This game with an added procedurally generated universe is basically what Elite: Dangerous should have been, but never was. It's deep, it's immersive, it's got tons of different playstyles and challenges, for a good while this was (and to a degree - still is) an ultimate space sandbox game. You can build and manage an entire carrier strike force, cruiser fleet. Or choose completely different route and dominate the galaxy with your trade fleet, rising billions and managing an entire empire of trade. Or choose even a different route than that and grow an enormous factories, supplying entire empires in everything, from weapons, through food, down to electricity. Flaws? Well, combat (especially turrets) AI isn't on a bright side (look for a mod that's fixing it), galaxy isn't procedurally generated, so after 500 hours you might get bored, and finally: It's an enormous time sink, there's always something to do, somewhere to go, it's nothing like Elite when one route takes 15 minutes to an hour of doing nothing - here if you choose to do something - you can get right on it, which means that it's difficult to get out from in front of the screen. You like space games? Buy this. NOW.
After a long time of an intense development - here it is. The official, feature-complete game release. One of the few really successful, model stories for the crowdfunded games. Great track record during development and a final game release that actually plays like a polished, complete game (which is something that can be said about very few crowdfunded games). Easily comparable with a classic -Tycoon games, it's deep, fun, engaging, gives a huge field for creativity, optimization, building that beautiful clock that will just... tick. Or burns in flames because power generator exploded. ;) What's new comparing to many of the old tycoons are quite an advanced logic circuits allowing you to do some crazy magic and automation of your facility (someone even build a computer with it). Also the "escape" mode, while being the only part that feels a bit unfinished, yet full of potential, can be really fun and enjoyable while looking like a fresh addition to the genre, even if PA isn't the first game to make this sort of thing. Overall I would say that it's a worthy purchase, even for a full price. You'll have hours and hours of fun. Random fact: PA is so successful that it already inspired a creation of another game with similar arts style - Rim World.
Mind you: I never played this game before. First impressions: Works perfectly fine in Win 7x64. Cons: In settings there's no way to play it on a full screen 1920x1080. Game interface doesn't allow you to change the size of windows, seeing that you have plenty of space and these minuscule windows - it's really annoying. Treaties are messed up: countries can join them even though they weren't eligible to do that in real life (eg. Poland popping into EU in 2001), and joining any treaty seems to have only advantages - there's no duties or expenses or cons to anything, so you want to run though all of them and join everything you may. Map looks awful and is very non-functional (doesn't feel like Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis at all). Interface is very click-heavy with little done to make it functional for the user. Managing your country is extremely simplified - to the point where sometimes it's just stupid (eg. options for internal laws about "Abortion" are: permitted / not permitted, moving capital city is just 2 clicks and no obvious effects) or almost intentionally made difficult (eg. no hints on what the effects of certain actions might be, the history screen is very... weird and picky in terms of what it wants to display, eg. there is government approval graph, but no unemployment or income graph?! some events and changes are displayed on it, but other are not for no logical reason I could think of). AI also seems to be doing some weird stuff... eg. tons of countries take control over cereals production? Really? Why specifically cereals?! To sum up the nation management side of the game let me give you this as an example: In my first play-through I played as Poland, standard difficulty custom scenario with an objective of raising GDP by 50%. It took me 3 years, 10 months and 27 days. WHAAAT?! I don't know, perhaps this game shines when it comes to wars and battles, but in a peace time - its... not great.
