Star Dynasties is a mixture of Starlords and "CK1 in Space"...the basic CK1 releaseversion;)... in a Setting where a Human Space empire Collapsed into Successor States, those failed too, down to a level of Warlords and Tribes, then crawling back to a level of Neofeudalismen with lower Nobles fighting over parts of a planet, medium Houses controlling a Planet and fighting to get allegiance of others to raise to high status. You start as the leader of a High House, you create your House&the Leader but the rest is RNG. Every NPC in the game has Stats, Traits, opinion(parted in personal, Code of Conduct, respect) and Kinship. Those Stats define their actions unfortunatly its not explained well during the small Tutorial and while playing its hard to notice because its distributed beetween the Turn/Event-History, the Houseinfo, the Charinfo and the interactive Tooltip for the current Action. A example i call a vasall to the arms. Pro answering the call: He's a relative, we have a good standing , he hate the target Contra:he's a coward, pacifist and later i found out that the target knowed some secrets about him, because he's a rulebreaker Law and Code of Conduct dont matter so much. Everything together creates a %-Chance for pro and contra that action. While Kivisto is right that it is often irrational its not without reasons and if you look at human history(Even the daily News Nowadays)...how often was Logic and rational the deciding factor compared to Code of Conduct, Pride, Honor, Religion,Greed... Holdingexpansion is limited because of the Setting that much knowledge is lost and you're mostly limited to repair existing Stuff, you can sometimes get new holdings via expeditions and excavations but this it rare. Combat is limited but not really worse then CK or EU, Fighters>Bomber>Frigatte>Fighter modified by the Leader,Housebuffs and chosen tactic. For 25 EUR the cost/benefit ratio is ok+ and the Dev react to the player and every patch improved the game a bit.
The Basic Idea is that you make a carddeck for your Mainchar that represent his abilities and equipment give him up to two companions that have a fixed deck+some cards of your choice and play it as a mixture of Tactical RPG and Trading Card game. I Love WH40K, i love tacical RPG's and i like several TCG-Game but... I.I didn't try MP on Gog but crafting isn't cheap and Sp only offers a boring Wavedefense Map.. live the grind II.Several Maps have kown Bugs that force you to replay that mission like the Necrothek sing his Orb. A old Dev. Statment says they know it can happen, they might look into it...well played to of the missions with known Bugs and was hit 5 of 5 time on 2.Priest Mission and 2 of 3 times for a another map..not fun. III.The Basedecks of the Companions can't be modifed, limiting your Options. IV.Several minor Bugs V.Very smal maps+Cheap Event and reinforcemechanic, 95% of the time enemys spawn around erasing most tactics expect for a)send a summon to trigger it and fight clever. b)babysteps with Unit that can retreat fast...trigger and retreat to the defensive potision Overall i was more often annoyed then having fun, glad that i bought it with a huge discount.
First..Bastard is based on Eisenwald, a Strategic RPG with TB-combat and a small part Simulation. The TB and RPG-parts of the Basegame are good, esp. the Story, but with a unusal implementation, the Simulationpart is functional, the graphik functional but outdated and it has some technical Problems. Bastard tried to add a new layer to "The Eisenwald", the Authoritysystem. It should measure and display how well you fill the Role of a Lord in the Eye of the Ruling Class and the Curch, hot good you are to make the people respect you and if you show leadership. But most changes of your Authority are not based on the Mainstory or major decision but on MANY Minievents. Thats not inevitably bad IF the Events a good or at least fun but most are just plain stupid. One Example...You arrive at a tavern and notice that a crowd is going to burn a man, if you ask what is happening the man tells you that he's a scholar and that they want to burn him because he spoke englisch instead of german, if you ask the crowd they tell you "Everybody knows..there's one human , the divine, the demonic and some mysthic languages, why would the humans need more then one language, he did not speake human, he's no Angel..so he must be either a Demon or Mage because he commune with them. Choose a)Burn him +Authorithy b) protect him -Authorithy... Eisenwald uses a mysthic version of the Holy german Empire... I. There was no High German at this time but many dialect that could be very different...try to speak hessian with someone using bavarian...good luck II.Latin was used by the Church, greek by scholars, french and spanish where the courtlanguage several times III.The holy german Empire had a Electorship for the Emporer and several of the kingships, germany included...foreign Lords where common, englisch, spanish, ungarian,... I am running out for words..so making it short...the Events are mostly stupid and that breaks the Authoritysystem, breakings a Coresystem of a Game, breaks the game
I didn't expect much for 9,99- EUR (release-discount) but i was quite surprised. The game is wellmade hybrid between sqadbased RTS and RPG, focused on the battles. I haven't to tell you much that isn't allready descrided at the shoppage, another surprise, just a few comments. The story is nice and well told while "only" using Text&Audio. The battlefields a are wellmade and add nicely to the nordic atmosphere. All squadmembers have a uniquie playstile and teaming up different member change the required tactic. The enemys are wellmade and fit the mysthical nordic theme well. There're some downsides, I. the game is not finished, some description are missing or labeld "work in progress", there're some minor thechnical problems ( like a lootchests spawning at a location where you can't open them) and finally...sometimes you have to replay old battles everal times to get loot but most the time missionrewards a re enough to give you a good equipment.
