Even if you can download plenty of stories from players that created campaigns and you don't need more than the base game, I gave a try to this story as I enjoyed the main campaign. If it's not as interesting in term of world building, it's still interesting as it's entertaining enough. Also, in this one, there's deeper interactions with factions to make it an open world story. So, if you enjoyed the base game, that's a good way to fill the pocket of developers for this work. I won't fill their pockets with their classes DLCs as it should be part of the core game or as a free DLC. Basically, new classes are not that relevant to enjoy the game for an old school player like me who enjoy the basic "Warrior-Mage-Rogue" classes. Anyway, this DLC being good enough, I'm waiting for more stories from DMs-developers. I wonder what kind of world they have in mind.
Well, this is probably the most disappointing Paradox game with Stellaris. Developers keep developing those game breaking previous mechanics that worked well. It doesn't enhance anything, it just get more and more easy and... boring with every new DLC. The colonial system being the worst mechanic I've ever seen in a grand strategy game. You just can cheese a whole continent (America) just because it's really badly programmed. As for diplomacy, it's as weak as previous games, mostly because AI has no intelligence. The lack of vision is the main problem. If you keep developing a game, the core mechanics shouldn't change all the time breaking previous saves you made as the game has changed way too much. If Paradox had a good vision of their project, they wouldn't break their mechanics at almost every DLC. This is a mess and not professional at all. Paradox used to make awesome Europa Universalis. This one is too be avoided, or maybe just buy the base game and avoid DLCs. All in all, it's an okay game using many previous game mechanics. As always, AI is completely dumb, so don't expect any challenge once you've understood how the game works.
... except the kinky one. Well, I won't buy any of them as I own most interesting games on them. Dead in Vinland, go for it. DLC are nice but not mandatory. If you don't mind RNG, it does the job, a nice story with simple game mechanics. The discount price of the game is almost the price of the bundle. The two other games seem decent enough. Hard West and Cossacks, just go for it too. Hard west could have been better, but that's already a fine game. As for Cossacks, most older gamers like me will always consider this game as one of the best of the genre. Krush Kill ‘N Destroy was ok to me, but far from Command&Conquer's quality. As for this bundle, Antihero and Wintermoor do a good job in their field. It's more for teens than for adults in term of storyline, but the game mechanics suited me. Nothing original, but both are well executed. I cannot speak for Hand of Merlin. Maybe the price is too much for a bundle, but Hand of Merlin is quite new and seems to be as well executed as the two others. As for me, I'll wait for a bundle with games I don't own. Unfortunately GOG doesn't do like Steam that decreases the price of a bundle when you own some games. Too bad, I'll wait to get Hand of Merlin.
Kingmaker was pretty cool even if full of flaws, especially for kingdom management and being full of bugs. Well, this one is exactly the same. They didn't improve anything. As fpr the choice-consequence system, it's still not deep enough to make us feel playing a tabletop RPG. But it's common to almost all video games. And get it through other means than buying it officially if you want to avoid the spyware.
Overall, that's a good hit. One survival game that succeeded into hooking me up. Probably thanks to the demons setting. Also, because things are going pretty fast. Even though the research tree can be big and the map a bit too large, it goes fast. You gather things fast, you research fast, you improve your lads fast. And the difficulty scaling is pretty ok if you go to areas where you're looking for loot that scale with your research level (meaning you have the right weapons level) But... even if the story seems to be interesting, I couldn't manage to finish it. Mostly because as many survival games, it's too repetitive. And as you need to gather more ressources and harder ones to get, the end didn't come quickly enough to keep me hooked. Basically, I'd say that if you're fond of this genre, it should be ok. The plot is decent, the game mechanics are decent, the music is nice, the number of character class, weapon to craft,... is enough. If you're not into these kind of games, you may have the same problem as me to finish your first game.
As I enjoyed a lot "Conquistador" I finally bought this one and... the feeling is mixed. While the ambiance is generally very nice, the game mechanics didn't improve much and tactical combats are way too easy to overcome, leading us to boring fights which take a good part of the game. I prefered the way we travel in Conquistador too, the Viking map being... just a boring map. In Conquistador the map was the environment, and it felt nicer. Big bad point of the game: loading times are way too long for very small areas... I don't know how they made it, but with my computer everything is fast except games that aren't properly optimized... This problem wasn't in Conquistador. I just bought it and I finished the campaign already (less than 20 hours I'd say)... And this doesn't feel as complete as with Conquistador too. While the settings of the story and the tasks given are interesting (strengthen a threatened Dane village by leading an expedition to the British islands and bring riches), at the end you feel like there could be more to be told about the whole campaign. It feels like the campaign is just there to provide "tactical" combats instead of the opposite, combats serving the campaign, the storyline. So if it's not a bad game, it's not as good as Conquistador while Conquistador was a "first". So that's not encouraging to test "Rome", especially when I read some reviews that give the feeling it'll be more like Viking than Conquistador... Overall, you'll have good times playing it, as I said, the ambiance is nice and there's nothing really bad for the experience.
