greywolf00

Better than 1, but much weaker than 2 imo. Props for the attempted innovation on the portals and city fights, but the portals especially just turn this game into a massive slog that stays well past its welcome. Couple that with a bunch of very poor DLC deliveries and pricing and the Mixed score is understandable. The build your own demon prince was a great addition and I hope this become a core feature they continue to build on. I would never recommend this over 2, and unless you really want to play one of the new factions you can pretty safely skip it. And unless the portal suppression mod gets fixed strap in for incredibly long, drawn out games.

This is one of those games where I wish Steam had a more nuanced recommendation choice than Yes/No. TL;DR – depends, weigh the Pro/Con list (very subjective are Cons for me). Ultimately, I asked if I would tell someone to buy the game. My answer is No, because there’s a lot on context/caution I’d feel compelled to provide. Even after sleeping on it to see if I felt compelled to play today it really just hasn’t hooked me. Just as a background, I’ve been a big BioWare fan, including Jade Empire, KotoR, and SWotR. I even have Anthem and ME:A. In the DA series DA:I is the first game I didn’t finish, because there was too much slog (poor pacing, poor level design, war table time slogs) to overcome for me to stick it out. I was cautious about DA:V but after reading through the divisive takes on the preview I knew I’d give it a shot. I was less optimistic after watching several pro and negative reviews coming up to release but decided to lean on the Steam refund policy (which I’ve never used before) as a safety net and give it a try. 1 ½ hours in I’m still mixed on it. It is better than the negative reviews lead me to fear, but several things I saw in those reviews have resonated even in this short playtime. Pros: Pacing is way better than DA:I. There’s a lot of action right off the bat which picks back up quickly after the first break. So far, I’ve enjoyed the story – might be because I never finished DA:I. Cons: Some of the voice line delivery is very flat for the scene, undermining the intensity. Level design is improved compared it DA:I (which I found too large and bloated with busy work icons), but at least early on it feels a lot like DA2 where it’s very linear and limited. I did encounter a crash to desktop ~70 minutes in for “physically removing the GPU” during play. I’m running an i9-13900KF 3.00 GHz, 64 GB RAM, and a GeForce RTX 4090 so hardware isn’t the issue. I did upgrade to the newest driver released last week, but haven’t played long enough to confirm if that fixes the issue. Very subjective: Combat Action combat is my least favorite system (turn based > RTwP > Action). Even among Action combat games this feels simpler, and I always hated the ME take on commanding teammates. It has not improved here. That being said, one of my biggest complaints with Action combat systems is they don’t always feel responsive, and I do not have that complaint with DA;V. I can get my character to do what I want, when I want which is a core requirement. I had complaints about how spongy enemies got over the ME series where the last ¼ of ME3 was just unbearable for me, so I’ve just been playing on the lower difficulties to avoid it. I can see spongy being a concern at higher difficulties. Art Obviously, a turn towards cartoony which I’m just not a fan of, especially in a series that has been darker in themes historically. I really despise the Qunari overhaul too. Conclusion: I would not recommend this outright. If someone asked how I felt, I’d say it’s ok. Nothing really stood out or is compelling me to continue. It starts off pretty good, but I thought ME:A and DA:I did too before the shine wore off and I couldn’t bring myself to force my way through it. Given some of the great releases we had in 2023 and early 2024 (BG3, Rogue Trader, Horizon Forbidden West) this doesn’t come anywhere close to the recent RPG quality. I would say take advantage of the refund window to kick the tires and decide for yourself.

TL;DR - Will buy another Beamdog developed RPG. Obviously this is a bridge between BG1 and BG2. Beamdog made some changes including increased size of enemy parties which definitely necessitates a more tank heavy approach. My PC was a fighter/thief, and I had to pair him up with Dorn and Viconia in melee in a fair amount of battles to keep the back line safe. There are some things that SoD does better than the base game. I really liked the way they changed random ambushes with unique maps. The areas are larger, you can actually position your party, and most of the time there was a small bonus cave/reward. The number of enemies is much larger than the base game in several areas, and I really liked some of the new enemy additions. The maps are much more saturated with content than the original series. They added a lot of magic items to better round out offerings. I only played with two of their created characters through BG:EE and SoD, but they were both pretty good. Baeloth is a really useful mage addition, though I found his personality and dialogue in SoD fairly annoying. That was not an issue in BG:EE. Dorn is both a useful character and a really well written companion. Great addition to any evil party. A found a lot of the banter for SoD to be really well written. Edwin hitting on Viconia was great. As for the story, I thought it was really solid, until the very end. Had they finished the writing right after the close of the crusade, I think there’d be far less complaints. Even then, my complaint stems from it just not fitting the lore well rather than poor writing. The only UI change I really hated was the journal. Mixing completed quests and in progress quests together randomly just creates way too much clutter. If there's one thing they need to patch, this is it. I was not sold on Beamdog as a developer from their EE games. After playing SoD, I'll gladly buy another RPG they develop.

