Recent reviews by Athny

At 1st, I kinda loved and hated the game. Theres alot of things that really kinda tick you off and make you think should be better done but once you get used to it and past it, its pretty great.
This is honestly the most stable RTS game I have and i literally have a library of *hundreds* of games, many of which are RTS.
If you love CK3, VIC3 or maybe even HOI4, you'll absolutely love this. This is like EU4 and VIC3 combined with CK3 building and war mechanics. It's really, really great. Paradox nerds will be wet over this game.
Things I think should be done better is mostly UI changes and additions, like your infamy meter being visible on the top bar imo should be a thing. Plus also AI needs a cooldown on their alliances. I have kinda fixed this by using a mod that natively makes it so you can have multiple alliances, which fixes the AI basically grabbing eachother for allies and leaving you none - and you get ganked in wars. This just makes a bit more sense while still having a cap.
I played 7hrs, most of the time i got wiped and my match failed. But ive had 1 solid playthrough restoring the HRE as Bohemia and im sitting around 1540s. It's got an amazing length of content and the amount of open modability and pro-community developer is actually wholesomely awesome. I cant wait to see what gets added upon and done to this game, especially with mods.
There is massive mods coming from HOI4 teams, CK3 teams and more. You'll see, as there already are some, massive new worlds to play like Tamriel (Elder Scrolls) and Millenium Dawn seems to be coming in too. Id be excited to see a LOTR and a AGOT.
If this ever changes from a positive review, itd be an extreme. This game really deserves 90% minimum positive honestly, its worth the price, its a worked on game, its still a vast amount of replayability and you'll just have fun. You just gotta beat that little learning curve like I did in the 1st few hours and youre set.

be a bard. no killing, unless attacked or for funny moment. vibe hard, dodge arrows - yoink bows. if you like the sound of this, become a bard today and play Mordhau

Final Review Update:
As a veteran player, who mained on EGS and bought it again on Steam, don't buy this game. If you do buy it, do not EVER buy it for full price. Do not support these developers in any future titles. If any studio deserves to be cancelled, its Torn Banner..
Torn Banner are vile, in all aspects. Not only do they don't care about their community feedback at all but they banned Soter Dave for exposing the state of Chiv2, with mass hackers and the FACT that Torn Banner supports hackers and does not punish them. Instead of doing something, they banned him permanently, a content creator of the game. They banned his name from forums, they pretend this criticism doesn't exist and carry on like they don't just ♥♥♥♥ on the community every chance they get.
Soter Dave passed away a few months now but nobody should forget about it or forget about him. He was banned from his favourite game because he made an exposing video trying to get the devs to do something about the mass hackers - instead, they banned him and removed his content.
Shame on you, Torn Banner. If you're gonna take people's money, do the decent thing and support them.



update: another insult - devs giving server support without xp/gold or ability to really do anything with them.imagine trying to get the community to make hacker-free servers because you are too money hungry to just ban them.

reviewing after feb 22nd blog post:

I have alot more hours into the game than this states, I bought this twice on Epic and on Steam and collective between both accounts, im sitting around level 240.
What has me upset about the recent update is a few things so ill list:

- Cheating; cheating is a hugely widespread issue and the sad fact is, developers do not act against reports. They don't. Cheaters I've met carry on cheating the next day and nobody at Torn Banner gives a ♥♥♥♥. Their implying case that its some kind of priority of theirs is laughable and ridiculous.

- Denied mod support: despite the community wanting mod support so custom servers could be utilised, Torn Banner announced that (despite the easy implimentation) they would never add mod support into Chivalry 2's lifespan. This just sucks.

- Negative Tweaks: the developers thought it was a great idea to purposely mess up the spawn system so players spawn behind walls and often far far away from the objectives. The theory ive been given by a veteran player is that they wanted new players to experience more of the map and to make matches last longer - despite them nerfing the amount of gold and XP you get.

- Tenosia update: by far, the Tenosia update is the community's most disliked update. Lacking content, annoying voicelines and EXTREMELY unbalanced maps - the developers fell really short on that update. Since then, they have not tried to solve any of those issues.

- Lack of Support to Gamemodes: they recently teased theyd be doing a FFA map. This is amazing - but its been a long time coming and they haven't done anything to other gamemodes for a long while. The focus on ♥♥♥♥ like peasant last man standing is just really dumb and the thing is, I meme when I play. I never play serious so playing peasant would be right up my alley - but we already have that ♥♥♥♥ and we could just experience that in a subclass or some ♥♥♥♥. It'd be nice to maybe get *just* a siege map, where its a TDM obj kinda thing of just a castle and short match fun ♥♥♥♥. but yeah, lack of FFA support is sad too.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. It's why I bought it twice and have even gifted it to a friend to play with me too - but its just a sad case of developers not listening or caring about their community.