I'm very much torn on this game. I want to love it, but at the same time I hate so many things about it. It has huge potential, but it's crippled by several key oversights and flops. What I loved about it is this sense of creation, and a sense of doing something you thought wasn't possible. It's also one of very few games allowing you to learn some basics of orbital mechanics in relatively simple way. It allows you to grasp some of the excitement real engineers get from building a spacecraft and seeing how it lands on strange, new worlds, and the frustrations along with the stress some of the spaceflight pioneers had decades ago with rockets tumbling in flight, or the difficulties of orbital rendezvous. At the same time however it's fundamentally flawed in many, many ways-and it's not simplifications that bother me, it's the things that this game just doesn't get right.Characters limit in GOG reviews sadly don't allow me to go in detail, but let me say this: What you will learn after playing KSP isn't how the spaceflight works-it's how the KSP works.You'll end up having tons of misconceptions and be very convinced that what this game teaches is a good science.It's not.It's wrong to the point where in the Internet I can recognize KSP players by their clueless comments, completely detached from the reality.Some of the most important things missing from the game include lack life support, radiation,proper aerodynamics (v1.0.x is still wrong), proper reentry, fixing ridiculous density of planets, adding data displays or stuff on surface of planets. Beyond that game doesn't feel like it's anywhere near being finished.Research tree is a complete mess that's left remaining from some early version, parts are inconsistent, many of them missing (eg.no upper stage engines for 3m parts, or any of the parts for QBE 'series'),science is still just a clickfest,there's no role for rovers,contracts are also a mess detached from reality, etc.(no chars left to talk more)
I would highly recommend this game for any RTS gamers out there, mostly because of AI that is the strongest point of this game. It really feels like fighting against a real player. Also a historical setting with all these tiny details on a map really make a difference creating unique atmosphere you'd expect from commanding a real battle. "Plan your strategy" feature is great. And graphics... it's one of most beautiful strategy games I seen since quite a while. What I didn't like is mostly related to the amount of control you have over your units - the thing I was missing most is switching from single to double-line formation and controlling when and how to use cover (eg. I'd like to have all my troops standing in a forest, along the every edge of it - in some cases it's impossible to execute). Tutorials have no mention about different artillery ammo types even though they are essential. You can often see your line to fire in some generic direction ahead even though enemy is 60 degrees off to the left. Charging on artillery somehow tends to be a horrible idea and when you overwhelm it - artillery men just don't want to die (even if they are swarmed by a 1000 of your troops). And battles tend to end in some arbitrary moment, even if they are delayed - eg. sudden end in a middle of a charge on the enemy under heavy fire... clock ticks and everyone just decide to go home?! Overall though it's a great game with surprisingly deep layers of strategy involved and all these nuances that seemingly don't matter and yet make a huge difference at the end of a day. I have a ton of fun, even though I'm not a Civil War geek. I'm looking forward to see if there will be any other "Ultimate General" games with other battles involved, perhaps next time something from Napoleonic Wars?
PoE is an RPG that basically fulfils all of the unfulfilled promises and failures of Wasteland 2 and adds tons of amazing things on top of that. It feels like a true successor to Planescape Torment and all of the other old-school RPGs. Things I like most: 1. Storyline - Involving from the very beginning got a few plots you are suppose to discover (yes, few, I see reviewers saying there's just one mystery at the beginning, which is false, watch and listen carefully) with introduction giving you an amazing glimpse into a very deep and huge world. It's basically a complete opposite of Wasteland 2 where through first 14 hours of gameplay I couldn't get hooked up to the main storyline at any point. Here I was already interested in the first screen that loaded. And something I always have an appetite for - decisions that matter. And PoE really does deliver in that department. 2. Combat - I adore it. Deep, interesting, makes you forced to think about strategic level (what weapons will be best for this battle, how to open the encounter, where to move your characters, what opening spells or attacks to use, etc.) and tactical level (positioning, what abilities to use for which opponent, when to use defensive spells and which, etc.). Tons of varied opponents many of which require individual approach. Again - complete opposite of Wasteland 2 where you had barely few types of enemies with most basic AI repeating the same things over and over again. Here every encounter is different and makes you analyse the situation. Why other reviewers find this game difficult or random is precisely because they do not think just randomly throw into battle failing over and over again. 4. Twin health system - Endurance and "regular" Health. Thanks to this you avoid usual pitfall of cRPGs - save&load cycle. Loosing character is penalizing, but not instantly crippling you and forcing to reload. In a way reminds me of P:T where decisions matter but aren't a difference between game over and not.