I've seen a ton of complaints regarding the timers on missions. While I agree they can be annoying, I never found them as game breaking as others have. Not to mention, on day 1, there were multiple mods released to address it. You can completely get rid of the timers, increase the number of ticks on the timer, or pick a mod where the timer doesn't start until your squad is sighted by the enemy. You can also get mods to adjust the speed of the avatar project progression. And the ease of modding this game compared to the first is night and day. Expect a thriving mod community moving forward, including new weapons, classes and aliens. I was fortunate enough to not run into major bugs during my play through. I only had one crash, during the loading of the final mission, but got through it fine the next attempt. Overall, I think XCOM 2 is better than X:EU & X;EW, even if the loss of mechanized units and gene mods are a bit disappointing. There are more alien classes, a more randomized map system and more weapons.

If you're a fan of story driven RPGs this is worth a look. There are a fair amount of twists and the story tends to stay fairly interesting throughout. There's a lot of choice and consequence throughout, though the ending is a let down in this aspect. It uses The Dark Eye rule system (like Drakensang and Blackguards) which tends to make character progression and building quite fun and rewarding. There's a handful of normal stats and skills and you get rewarded for making potions, opening locks, identifying lore, collecting plants etc. It's an ARPG due to the action combat, which I hate, by it's far from the worst implementation I've ever played. I never found combat to be overly clunky or difficult and the story was good enough for me to push through to the end. I did find that spell points to use for improving spells being rewarded based on spell usage during a fight to be a nice feature. There are some annoyances worth mentioning though. Demonicon does seem like a budget title (though with very solid writing). It isn't a long game, taking me about 10 hours to complete the entire game plus all the side quests I could find. Levels are fairly railroady and there's limited exploration (think Dragon Age 2). There's also a limited number of game areas and one dungeon gets reused 4 times for different quests. There's also semi limited itemization (this is no Baldur's Gate, but a fry cry from say Of Orcs and Men). It also uses an auto save feature rather than save anywhere which can be quite annoying. Overall I enjoyed most of the experience and would pick up another RPG by the developer.

TL;DR: Really captures the BG vibe. Highly recommended for fans of the IE games. Writing is solid throughout, even if some companions are a bit flat. The new mechanics are a mixed bag of hits and misses. Wish there was a higher level cap. Glad I backed it, and can’t wait for the expansion and future continuations of the series. If you miss the good old days of BG, do yourself a favor and just buy this now. For those of you who have managed to miss one of the best CRPGs ever made keep reading for the rundown. PoE uses a RTwP system with plenty of options for auto-pausing, as well as a slow mode to briefly slow the action down and get your tactics set. While your uncontrolled party members lack an AI like BG (used spells on their own based on AI chosen) they do auto attack without input. A lot of the more complex rules are gone and things are much simpler for new comers (no need to know what THAC0 is). Many abilities have a limited number of uses per combat and other have a limited number per rest always providing choices in combat. At higher difficulties the number of enemies grows, you get higher enemies types (Black Ooze > Lesser Black Ooze), and the number of camping supplies you can carry is extremely limited (Hard and up). Depending on how much problems you have with combat this could be an issue. Crafting has also been added, though it’s far from a great implementation in my opinion. The diversity of races and classes doesn't disappoint. Each race has a choice between two subraces which gives them a racial bonus. Many of the races, and classes, will be familiar in general make up to normal fantasy tropes, but there's also some unique things like God touched (the lack of a helm is a drawback) and Ciphers. Character creation overall is pretty good and adding in custom portraits is quite easy. Some of the newly designed systems do fall a bit flat though. The new stat system really lowers the importance of min/maxing. On the one hand this means casual players won’t be stopped by bad builds, but people who enjoy character building may feel let down by the diminished emphasis on stats. XP is no longer given on a by kill basis, instead being rewarded for bestiary additions. For example, a little bit of experience the first few times you fight a monster till you know everything about it, then none at all. Depending on play style this can lead to a fair amount of unrewarding combat. A minor complaint includes most NPCs not feeling as interesting as BG. The low level cap (12) is disappointing, though understandable. You will most likely hit the cap long before the game is over if you pursue most side quests. After that point the lack of character progression feels a bit unrewarding sadly. Considering they designed a ruleset from scratch and had a limited budget it’s understandable, but still a bit of a let down. I expect this ground up design is also the reason for the limited number of abilities and spells compared to AD&D. Unfortunately at the time of this review there are bugs. Obsidian is still patching, but their official communication regarding it has been pretty poor. However, they are an established midrange studio so we know it's coming, eventually.

