I did my best to like this game because I am a huge fan of Dawn of War 2 and even stuck with Battlefleet Gothic: Armada until the end. But after I killed Ubjao in a single turn and had four techpriests at or near two full disciplines, I just couldn't go on anymore. The good: Growing my techpriests was addictive. There are better description of it than I can do, so I'll leave it at that. The dialogue of the two main characters, Videx and Scaevola, is also a delightful, especially when they talk to each other. Sadly there is no voice acting, but they have such unique speech that just reading their lines I could imagine how they would sound. This game eschews the traditional restrictive move-then-attack model of turn based tactics with a point based action system. You can store multiple Cognition Points then spend those points to move and attack as many times as you have points. There are multiple ways to gain these points in and out of combat, and not all actions use CP. So there is a lot of freedom to use CP in smart ways. The bad: The Necrons in this game are the most boring enemy I have seen in a WH40K game. All Necrons except the bosses are silent and have the personality of an admantium ingot. The bosses are a bit more unique and have voice acting but they appear only a little. The combat also gets boring fast. Although each enemy type tends to have a gimmick or two, their AI predominantly just rushes you until they are in firing range. It gets exciting when a new enemy type is introduced, but there are only a handful of those and many more missions. So most of the combat feels like a slog. Finally, the random events between combat frequently have arbitrary or even nonsensicle outcomes that may even mess up the tactical battles. The tactical combat of Mechanicus is enjoyable while it's fresh, but that doesn't last. The epicness of the grimdark WH40K is basically nonexistent. Too much of the former. Too little of the latter.
5 stars when on sale This is one of the most unusual point-&-click stories I have ever played. Very well written with diabolical plot twists, nuanced characters, and such clever foreshadowing that I didn't pick up on it until I watched a quick replay prior to writing this review. The dialogue and voice acting are so well done that I actually looked forward to the numerous Q & A sessions between characters in the game where all you see are just two head portraits that talk back and forth. Not to mention this has one of the best villains I have seen in a game, or anywhere for that matter. The puzzles are OK. A few clever ones. A few annoying ones that I had to solve with a guide. Mostly they are the usual P & C fare that aren't mind blowing nor irritating enough to make you quit. If you are an adventure game fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out. When it is on sale, there is no reason not to. Even not on sale, a lot of adventure fans would consider it worthwhile. I would if it had better and more puzzles.
I read that when the original Divinity II Ego Dragonis came out, it had a lot of problems: excessive difficulty, poor combat, an abrupt ending, bugs, etc. I am happy to report the Dev's Cut does not suffer the same problems. I played a warrior mage, and on medium difficulty the game ranged from slightly challenging early game to a breeze at the end. I died a few times on a few of the bosses, but only one or two felt unfair. The combat is nothing to brag about but not annoying. The controls are responsive. The movement is fluid. Although the combat gets repetitive after a while, it usually doesn't feel like a slog, except one act in the game where you have to fight through several very similar enemy fortresses populated by the same enemies. At least you get a lot of exp and loot. I only encountered two noticeable bugs playing through the game. The quest log sometimes cannot scroll down until you open one of the entries. The music cut out during my first reload of the dragon sequence in Flames of Vengeance. I promptly reloaded again, and the problem stayed away. I did not run into a single crash or bugged quest. Now the good. The game feels very balanced for the casual player. It has just the right amount of freedom to give the impression of an open world without intimating you with miles and miles of open terrain and dozens and dozens of NPC. It has enough skills and gear to give you choices in several play styles, but not so much that you need a couple of skill bars in a fight or have to labor over choosing one from a dozen similar swords. Once you choose a direction, you will know exactly what you need and can manage your needs easily. The original ending of Ego Draconis is now only a slightly abrupt plot twist. I found this version much better, indeed much needed. The story and characters were interesting enough to motivate me to finish the game. The epic music and god voice acting contributed a lot. Divinity II Dev's Cut is a very comfortable game to play.
BZ:CC is more of the same as BZ with some notable improvements. You might find the fusion of driving game and RTS refreshing, or gimmicky, or like me: excited at first but increasingly tired and frustrated the more I played. The biggest shortcomings of BZ:CC remain the atrocious AI and the bland missions. Yes, the enemy hover tanks can kite like a crab and shoot like a cowboy. But if you order two of your tanks to attack a structure and one blocks the line of fire of the other, the other will just sit there and do nothing. The AI has so little adaptability that many of the later missions rely on arbitrary spawning of enemy units. The same units will periodically spawn out of nothing away from the enemy base then follow the same path to attack you until destroyed. It makes the campaign feel tiresome. Nevertheless, there are several areas of improvement over Battlezone 98. The interface and control are better. You can build a bigger army than in BZ98. Their grouping and health/ammo are still readily visible on your HUD. Base building is also easier. Building is now grid based with plenty of open space. There is less frustration all around. There is also the semblance of a plot with commendable voice acting. The plot is not much better than BZ98, but the characters are OK, even though you mainly interact with them through voiced briefings. Commander Shabayev in particular makes the campaign feel more bearable. Last but not least, there are genuine choices in the campaign. I counted only two, one major and one very minor. But the fact that you are presented with a deliberate choice that changes how the later part of a mission or even the rest of the campaign will go is rare in RTS. I wish there were more such choices in the game, but even a couple are a plus. Battlezone is not for everyone. There is an inherent tension between driving game and RTS. Nevertheless, BZ:CC makes enough improvements over the original that I can recommend it more than BZ98.