First, take into mind, that price-performance ratio i part of my way to rate the games. If i have to pay 70 EUR i expect a way more then paying 25(release-discount). They are billions could be discribed as a rtSTRATEGY game with simulationparts and a very smal RPG-part for the campaign. I wrote the Strategy in capital letters because it's more important then reflexes and being fast. The game offers a very good survival mode. The game offer a lenghty campaign with a mixture of Settlementmission, battles against the Zeds (aka swarm-mission) and Hero mission. Aside from this it should be noted, that you can't save/load freely. The Settlementmissions are good, someone said there all the same, thats not true every map is wellmade loaction with a special setting. Yes you have to do your build up all the time but that is true for at least 75% of the strategy or RTS-games. The Swarm-mission are, while a nice idea, are problematic because you can get stuck i you didn't research the right stuff fast enough and without researchreset it can be a game over. The Heromission are all optional and you clear dangerous ruins with your Hero to aquire Ress and Researchpoints. The Location are wellmade and most have tools you can use to turn the tide of the battle. The Downside(s) of the Heromissions are I.The Hero are just buffed standard troops without a story, abilities ore something to make them shine II.Most Missions let you deal with hordes of standard-Zeds and both Heros are bad at dealing with large groups for different reasons, maybe it loooked good on paper to force the player to play smart and use the enviroment/missions tools but a.) is 75% kiting or hit/run not fun if you do it every time b)without manual save/reload opening the wrong door or going left instead of right around a building can kill you without any chance. Still, the game have a special touch and playing is fun, more fun then many games that cost twice as much, raising my rating from 3 to 4.
if you look for a nice turnbased Tactic-Rpg with a rougelike touch, otherwise it's best to investigate it carefully because aside from the good combat and the small strategic part(Party-managment) the game is..well not bad but strange but let's not disgress. The Story...the game aims/claims to tell the Arthurian Legend in a new, mature way...the scenes where they use drawings&told or written descritpion are average to really good but the dialogs and behavoir of the chars really hurt. They try so hard to be brutal,mature, sinister that you get the feeling you have a bunch of older kids that read a marvel comic about a alternate Arhurian like story and now try to replay it. Sometimes it funny but most the time it feels just strange and improper. Oh and don't expect this Arthurian story to be close to the Legend or the History. The Exploration...is ok, it's not real exploration and the camera+Leveldesign restict you but overall it's good for a game of this price Tag. Without claiming Exploration being a major plus i had not even mentioned it as a "negative". Long story cut short, it's good enough but a strong point. The Art..i really liked it, i only wished they did not claimed to be the mature Arthurian Legend and instead made it a "free story" about some unknown Knight instead of forcing the new "layout" to a old Legend. Could have spared those dialogs :) The Combat, really nice, a good combination of feature, good diffculty curve, you can use the enviroment,...overall really good Strategic part(Partymanegment) ok+. you get some really nice option here but it take while until you can really make longterm plan and you will lack funds for quite some time, together with the lack of free saving it can really hit you in the back for some time if you made a fault. Overall, if you like turnbased combat,taking the discount into Mind, you can't really make something wrong, there much wore ways to spend 13 EUR.