TL;DR Great story, meh mechanics Purely from a writing standpoint, this is one of the most overlooked gems in the RPG genre. If you love story driven RPGs, I highly suggest considering this game. Tons of games talk about "Mature Themes" but this one really hits that nail on the head, and not just from the adult language (which there's a lot of). It covers racism, greed, hatred, violence, and betrayal. I felt both of the main characters were well written and it was interesting to see how their interactions with each other evolved as the story progressed. Now onto the actual game systems. The combat system isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. It's just like Game of Thrones, super slow mow where you can queue up 4 moves for each character. If you haven't played GoT, it's like KOTOR but without the actual pause. Difficulty of combat spikes a bit too and can be pretty hard when you don't get assassinations done before hand. The game is really linear and there's almost no exploration. There's a handful of side quests but, they need to be done right then and there. Maps are very railroady with minimal hallway detours to find an occasional goody. Each hero has 2 full trees and another tree split in half to work together/class specialty. It's by no means one of the most flexible systems in the genre but, it is far better than many others. Game also isn't a huge, 40+ hour epic. I would expect 10-25 hours depending on difficulty with combat.

So the story is great and I would love to give it a better score but, the rest of the game is kind of a step back from DA:O thanks to the short development cycle (unless you hate iso tactical battles, DA 2 is much more action filled combat wise). Cons: Enemies are done via waves, very annoying and doesn't add tactical depth Art assets are reused like crazy. There's only 2 or 3 dungeons, 2 houses, and a warehouse that gets reused all game long No ability to create your own character. You will be a human from a set family, all you can pick is class and looks. The Mass Effect convo wheel has been added giving misleading information about what your character will actually say when picked Very linear. You can explore maps but the extra areas are just hall ways/rooms Short for an RPG, took me about 25 hours to do everything Pros: I found the story to be epic. I knew the Templar/Mage setup from DA:O had issues TL;DR if you played DA:O and liked it, you'll probably want to at least try this on sale to see the build up to DA: I. If you like the combat from The Witcher, you can probably stomach this.

I found the story here much more enjoyable than IWD. Felt a lot more like the BG games. Still somewhat heavy on combat but there was also a lot more story which made it tolerable.

One of the weakest IE games. Very light on story while heavy on combat. Story is rather generic. Lacks the large world of the BG games opting instead for smaller areas with multiple levels (ie Towers, Dungeons). The story in the Heart of Winter expansion is much much better though.

Good game, albeit short. All of the good is wiped out by the horrible controls though. There are a bunch of areas that can only be passed via rolling (Sprint Crouch). The problem is, the character rarely rolls when you press the buttons. Instead, the crouch button seems to override the command and he'll start crouching instead of rolling, forcing you to replay sections endless till you get lucky and the controls proc the correct move. Have had the issue with both a controller and keyboard controls. Very frustrating and not worth the price.

Game isn't bad but it's not great either. It's an RTS 4X game which I'm not a huge fan of to begin with, but the slow speed of ships to go places, even when cranked up to x5 speed, is just too much. Sure, you can crank the speed up to absurd levels, ie 50x, but the game starts to stutter a bit. By far the best aspect of **** is the ability to build ships. At first glance it looks just like every other space 4x game with this mechanic, but it has an added layer of depth. If you make a huge, heavily weaponized cruiser but fail to armor the ship's power source, you just created some expensive space scrap. Unfortunately, the RTS approach again undermines this. The speed at which you can unlock new technologies (the tree is much smaller than other 4x games) often means you've unlocked a couple new upgrades by the time your ships get to where they need to be for combat. Not a bad game but I found it less fun than other games like Endless Space. Worth grabbing on sale if you enjoy RTS/4x.

