Recent reviews by 3Form

If you're a fan on the show or the books then you'll enjoy this in its own right as a short story / prequel, particularly if you're fond of Drummer, the protagonist. I wouldn't expect it stands alone particularly well if you haven't seen or read them however.

Visually the game looks really nice with unreal engine 4, and you can edit an ini file to hack an HDR setting on if you're blessed with such a monitor. I'm pretty impressed by the character models and animations and the scenery is generally pretty good.

Main complaint is it's quite short. You can expect to get ~8 hours out of a single playthrough, maybe a little more with the DLC. You might get a bit more playtime replaying some episodes to try different choices because whilst they don't change the main storyline they do have an impact on your crew.

Hoping we can see more episodes in the future as there's quite a selection of characters in the Expanse that could make for interesting side stories / prequels.

Game is a city builder with strong narrative and can be quite punishing of mistakes. You're dealing with a very tightly balanced system after all :). I feel it borrows heavily from Frostpunk but is (imo) nowhere near as punishing. Having limited "space" is also an interesting dynamic for a city builder.

There is also some neat social commentary about hubristic CEOs that paint themselves and their corporations as noble saviours of humanity. I'm sure some real life examples spring to mind.

To top it all off the soundtrack is created by the same artist as in Mechanicus. It is spectacular and easily worth the cost of the base game in its own right.

The game is a little rough around the edges and I will admit I'm a little disappointed with how the promised heavily loadout-based class system failed to materialise, but the core gameplay is still incredibly satisfying.

The melee combat feels like Vermintide in 40k, you won't find anything else like it, and the addition of deeper ranged combat shakes things up enough to help make the whole system still feel fresh despite 600+ hours in VT2.

The art is just phenomenal and the game looks really good. I can't help but stand and gawk sometimes. There's one level I played through several times before realising the finale (disabling some air defence guns outside the manufactorum) doesn't actually occur outside - I looked up and realised we're still deep inside the hive city. The iconic 40k weapons are really well done too: the bolter is incredibly satisfying and weighty while the eviscerator rips through zombies and splits them in two.

Performance-wise it has been a bit rough but with each patch things seem to improve. I'm now able to run 50-60 fps with 1440p at medium settings on my 5 year old Vega 64 which I wasn't able to in the beta. I'm also fortunate to not be experiencing many crashes - I had one UI based crash which has just been fixed.

As above, outside of the core gameplay loop it is a bit rough. Itemisation, crafting, progression, builds etc all leave much room for improvement. But when I look at VT2 now vs how it was at launch in 2018 I think Fatshark will get there eventually.

In summary then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this if you're a 40k fan and enjoy the coop horde games. Even moreso if you haven't played Vermintide 2 and therefore come in with no preconceptions. If you do have hundreds of hours in the previous games then it might be a little harder though.

Great to have some new maps to play but it is disappointingly short, took about 7 hours to complete although I could go back for some stars I suppose.

That being said they removed the baby crying noise from the intro so on balance I recommend.

Honestly this is a really atmospheric and slickly produced turn based tactics game with an incredible soundtrack. I'd pay full price just for the soundtrack alone!

There's essentially a meta-campaign where you choose which tombs to investigate, and each tomb has multiple branching paths with different rooms to explore. Your performance in each tomb influences the meta-campaign and therefore each subsequent mission you take. It's really well thought out.

The battles themselves contain interesting mechanics - particularly around the main resource for performing actions. You must establish map control to access resources, and the AI will deprive you of them if it has the opportunity. Choices you make in terms of upgrading your techpriests and supporting units are meaningful, and you can find interesting ways for them to work together.

That being said, the main issue with the game is the difficulty curve - after a while your techpriests level up so much and can unlock abilities from all of the skill trees (medic, melee, tank, scout, ranged, etc). Your power basically snowballs and the fights become trivial. The devs added some difficulty settings, but this just makes the initial missions really tough. You still end up snowballing. There are some other options you can change - permadeath, only able to choose one skill tree for each techpriest, etc. But they are not really implemented in a way that makes sense. I think to get real challenge from this game you will have to set your own rules somewhat...

On the whole I do recommend though!

There are not many games where you can play for 300 hours and still feel like you've barely scratched the surface.

This game has a serious amount of depth to its mechanics whilst remaining instantly accessible, and I can't recommend it enough. Especially if you've ever felt the battles in Total War could do with being a little less arcade-like!

Essentially the game functions similarly to the previous version (Field of Glory 2) but is set during the Middle Ages rather than the Classical era. As such the unit rosters are different, but more varied than you might expect given typical depictions of Medieval combat elsewhere. Scottish schiltrons, Tatar cavalry, Mongol horse archers, Irish Kerns, Norman Knights and Saxon Huscarls to name but a few.

The game rewards careful positioning and planning such that when you manage to pull off a heavy cavalry flank that causes a chain rout the feeling is glorious :)

Unity of Command II builds upon the original game's fantastic turn based scenarios with a campaign metagame that includes unit persistence, HQ upgrades and choices at the strategic level. You can make ahistorical campaign decisions upon seizing certain objectives (what if Market Garden had succeeded?) and you must carefully balance your needs in your current scenario vs resources available for the future (e.g. I can take this bonus objective, but at great cost to my elite units).

The metagame rewards prudent, measured choices around which units you upgrade each scenario as after a set of missions you are presented with a "conference" where HQs can be upgraded. Some scenarios will be made much easier with certain upgrades (Crossing the Rhine without serious engineering support is tricky indeed).

One of the complaints levelled at the first game was that it was more "puzzle" than wargame. For those of us that enjoy puzzles, the challenge to find the perfect solution is still there at the higher difficulty levels, but those that err towards the wargame will find the relaxed objectives do allow for experimentation and the metagame provides that much needed army management experience.

I cannot recommend this game enough. Simple enough at first glance to dive in but fantastic layers of nuance that allows for some very serious and deep gameplay choices - particularly for those that enjoy min/maxing and ticking every objective on time!

This is a fun little route/network-management type game with a very crisp and pleasant art style. Don't expect a realistic simulator style train game, but more of a puzzle/optimisation problem solving type game.It's very reasonably priced for what you get and looks like the developer is keeping updates (and DLC) coming so I can't help but recommend!

This game is the sequel to Aggressors: Rome, itself a very fun game. Although there are hints of grand strategy, this game plays very much like a 4X. Starting location and initial power/resources are of course determined as per history however, so it's not as straightforward as the 1 settler Civ approach. Having said that though, you can spice things up with a random map if you want.

As others have said it's also much deeper than it first appears and there are numerous intricacies to the combat system and the AI is capable of putting up a challenge.