The actual gameplay is pretty good, but the combination of forced Ironman mode and heavy reliance on the Random Number Generator (die rolls) is a recipe for frustration. The default actions are often counter-productive, and sometimes easy to mistake at a glance, leading to disaster. You can't reload, and either have to carry on with whatever's left of your party, or start over from scratch. Balance isn't great. After several "learning experience" losses with each faction, I suffered 5 consecutive defeats with Possessed team, then tried an Imperial Mercenary team and won 5 in a row, followed by trying again with Possessed and losing 5 more battles. Skaven are absolutely brutal against the player at low level. Combat itself is rather enjoyable, although bearing absolutely no resemblance to real combat, more like stacking bonuses and effects in a collectible card game. The unforgiving RNG WILL kill a lot of your characters, such as several of mine who suffered stuns on the first hit of the game, and promptly died without ever getting to make a single attack; I was outnumbered from there on and lost badly. In one battle, I accidentally clicked the left mouse button instead of the right on one occasion, causing my Leader to cast his "default" spell (a really stupid choice for a default action), and was promptly struck dead with 999 damage. Another battle lost. No reload option.
I LOVED Mount and Blade, although it had its limitations. You couldn't become king, for instance. While retaining almost all of the aspects which made M and B a classic detailed in the other reviews here (I still prefer the original), Warband allows you to create your own kingdom. Unfortunately, the kingdom management aspects can get to be more annoying than fun, and the constant defection of lords to other factions reaches the point of absurdity when you're fighting a faction that has more foreign-born lords than from its own lands, fielding troops of their own culture instead of their adopted one.
I've been a fan of X3 for years, and bought Rebirth (long after it received several major patches) knowing that it wasn't "X4". What I didn't know was that it uses a totally different user interface and control system, and that doesn't work on my PC. The controls are pretty close to "on" or "off", which means the Skunk is either sitting motionless or racing at full speed (although if I fiddle with it back and forth, I can sometimes get it to some intermediate speed), and any course changes are in the 20-40 degree range or greater, or else nothing. I can spin the ship in circles without really trying, but a 5 degree course correction takes a dozen swings back and forth. After more than a half hour of trying to land, I managed to crash more-or-less intact onto that first repair base you're directed to, but once again, walking around was either "stop" or "run full speed", and turns were extreme or nothing. I'm using a common Logitech mouse and standard keyboard, and it didn't function any differently with a different mouse or keyboard. Basically, the game's not compatible with my system, and Egosoft had no suggestions that made any difference. Other players don't seem to have the problem, but be aware that it can happen. The rating is kind-of arbitrary, since it's difficult to rate something that you can't run for some odd reason, but which looks like it SHOULD be decent. Since I believe Egosoft uses the same control interface for X4, I'm not about to sink money into that. Pity, because I loved their earlier games.
I originally bought this game on a stack of floppy discs, and spent the next several months playing it at every moment I could spare. Basically, it combines turn-based combat with squad-level RPG stats and equipment advancement, base building, and at least a taste of diplomatic considerations. The nearest equivalent might be Jagged Alliance 2, another classic game that adds strategic considerations and RPG advancement to an excellent tactical wargame. The only disappointment I recall was that nobody went on to build a series of squad-level focused historical wargames on either of those foundations.
Like the other games in the CC series, this game simulates the forces and fears which affect each and every one of the individual tiny soldiers that make up your forces. Unlike the earlier games, it uses pre-configured forces for each "division" you play on a tactical map, and move on the strategic map, but in this one you have control over where they move on that strategic map. Previous games allowed you some customization of your forces, and battles had to be played in sequence within each "operation". Unfortunately, I've had about 1/3 of my sessions crash when I attempted to direct fire at a target, particularly with either mortars or rocket artillery. Click on the unit, drag the targeting dot toward the enemy, and the game performs some illegal action. CTD, reload. I had one map where it crashed at least 5 times (generally while I was on the verge of breaking the opposing force) before I was able to play that particular engagement to a conclusion. Aside from the crashes, I'm enjoying this little blast from the past. The interface is simple yet effective enough that it's heavily "dated" like a lot of other games from that era, although the lack of a 3D perspective often leaves you guessing about lines of sight until your units actually get there..
The concept behind this game is really good, the creature building functions by themselves are highly amusing, and the initial stages of play are a lot of fun, if a bit shallow, but it gets more generic and tedious as it goes, especially after you've played a couple of the relatively short games. Basically, it turns into just another mediocre RTS game, and there's no shortage of those. I've put one full evening into it (one of those sessions where you look up a the clock and it's 2am), and a couple hours here and there, and I think I've already seen the majority of what's there. Still, I have to admit that I enjoyed the early half of the game a lot. The latter half feels rushed, as if the developers ran out of time/money/ideas or something, and had to push it out the door as-is. I would consider it overpriced at the normal retail figure, but it's well worth it for the under $10 price that GOG has it on sale for.
After having enjoyed the classic MOO and MOO2, this was an automatic "must buy" for me. It turned out to be one of the worst games I've ever played, and the only worse ones didn't cost me nearly as much. To give an example of how broken this was, I was running short on food, and one planet had a few open slots where food would grow, so I ordered a farm to be built. The local governor thought it would be a great spot to put a factory, so he cancelled my farm and started a factory. I cancelled the factory and put a farm down, only to have it replaced by another factory. Meanwhile, my entire empire was out of food and falling apart, but NOWHERE could I build another farm that would actually build. Game over. Uninstalled, and sold the game back to the store, so it became someone else's nightmare.
After years of playing Mount and Blade and Warband, and various mods for them, I decided to try this. Big mistake. It vaguely resembles Europe, but nothing is where it's supposed to be, such as a major Spanish city located in the middle of Germany. After about 10-15 hours of struggling with it, dealing with a couple of bugs which didn't completely break the game but made a lot of my efforts pointless, and a couple of crashes to desktop, I gave up on it. It's about on the level of a mediocre mod for WB.
FoG:Empires is another of those turn-based games like the old Master of Orion, or Slitherine's own previous Legion, Chariots of War, or Spartan games, where you move arbitrary-sized units of population to any of the 4 different task groups: Food production, Construction, Money making, or Cultural advancement. Filling up the food bar completely grants another unit of population, with each additional unit requiring exponentially more food to build. Diplomacy is considerably more fleshed out than in their earlier games, and it plays pretty easily once you learn the interface (which is about average in difficulty, despite a couple of quirks). I was up and running in about an hour on my own, and didn't need the manual to at least figure out the basics, although I had to consult it later to clarify a few issues. There are several annoyances and insults in the design of the game, such as the initial campaign selection screen always defaulting to the DLC, and you have to CHOOSE to play the base game, since the default selection will throw an error message for not owning the DLC. Each faction (out of well over 50) has its own list of "goals", which unfortunately will always be presented in the same order if you choose to replay that faction, so it's not quite as "infinitely replayable" as it could have been if it had been procedurally generated or randomized. Some factions are pretty much destined to get overrun by nearby and larger expansionist powers which will inevitably get an early mission in EVERY campaign to destroy you, so not all factions are "worth playing". Overall, after the initial "newbie failure" due to picking a difficult country without the experience to pull it off, this has turned into one of those "just one more turn" games where you look up and find that it's 2am. I find it well worth the sale price I got if for, here on GOG.