IMHO, far and away the best game in the Hack & Slash genre for non hardcore gamers (those who don't mind the imbalance/xp penalties from death in PoE). The music creates the same feel the score from Diablo 2. It does a great job of setting the mood. The game itself is much like D2, 3 skills trees per class and ability to assign points to attributes every level that impacts what gear you can use and when. The combat on normal absolutely nails down the fun of mowing through hordes of enemies with your special abilities. Elite difficulty is too much of a kite/grindfest for my tastes but other may enjoy it. The endgame is well handled imo. You have the choice of starting a NG+ or running maps. Maps have random bonuses/penalties to keep them interesting but they tend to be a little long for my tastes (3-4 different levels in the map). While I dislike Runic not including respec potions, that's easily fixed by tons of mods. Speaking of mods, this game has amazing support for them. There are several mods adding new classes and pets. There's stuff to tweak drop rates, skill point gains, add tiered passive skills, and almost anything else you can think of. For people who don't mind a higher mob spawn rate for more champion mobs, I highly recommend the Synergies mod. It changes a lot of the spawn/drop rates of vanilla while adding new gear, classes, focus specific enchanters, and a whole new zone with boss mobs for level 100+ characters.

Saw this during the Steam Sale and said "WTF is this." Rolled the dice and was massively impressed. Basically, you play the part of the planet. You're totally barren and unable to sustain life. You control 4 different giants who all have different abilities. Your goal is to make the world liveable and grow the cities as big as you can (racking up the city and world score). Every city will produce a semi random special work with certain requirements. Upon completion, you get an ambassador to upgrade your giants skills/unlock new abilities. This is the real key to the game as higher level project require much more resources which cannot be obtained without upgrading resources (which start out locked and are unlocked by completing various achievements). The challenge kicks in late in the game from the greed mechanic. When a city has more than 20 of any unused resource (threshold can be raised/lowered by various things like projects, awe, and danger) they gain greed. Too much greed and they'll start attacking other cities and even your giants. Late game they will start work on projects that give cities up to 500 unused resources (bigger gap faster greed accumulation). Losing a city can massively set back your score and cost you valuable achievements. The game is a balancing act of managing multiple cities and their needs while striving for ambassadors without letting the humans kill each other. My one complaint comes from the 2 hour game mode (needed to unlock a lot of the high end achievements/resources). If you're really striving for absurd scores to get the best resources unlocked quickly, you spend a ton of time pausing and issuing orders to ensure you're maximizing building in the time limit. This can easily result in 4-5 games that I honestly found far less fun than the 30 & 60 min game modes.

Picked this up during the Steam Sale after trying the demo. It's a very interesting premise with great, and humorous, writing. Some of the later maps were somewhat challenging, not because they threw a bunch of enemies at you, but because the puzzles to gain entry to certain areas were well put together. Major complaint is without a doubt, the length. Around 2 hours of campaign at best. However, the Dev is interested in adding Workshop support allowing modders to go nuts.

Best space 4X game I've played since GalCiv 2. My only major complaint is the AI, it's terrible. Even on normal difficulty the AI gets artificial boosts to make them "competitive" with the player. The combat system is different, basically rock paper scissors. Everything counters 1 other card (resulting in a boost), and is countered by one. I was pleasantly surprised to see the AI seems to learn from the system and adapts its strat around your habits.

Like every game, this isn't for everyone. The default campaign is short (took me slightly north of 10 hours without skipping sidequests), it has a check point system instead of save anywhere, lack of lootable corpses, and no voice acting. If none of that bothers you, it's worth a look. The story isn't bad, and there's a lot of dialog. My main complaints are as an RPG, it's kind of lacking content. The campaign is very linear, not a lot of tactical depth to combat, no ability to customize anything except a handful of consumables on party members, nearly all hired runners lack any personality, and reactivity is pretty sparse (ie special dialog for race/gender is rare). However, where this game will really shine is future content. It shipped with an ugly but powerful editor that allows modders to fix certain things (more open world questing and lootable bodies for starters). The Berlin DLC is also planned to be more open ended. Overall, a shallow but solid default campaign. The best of this game will come to the surface in the coming months.

If this game had any kind of real endgame (the scenario mode is very flat and uninspired imo) or NG+, I'd easily rank this behind Torchlight 2 for best recent game in genre for the less hardcore crowd that PoE doesn't appeal to. Game is fun, and there's some decent comedy but it has plenty of flaws. Short (only 10 hours or so), very basic (only 2 skill active skill slots, only 2 trees ranged/melee, lacks class/build options of other hack & slash games), and is essentially done once you beat the final boss. That being said, I'm looking forward to the next edition but will again wait for a sale.