First...i was surprised, i expected a citybuilder/survival hybrid but Forstpunk is more special...i would call it a eventdriven crisismanager. You have a special setup, story, city&World-events for each scenario, modified by the things you(as a leader) do, the difficulty and the "meta"-situation. Many Events can't be avoided,but if you payed attention you will see most of them coming and can prepare yourself&yourcity...and with every event&action you will form your story/your city and the "way of live"...well expect your changes made the people to angry and the come at night with torches&forks... I.The lenght of the scenarios! is short and through the fixed Events there is a limited number of ways you can play them(5 for the 1) but the scenarios are very different with nice lore/intersting story/events. I read some reviews stating they neeed only 2-4h for the game..well...from the description they made a speedrun of the first scenario, skipped the events, ignored the story&the lore...I can only say...if you don't like storyevents, if you're no interested in lore&atmosphere and you play only the managerpart with 10*speed the game will be short but you choosed the wrong game. Why playing HOI or UI if you don't like grand strategy... II.UI&Infos...i read several comments that you don't get enough info and the bad controlls...all infos are there...theres a biig button that gives you all statistic data..like how much coal you have, how much you gather per hour&day, how much you use how the coal is used, how long the storage last...you can even see the temperaturechanges several days ahead...the only thing i found annoying is the buildgrid but well..the big stove is the heart of the city..it makes sense to build around him..i just don't like it :) III.Law&choices Most comments about the Law&Choice-system showed me...the people either didn't play the even first 20days or they did not progress through the Lore/Story (or ignored it). Out of letters:(
I started playing Polaris and was stunned, everything is made with thought and a relistic touch, everything has depth and flexibility and still leaces enough "free space" to play my style, being the hero of my story. A simple example...the fuel-system..most games use a a rangesystem take cell X into your design and you can move around at range Y around your planets, others use a real fuel ressoucre but allow some slow sublight emergency travel...at Polaris fuelcells give only storage for fuel that is used up while traveling, so..you have to think at least twice about designs..more fuell cells=less wepons/armor/.. but more range and more important easier logistics and it chains throught the hole game....do i attack knowing that i don't have enough fuel to return the fleet to my space...if i can't conquer the planet the fleet will be stranded..etc.. And it's similar for most parts of the game, really great. The races and the researchsytem are a bit special but i liked it. Soo...if everything is so nice, good and realistic...why only 3 stars... 1.The Steamroll Many 4X and esp. space 4X have the problem that a early advantage like a good planet or two can make a heavy change in the balance of power. Most games balance this with new colonies needing a huge investing before getting usefull or some kind of corruptionsystem. If polaris has something like this i didn't noticed it. For me 4 of 5 game had been over quite fast either i started and found some earthlike planets early and could us the advantage to conquer the first other race i meet->steamroll or i explored for 100 years without finding a earthlike and was conquered or "enslaved" by one of the first races i meet. I started around 20 games and they all gave me the feeling that the game was won or lost from turn 1, depending at the generated layout. Maybe i am doing something wrong but i didn't got a intersting game. 2.Controls&Ui 3.Depth and realistic aproach without automation can dive you crazy No words left :(
The Basic's are here, building&upgrading cities work's fine but most others things till need work or maybe a rework. Let's look at diplomacy...playing the Zhou i just won several fights against the Han..that where of even streght at the beginning of the war...but while fighting me and losing most battles they declared war to two tribes far away, then a rebellion break out and they lost half of their remaining cities to the rebells. I made a good (for me) peace because i was the defender and had some desasters to deal with too. Two turns later they declared war to my vassals, i took a look they lost more cities and where barly able to defend whats left... I made peace again for some cash, two turn later..they declared war again...:( War itself isn't fun too, the Ki just zergs, they raise what they can and send it to your closest city, expect for situation with a chokepoint their troops arrive one by one, most the time not even full armies. Worse, they even leave citys undefended, sending their army towards the old target again while you just conquered a city 2 days away. I could write much more but to make the long story short, the basics work and are fine but the meta-parts that make a game like this shine are unbalanced and unfinished. I don't know how someone could give the game at this state 4,5 or 5..