I was never very good at arena style FPS. I normally don't even play. But I had a lot of fun playing this with my college roommates. The control is intuitive and responsive. The action is fluid and crisp. The objectives are straightforward. The maps are superbly designed with a few I'd even call wicked. There are a fair number of weapons each with a secondary fire mode. But starting out you don't need to worry about any of that. You just pick a map, fill it with some bots of a level you are comfortable with (ranging from noobs to godlike), and have a blast. If I remember correctly, UT also has AI that can scale to your skill, which in this game makes a lot of sense. Although I own UT2004 and UT3, I didn't play them for more than a round or two. I am sure they are perfectly good, maybe better than UT, but you should get this one anyway. To try out if you are new to arena style FPS. For keepsake if you like the later games.
Seriously. Aida must have the perkiest breasts in video games from that era. Perfect. That she has good voice acting just completes the package. Along with the naive, slightly unintelligible, but most comical Ne'ban and the pessimistic but good natured Isaak, your crew aboard the TCA Atlantis is the only reason I finished the game. Mind you, the FPS gameplay is not bad. It's just not good enough to drive the game. The game is self aware enough of its mediocrity that it doesn't bog you down with challenging gaemplay, for the most part. Move methodically, and with patience and a bit of save scumming, you should have no problem seeing the campaign to its end. This is the perfect compliment to Unreal Tournament, which is a magnitude better in FPS action but has no break for you to take a breath, so long as you are playing. If you like video game characters, get Unreal 2 on sale, and take a moment to soak in the homey feel of your ship and crew between serious games.
4 stars for the American campaign. 1 star for the Chinese campaign. You are probably looking for more of the same in this expansion as the main game. The Dogs of War campaign does not disappoint. Over 15 missions, you will be challenged to the utmost of your abilities. You will have souped up American vehicles to play around with, familiar yet fresh. There will be more enemy units for you to kill in a variety of mission types. It's basically an expanded American campaign destroying the other great enemy of America: the Chinese. The best part about the American campaign is that many missions force you to get better at mechanics that might have been overlooked in the main game: sniping in the middle of combat (the Chinese have a powerful but slow tank specific for this purpose), extensive/smart use of the armory, drawing attention of enemies to yourself and better command over your units in skirmishes with difficults odds, to name the main ones. I played only for the achievements, but at the end, the original campaign's difficulty became a joke. Speaking of jokes, that's the Chinese campaign. The start of the campaign sees you run halfway across the map on foot, sniping enemy infantry on the way. It's 10 minutes of your life wasted (more if you have to reload) playing a FPS you didn't know you bought. Most missions have boring and mediocre vehicle combat/command but scripted events that give you fun diversions while showing you that the Chinese are deceitful cowards who rely on complete disregard for life to win. You sneak a nuke into a Russian base and steal their artifact. You spend some missions protecting a General "Fool." You get busted down to a scavenger driver. It's all in good fun at the expense of the Chinese. Actually, you are probably playing Americans masquerading as the Chinese. The Chinese haven't called their army the Red Army since 1947. No wonder you never fight the Americans, and the Russians aggresively try to snipe you. Oh, the sniping! Enjoy.
That's right. You start as miners. Instead of being the epitome of Hiigaran technological might, your mothership starts with containers used to haul ore. And through a chain of sometimes fateful and always dramatic events, you journey through an epic of galactic horror and self discovery to find out just what separates miners from warriors. Don't take my word for it. Go watch the first mission on YouTube. I never got comfortable with the space RTS mechanics of Homeworld. The actual gameplay did not prevent me from enjoying the game though. In fact, the game engine is pretty good at rendering epic space battles. This game is an especially good fit for a RTS player looking for a game that's heavier on the story.
This was one of the defining games of my youth. There are better alternatives now: Panzer Corps 2, Order of Battle, Strategic Mind, to name a few. One thing that has withstood the test of time, perhaps: voiced mission briefings. You wouldn't think it matters in a strategy game like this, but good writing and good voice acting go a long way to flesh out a campaign. It makes the campaign feel more... real, for lack of a better word.