I really want to give this a higher score because there's so much to love but also plagued with other issues. Kind of a weird game genre wise; some Action, adventure, and RTS elements. Pros: As usual Double Fine absolute crushed it for originality, story and humor. This game couples all of that with great art and an amazing soundtrack. Cons: Short, took 9 hours and I did about 1/2 of the side quests (which get incredibly repetitive quickly). Had several issues during missions where the cutscene to advance would fail to proc and I'd have to reset from a check point. There's no minimap which ties into the next complaint. I love the idea for quest location tracking (huge spotlight) but in practice it wasn't very helpful. Would have much rather had a line system ala GTA. Minor personal complaints like minimap zoom resetting while driving (pretty sure it's caused by holding down gas which doubles as zoom in while opening map). No diagonal dodge, just Fwd, Back, Left, and Right. Driving controls are much less responsive than any other game I've played. Yet despite all those Cons, I'm giving it an 8 which should speak volumes about just how great the Pros are. Would love to see a similar concept kickstarted by Double Fine.

Definitely a deviation from the JA series but is an ok game in it's own right. By far, my biggest complaints are with the AI. Your soldiers are absolute morons and can't do anything without being micromanaged. Even when set to guard your Mercs often won't shoot at enemies within range and sight zone, you have to manually tell them "Hey kill that guys who's **** your face." They see a mine? Better halt em or they'll run over it. This is super annoying when splitting a squad into smaller teams for flanking. Want them to go talk to someone? Better hope there's no closed doors in the way. They are incapable of opening them to get to somewhere on their own. Also ran into several issues with game freezes & crashes. For a real time squad based game, which I tend to hate in comparison to turn based, it isn't too bad thanks to the ability to pause and issue commands. Though sadly, even that system has it's flaws. Once your guys run out of shoot commands, they'll stop shooting. I often found myself just staying in real time or loading up with dozens of shoot commands to cut down on the micromanaging.

Simply a great game. The tower defense combat is a nice change of pace from what I normally play. Took a little over 20 hours to beat almost all the maps on highest difficulty. 4 difficulty levels for every map and a NG+. The humor in the writing was great, I did laugh out loud a couple times.

Not the type of game I usually play but it came in Amazon's Double Fine Bundle and I gave it a go. Was very impressed despite the cartoon graphics and weird story. Controls & combat are simple and straight forward but the abundance of costumes adds a lot of variety. Definitely has some good humor and is still safe for kids. Highly recommend using a controller but it has to be Xinput or you need to use x360ce. Very short, 6 1/2 hours to beat game DLC but the length just kind of feels right for the game.

7.5/10. Martial Arts centric GTA game. Enjoyed the undercover cop angle. Story is good even if not truly original. Slightly on the short side, I did about 70% of the optional side quests prior to beating it, took a little over 17 hours. Well worth getting if you enjoy these types of games. Some slight issues: Some gameplay decisions made to create tension (1 button action scenes, hacking, lockpicking, safe cracking etc) are just tedious and don't add anything of value to the game in most cases. Game controller must support Xinput or you have to be willing to deal with x360ce. The pathing drawn for where to go isn't very good. It will not highlight driveways or side streets that don't show up on the map so will guide you to wrong areas from time to time, and doesn't update well (won't tell you to go backwards if you miss a turn, will just tell you to go in a big circle). Lack of guns and ammo can make some of the optional drug busts frustrating since enemies will be armed and spawn behind you. Some of the gameplay gets repetitive fast.

No where near as deep as Dwarf Fortress but far more accessible and has a higher ceiling in the long run because of its better foundation. The major complaints about DF are generally no GUI, no mouse support, and the graphics. Gnomoria solves/improves all of these things. You can do almost everything solely with your mouse. Gnomes do dumb stuff from time to time or ignore working a task despite assigning them to them (I recommend just avoiding it completely and making custom classes) but overall I found it pretty easy to fix. It is Alpha and somewhat buggy, sometimes have to restart the game to get Gnomes to properly process priorities and move onto what they need to do.

Solid ARPG. Some slight balancing issues (Magneto is awful for some heroes), the pricing isn't very good, and the game is pretty short meaning nonstop daily farming or running alts. Gaz's does a good job addressing bugs in a timely manner.

