I've had this on my machine for a couple days, and when it's playable its fun... when it's playable. The game is an unstable mess at this point. It was rushed out the door and the QA really dropped the ball. I've been playing the tutorial/quickstart and on turn 101, when the independents move, it crashes, repeatably and consistently. I've never seen work this shoddy from Triumph, and can't help but thing that being on the Paradox umbrella has impacted their standards. Considering a refund. Will give them a week to get their act together. TLDR: Do not buy now. Not in a stable state. Wait for patching to commence.
Played the first of this series, wasn't thrilled by the linearity of it. However, Shadows was on sale, so I figured I'd give it a shot. 20 minutes in, my first significant choice is fatal. That's not "branching narative" it's the same one dimensional crap. If this was a tabletop session of VtM, you'll throw you coffee in the GM's face and never sit down at a table with them again. Learn to craft something other than jump through the hoops naratives, DD.
Just a note on the heat issues mentioned in the previous review. I've got a stable, couple year old system with an EVGA GTX 660ti in it, stock no overclocking. I ran the latest AoWIII and GPU shows 74C in game under load (speedfan 4 reporting). Ran Dragon Age Inquisition, exact same temps. Both games set on high graphics, frame rates a bit higher in AoW but not much. Conclusion, there's not currently a heat issue on my machine and I doubt there'll be one on yours. It seemed unlikely to me that software would cook a GPU, but strange things can happen. Just take the reports of potential calamity with a big grain of salt. Correlation does not equal causation. As for the game itself, AoW has been my goto strategy game since way back. It's the nearest thing to a modern "Master of Magic" you'll find. If you're looking for epic fantasy strategy, Triumph knows what they're doing. Enjoy.
