Build a farm. Store grain. Make bread and store it. Deliver bread to storage near a grocery. Grocery sells bread for a profit. Now explore 149 other products. In Short: IG2 is a good and solid economy game with little threats and huge potential for optimizing production queues. If you like Caesar, but hate war and citizen management, give it a go. If you like Transport Tycoon, but want to make your transports more meaningful, also give it a go. Pro: Extremely detailed and busy world, vast encyclopedia, lots of resources, products, transportation, customisation. Con: Outdated UI, clanky controls at time, many accidental buildings with touchpad, lack of REDO button.
A luchador, a magician and a mad scientist go exploring. What sounds like a terrible joke turns into part whacky, part exciting and part frustrating adventures. The combat is accessible, but has a lot of nuance due to the emotion system and allows for risk-reward scenarios. The exploring itself is straight forward, go places and hope you have the right skills. If not, you can still avoid some, or you go for the risky, but rewarding route. A lot in this game allows you to set your own difficulty and this is a good thing, as it rarely seems unfair. But if you go the easy route, you will find yourself, well, slightly humbled. I dare not spoil why and encourage you to find it out yourself. For the next runthroughs, I will try to optimize my strategy, take more risks and go deeper into the customisation this game has to offer. This game takes a lot of good steps. Set your difficulty, playstyle and targets. Take babysteps if you need or go all in. A sure and safe recommendation for all lovers of turn based strategy and exploration adventures.
The formula to which the series sticks until this very day with only minor changes with each iteration. Here is where it all began, with a small ship and some goods to a thriving network of cities and warships. On the technical side, I had rare occasions of sudden crashes (thankfully, only shortly after starting the game). I can not Alt+Tab for some reason and if done via Taskmanager, the colors go all LSD. For this I have to substract a star and hope for a patch or something. I really hoped for a bit more of remastering, but well, what are you going to do.
I had a ship of energy beings, protected by a special energy shield, firing a powerful slicing laser. 3 sectors later no one of the original crew (or race) was alive, just a single human cruised a sector of aggressive insect people. Another 2 sectors later my ship was fully manned again, just to get forked by an elite rebel fighter. FTL is a space simulator which throws one danger after another at you, provides you with interesting weapons and technology and requires a new level of microing, defending and controlling your own ship while targeting and boarding the enemy ship. Get it here on gog, since you probably won't find a cheaper online version.
I played it back there when it was released - and still want to play it. Though with outdated graphics, the gameplay is one of a kind. As you build your village and farm rice and water, you can send your peasants into 5 training facilities + 2 - 3 skill buildings and create a variety of units. Catch horses for your soldiers to ride or feed them to the wolves, so your wolfclansmen have some extra biting power. Each of the four clans has a unique playstyle. The Dragon clan focuses on classical samurai and archers. The Snake clan consists of thiefs and ronin and advanced gunpowder units. The Wolf clan are barbaric, wild soldiers with claws, hammers and rockthrowers, while the Lotus clan is a plague-like sect with powerful magicans. Battling your foes earns you Yin and Yang, with which you can upgrade your units or hire heroes, which are powerful individuals with fighting and civilian skills, but not unbeatable killing machines. Fighting is much more dynamic to look at. Your warriors have different attacks at their reposal, dealing varying amounts and types of damage while "dancing" with their enemy, instead of standing still and hacking on the enemy. Watch out for the woods. Since your units have stamina and can run instead of walking slowly and sneaky, they can scare birds and reveal their position. If you want a free path, BURN EVERYTHING DOWN! Fire spreads and slowly destroys buildings. Maybe just slightly overprized here on gog, it is truly a gem for strategy players.