Was fairly impressed with the changes to religion. Picking and choosing the perks and making it a viable mechanic outside of just diplomacy numbers was a good change. Can never go wrong with more units, Wonders, and Civs in expansions for this series. Really wasn't impressed with Espionage, it has always felt like a half developed idea tacked onto the series. Still has most of the fundamental tuning and balancing flaws from the system & mechanic changes from 4 to 5 but absolutely improves the base game.

I hated the death stacks from the Civs of old and loved the actual ranged attacks from ranged units from Civ 4 mods so was really stoked for Civ 5. However, they vanilla game, not sure how patches have addressed it, game was never properly balanced around the changes. Late game it was common to see every single square on the map occupied by a unit. Unlike Civ 4 where you had to strategically select city sites, Civ 5 brings back ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) as the best strat. Essentially, it doesn't matter where you build a city, it's a net gain. That 1 square tundra island surround by useless water? Yes,build on everyone you find. Overall, Civ 5 is a mixed bag. Glad to see the hex system, ranged units, and death of death stacks but the overall tuning and balancing didn't keep pace with the changes.

HoMM in a semi historical setting and better story, imo. Getting sloppy with tactics in battles can really slap you in the face though. My first attempt I let one of my doctors go on another expedition for a week. Well I got sloppy in a battle with the rebels and 3 guys sustained critical wounds. Wasn't enough doctors in the group to pull me back from that. Graphics are acceptable and I found the story somewhat interesting to begin with but after 8 hours I just started clicking through things. Easily worth the small price they're asking for. Btw, developer apparently gets more money from buying on GMG, don't worry Steam key no their awful capsule, than they do through Steam directly.

Overall not a bad game. A nice amount of customizing, both via implants & skill addons. Game is pretty challenging but it feels like some of that is due to it being a Real Time squad game without pause. Sometimes you just can't grab aggro off your healer fast enough to keep him alive and the fight is over after that. Even with hotkeys and shortcuts when I lose fights its often because of this rather than biting off more than I could chew.

Oft overlooked and under appreciated developer. Yes the graphics are dated and you have to read a fair amount. However, there's never any fear that you'll beat the games in 10-20 hours. Overall, the story is pretty good. If you've played any older RPG the systems really don't need any explaining.

Unlike most people I liked Fallen Enchantress better so take my review with a grain of salt. The new hero trees are stale and boring. Yes you have more control over building the hero but I no longer find myself weighing the Pros and Cons of the random selections in FE. While the new prestige system removes the randomness of finding heroes it takes away some of the feeling of wonder I had previously. Eliminating the multitude of different damage & armor types for universal consistency & weapon specific special moves does slightly erode some tactical decisions. Overall, still a solid game and for me, this series lags only behind Civ 4 & 5 for hours invested in 4X games.

I also got this game dirt cheap, $2.5, and feel like I robbed the developer blind. Sunk about 11 hours into it. I agree it's easily worth $5-10. Normal mode is easy to get a handle on and the Challenges & extra mode (forgot what it's called, randomly blocks 1/2 your cards so you have to try different decks) can be a real challenge. The humor in the story though is by far the best thing about this game imo. Some nice insightful jokes.

Despite the reputation and praises I avoided this game like the plague due to the interactive story label. While I still don't think the game is worth it's full asking price I do feel it's absolutely worth grabbing on a sale. Took me slightly north of 10 hours to beat all 5 episodes. The story is amazing and does a very good job creating tension and, for the most part, does an excellent job of creating the "just one more turn" desire. Looking forward to the sequel and may also take a chance on Wolf Among Us, on sale of course.

Love Paradox games and this started out as no exception. It's big, complex, and detailed. Once you get the hang of it you can chug through rather nicely. For me, the game fails miserably when it comes to a King/Queen dying. Historically, you didn't see wars stop due to a death or rebellions pop up after every death. In CK2 however, all aggressive expansions immediately halt upon death and rebellions are far too common from the ensuing loss of stability. Tends to create boring dead zones of time where you can't really do much other than wait for loyalty to solidify to expand again. It's just tedious and boring rather than challenging and entertaining. Really frustrating when you get unlucky and run through multiple rulers in a short time frame. Overall the game isn't bad and is worth grabbing if you're into complex strat games.

