I really want to love this game, but I find it too difficult on Beginner. No matter what I do, I cannot win a single shard. I've played 4 different campaigns. I play tactic games all the time and I don't usually have trouble with them. I beat Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and Gauntlet, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics WotL. I'd like to compare this to Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares. Eador: Genesis is a rather fun game with a frustrating difficulty spike. There is no reason that Beginner should have such fast A.I. There is no feature to save the game file so you can reload it. I do not have time to play through a world in one sitting. No save feature keeps me from giving this a high rating. The combat system really reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic, and it also reminds me of the old school Ultima games. There are 4x space elements to this game, but they are limited to just picking worlds to take over. You cannot do much else in space. The ultimate flaw in this game is the fast A.I. , which somehow manages to build large armies that appear out of nowhere. (Sound familiar? MoO2 Silicoids and Klackons, lol). It really just needs a balance patch. I figure the difficulty will keep me coming back, until I finally rage quit.
I love this game, I really do; HOWEVER-- It does not map to my Microsoft XBOX 360 Wireless PC Gamepad (The official certified one) very well. It doesn't recognize the shoulder buttons nor does it recognize the Start/Select buttons. Another huge flaw is that I can't quit out to Desktop without Alt + Tabbing out of the game. Also, there's screen cutoff towards the top of the screen which makes inputing initials after winning/losing a match nearly impossible. Maybe after a few more updates GOG.com will release a patch addressing all these issues. I'm running this under Windows 7 Pro. I'll change the rating to five stars when I can actually play the game how it's intended to be played.
I played the main campaign all the way through. The game is very fun for what it is, and really, the fact that it's an immigration control simulation game-- and still manages to be fun, is a feat in itself. There are multiple endings, the graphics fit the game because of the setting. After a week or two, the game might lose it's luster in your collection. Not because it's a bad game. This game is a really really good game! So why will it start collecting dust? Let's find out! The negatives: 1.) The interface at the end of your shift, when you pick your medicine and heat and pay your rent-- I really think the game falls short here and should be a bit more player interactive. Like being able to see your living space...or leveling something up? 2.) More dialogue, please. The game falls short in dialogue and voice sfx. I'm talking of the people approaching you trying to get in. They literally all say the same thing, they have the same sound clips when they speak- Expect many different people to respond to you with the same response after you've interrogated twenty or so other people for the same problem. While the dialogue for the player is obviously going to be the same, the dialogue for the travelers shouldn't. Was it deliberately bland for a reason? Maybe so. Maybe it's the developer's creative way of purveying times of destitution during the Cold War era.
