I remember playing this when I was younger. The magic is still there. Nostalgia told me this was really cool, really good and... absolutely impossible... and it was so right — hyperbole aside. It's a very awesome game with some awful flaws. The enemies can get very annoying, the quicktime events are grading, the objectives can get confusing sometimes and the boss fights are frustrating. There were moments I had to be stubborn because not everything here is fun. But it is really fun when it wants to be — I loved replaying it, immersing myself in this world again, and having fun with the force to the detriment of all who stood in my way. It really makes me wish for a Force Unleashed 3. I beat the game dressed as C3PO due to a boss fight glitch. "Play dress up to go back in time" is a force power I never imagined to wield.
It's a little lacklustre and I keep remembering the "Who needs Halo?" thing as I play, but it's fun and, at times, funny. It's nice seeing what they were trying to do at the time and, even though it doesn't necessarily play as nice as even older games, it's serviceable. I do find it funny that it tries to keep you miss and hit shots statistics with the level of spread, it's confusing noticing I got a key I didn't even see several times in a roll, and it was genuinely cool seeing a general fall victim to artillery in front of me. Even the little rubble fakeouts show that there were people trying. If you come knowing it's an old game, which was old for its time, and very much a port, you can still take something away from it I'm not the biggest t'au fan, but I've been enjoying a few books. I'll read the comic and then try to find the novelisation of this game eventually. This game is giving me some enjoyment out of the Blue Men. It kinda makes me want a Space Marine 1/2 or a Boltgun sort of game to come out for the t'au. Hell... I've been missing cover shooters — would be nice having a throwback with the youngest race in the galaxy.
It ran nicely on Windows 11 for me. I don't know exactly what dictates if it runs or not. Seems like a gamble to buy, judging by other reviews. I haven't played much yet (2h30), but I've already seen some downsides. • Weird repetitive missions with repeated dialogue. A minor issue, especially for ARPGs, but... • It has an odd dialogue system. You start dialogue to hear the NPC, then restart it to accept quests, • There are no safe zones, so you gotta run around, trying to catch the NPC to talk to them in the middle of chaos (which is funny, sure) • But then you have the unintuitive UI. The map is a mess, the menus are strange and the HUD takes a while to click. Tracking quests is a bit inconvenient. • And that's not even mentioning that the quests are designed so oddly that you don't even know what to do sometimes due to bizarre spawn points and lengthy periods of waiting for something that never comes. • An unnecessary friendly fire system that makes fighting among crowds a complete mess, and you have to in a few instances — the mortality rate of friendly NPCs is astounding • And a wild lock-on on interactable objects that ruins movement at times. I got soft-locked because I clicked on the other side of the screen and it thought I clicked on the portal. My first character is stuck on a boss fight I was actively avoiding because I was underprepared. I'll keep playing (with a new character ¬-¬), but I can't recommend it so far. Do not buy unless discounted. The vibes and the fun bits of gameplay might not be worth the jank. I'm not sure it's just age jank — it's been far jankier than Sacred 2, and aren't they both from 2009? I've heard there's a trainer for the game that could potentially help fix the worst problems with a good dose of countermeasure cheating. I'm considering it. However... it has some many cute details at times that I kinda just want to gawk at it for extended periods of time. And it can be fun... headaches aside.
***I'm not super familiar with the genre. Take this with a grain of salt. I'm more of a TRPG and CRPG sort of girl and I come from Warhammer 40K. Also, I haven't played too much. My first impression was disappointment. The editing in cutscenes is terrible. They're all cutouts with camera work with a narration on top and every cut back to the engine is abrupt and jarring — it really doesn't scream production value. And the fixed camera, although it hasn't caused problems, also feels very harsh. The enemies are also too spongey. I had to pump the difficulty a little to have a little fun (otherwise its too easy, which is something I've never said), but then some enemies just become busy work. There's a sweetspot of "engaging with the move-set and basking in the visuals" that they missed, I think. Also, I find it peculiar that they started with the sewer levels of all things. They don't feel too special and the hub is equally strange. The walking around is quite boring, the geomerty is a bit to finicky and, appart from a few extreme exceptions, it's quite unimpressive... Warhammer should feel like too much at all times and it often felt too little. I had to restart and switch characters after almost a whole month's break (the Witch Hunter, I was the Mage) to start having fun with it — which felt quite peculiar —, but I really started enjoying it after that. I cannot attest to the writing of every character, but the Mage annoyed me quite a bit. I've seen snobs written more amusingly. I think it's good fun at times. You might even turn your brain off and just follow the flow. I'm only a couple of hours in... I'll keep playing and update this review eventually.
GAMEPLAY I've been having a lot of fun with the Tyrannids. I played a little bit of chaos too. Space combat feels surprisingly fun. I tried Battlestar Galactica Deadlock and was a bit underwhelmed with the kind-of-turn-based system, and Sins of the Solar Empire overwhelmed me. This system seems to have whelmed me just right. I absolutely suck at it, but I'm having fun. The difficulty options seem highly customisable too. I tried messing with it after dying in the tutorial twice and I suppose it did something. I'm not fully in love with the renown/levelling-up (feels too slow), but it doesn't detract much. I like the solar system domination; painting space pink feels good. What does cause immense frustration is how little you can zoom out. It somehow feels claustrophobic, and I should feel agoraphobic. And I've experienced some prolongued freezes clicking the New Ship button. MODS Also, the game doesn't seem super modable (I don't know if it's the engine or the community), judging by how many mods I found, but it does seem to have a pretty big one on Nexus and Moddb which I do plain on trying out. Quite recently updated too and, as it increases fleet size, I hope it fixes the zoom. DESIGN The music is incredble — no mechanicus, but the Warhammer feel is there, and so it sounds as absurd as you'd expect. The sense of scale is almost impossible to grasp, as it should be. Giant structures loom around you, too far away for their size. It looks just right. I have experienced some confusion playing the Chaos campaign just because the difference between Imperial and Chaos Ships didn't quite register for me too easily, so there's a thing to look out for. The cutscenes and comms you pick up along the way are also quite nice. Some are paited, others in engine, others pre-redorded — all sounding awsome. Overall, I'm quite excited to try the other factions out and I'm kinda really hoping already that Battlefleet Gothic Armada 3 becomes a thing.
