 20 min into it and I got a "daddy, this is really boring." **** it is. What a waste. If games like this are making money then I think i'll fire up visual studio and slam my ass cheeks into the keyboard a couple hundred times, compile it, and then release it to the public. With the money I earn I'll use that to buy an expensive apology for wasting my daughter's life for 30 minutes. So in review.....this is not a ****'s is not an "experience" and it's not even visual narcolepsy to knock you out late at night (I tried that too, ****'s a joke and we're the punchline. You've been warned.

Don't fall on the hype-bomb! This one isn't worth the purchase. The graphics are fine, animations fine, music fine, story **** fun? The fun just isn't there. Solo play is actually incredibly boring, which finally made me realize why the game tries to railroad you into forced online play. Well I guess nobody is playing this anymore because i couldn't get sync'd up with anyone. Out of desperation I purchased a copy for a solid gamer buddy of mine because i was convinced it was an outstanding co-op game, per reviews. **** just couldn't make it more than 90 minutes, despite us clearing many levels. It just became tedious too quickly. I feel bad for the devs because I can tell some love and good ideas were put into this, but there's nothing about this game that was truly fun or begs me to return to it. And the internet love affair just doesn't make sense for this title.