After FO3 I was hesitant to grab this. FO3 felt so bland and never pulled me into the world. New Vegas on the other hand feels much more like the original 2. Massive map with tons of areas to explore, more quests, everything feels more alive, and imo better written. Would love to give it a 10 but the annoying bugs totally prevent that. Falloutwikia has work arounds for bugs which fixed pretty much everything I encountered. And for those of you that hate FPS/over the shoulder shooters there's an amazing 3rd person view mod that allows you to zoom out to WoWish distances. Shooting is a bit harder but if you're using VATS it doesn't matter. Worth grabbing if you didn't really enjoy FO3 as it is different.

Better than its reputation led me to believe. Don't get me wrong, it has flaws but once you get the hang of it it's very enjoyable. If you've been debating about picking it up I highly recommend grabbing it, especially since it's on sale now. Some of the controls are funky (hacking is rather annoying) and the story is fairly cliche but in usual Obsidian fashion the characters are very well put together and I easily found myself **** in despite ARPG/Shooters not being my thing. Some of the design reminds me of Deus Ex, you almost always have the option of stealth or combat and both are viable. The design allowing you to pick and choose allies which directly impacts the way the story unfolds is great.

Without a doubt a niche game (sport text sims as a genre are really). That being said, if you do enjoy these games and MMA this game is lots of fun and easy to get lost in for hours. Essentially you play the role of a Dana White managing a company. You put on events, hire talent, build them up, all in an attempt to make your company more popular. Really not very difficult, money issues go away once you grab a PvP deal and then you can pretty much just sit back relax and watch the gameworld unfold.

When I hear the word ARPG I tend to cringe and move on. They tend to be light on story due to the increased attention to combat and the free aim combat as seen in the Elder Scrolls series just drive me nuts. Fortunately, The Witcher doesn't suffer from either of these problems. The story was interesting, something I rarely say about newer RPGs anymore and the combat isn't free aim. It does require far more clicking than any of the old infinity engine RPGs due to the combo system, which can ware on your nerves at time, but overall it works well and can be interesting to watch (for a few minutes) after you unlock new combo moves. Not as grindy and combat heavy as other ARPGs. Hitting most of the side quests I spent about 30 hours to beat it. Well worth the massively discounted price you can find it at.

This grade is mostly for the UI overhaul and removal of ISO camera. Anyone who gets motion sickness avoid this game, the 2 ISO cams from the original game are gone. You're going to get stuck with the annoying over the shoulder cam (even the widescreen mod isn't a massive improvement). They redid pretty much everything about the UI for this game, needed for the additions but more clunky than the original. Story is still solid, gameplay pretty much the same with some slightly more complex options added (traps/thrown weapons). The the cam isn't an issue and you liked the first no reason not to grab it.

Very difficult TBS game, even on Beginner. Can be very frustrating till you learn the systems but people willing to plow through and figure it out will be rewarded with a very fun (and cheap) time sink. Despite losing my first two campaign attempts I stuck with it, got an idea for what was going on and suddenly lost 40 hours of the first week. Highly recommended for TBS fans and people who enjoy a challenge.

This review is based on the current state of the game (minus connection issues). This game has online only DRM which was justified by making a single player game multiplayer by having regions share resources. However, this feature currently doesn't work and EA has admitted as much. You cannot share workers, resources, or money. City Hall upgrades do not sync with the region and carry over into other towns. As usual for an EA game it is infested with all kinds of other bugs. IE water is supposed to refill when it rains: Not working. Emergency vehicles will sit in long traffic lines even when there's an open road near by. You will also see fire fighters drive around in circles on the roads rather than go to fires. Fire Marshalls Wellness vans will randomly target buildings rather than prioritize high fire/gem prone areas. Not worth buying for a few months until they 1) Fix connection issues and add servers. 2) Patch all the broken features and revamp traffic AI.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

After several days on Inferno I have to dock this game to a 5. It's challenging but oh so boring. 10-20 minutes of kiting to slowly grind down a pack of elites gets really old really fast. Melee has it the worst as they lack ranged damage. It's brutally slow and a complete departure from the fun hack and slash style that made this series so great.

Think single player game with on okay story and a monthly subscription. If you weren't an altolic in WoW this game provides limited replayability, no more than 10 or 15% of the quests are class specific and the stories aren't amazing. As far as MMOs go, as much as it pains me to say it, WoW does everything better. Once you hit 50 there is no more story. PvP is basic and more generic than WoW. It boils down to the normal PvP / Raid gear grind that has driven so many of us away from WoW but in a much less polished and much less original wrapping.