This just isn't worth it at full price and i'd recommend to also wait until the developers support other gamemodes and their community.

Edit 2:

We won. Sony stood down their assault on democracy and Helldivers are heard. Well done but we should really still show love and support to the developers. They really did care and likely are a major part in why this was reversed by Sony. Back to a positive. This is not a forgive and forget thing, but the blame is on Sony. Not Arrowhead.





Edit: Fr, this is like Super Earth. We have a vote (a say) to what happens but its chosen for us.
Adding PSN to the game after months is just toxic and disappointing. Not only is it enforcing people to be tied to another company and login, some people simply cannot access the game anymore. For which, I hope players sue OR at the very least, get a full refund on the game + something on top of that for the time they spent and wasted on a game they cannot play anymore.
It's disappointing and the backlash is entirely warranted. The responses from the devs is sad because I notice they dont agree with the decision and they want players to be able to play the game.
"I dont know" a simply response by the CEO to a player who asked how he would play the game.
No hate to the devs, they are kind and honest people from all accounts but if I was them, I would still carry on and just keep pushing for Sony to revert their decision. I do wonder if this has been done because Sony might finally be stepping into the PC front as a market and application. With PSVR2 support coming, its a potential they just want to get as much pc players on psn as possible for future plans like such.


_What we are fighting for:_

- For Home!
- For Glory!
- For Honour!
- For the Homies!
- And for the Homies we cuddle at night!

Make a change in your civilian life. Become a Citizen today and join the Helldivers!

it's pretty good, honestly a game that is worth £10 more than it's priced at and can't wait to see more content added to the game

(6/10 current)

Don't get this.. YET - here's why:

With thousands of hours into Ark, experiencing its original EA release, SOFT and console release - and Atlas, I know how great and terrible Wildcard are. Atlas was an outright scam, SOFT was abandoned despite positive community attention and Ark SE took a while for fans to really love and that love turned into disappointment after the consistent delays in promised updates/features/DLC.
A friend of mine was a community staffer on the Atlas discord who was harassed and bombarded by the fans after it's launch and the devs stayed quiet and let the volunteers take the brunt of the criticisms. It was horrid and they knew what they were doing with that and did it anyways, sacrificing loyal kind people who just wanted to help - so I do have some genuine hatred towards Wildcard (and yes, "sister studio" bs but it was literally the same people).

While Ark SA seems to be going the same route as the original, there's actually some light at the end of the tunnel - at least, if Wildcard keep their faith to the fans for once..


Don't get Ark SA yet. While it is a nice enjoyable improvement in some ways over Ark SE and personally I'm loving the nostalgia, it's really not worth its price tag and is plagued with game-breaking bugs and missing content that they promise for Q1 2024, but still selling a game when you only have 1 singular map available on launch when there was already maps made just seems like lazy development or perhaps just under.
What I will say is the genuine light at the end of the tunnel that not many people talk about is - MOD SUPPORT. Having an open devkit (available on EGS - prewarning, its like 300GB), integrated mod menu, cross platform modding AND it's launch day posting directly about more mod support incoming - - this is honestly the major improvement over SE that needs to be highlighted.
And while theres major bugs in the game, that's not why I dont recommend buying it rn. It's purely because of the missing content since they posted 2 updates on its launch day that has been fixing bugs, crashes and optimisation tweaking - so it's apparent at least, theyre putting more effort into this launch than they did to Atlas and those problems would likely be fixed up to a better standard in a few weeks or months (which imo, game is still enjoyable even with bugs - after all, people pretending SE wasnt bug infested after like 8 years of its existence are being ridiculous too).

So uh...

TLDR:
Don't buy yet, Mod support is promising, bugs being fixed (hopefully) and you should get it when more content is available/probably next year.

> buys gold edition for £80
> plays a heist before bed
> goes to sleep
> wakes up
> tries to play
> can't matchmake
> it's a solo match.............

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disappointing. A shell of what payday 3 should've been.

Play this on Game Pass, do not buy this. I say this as somebody who has played payday 2 to the brink. I love it and this is another sad day when a game you love turns out to be just another disappointing memory.

So far, honestly one of the most addicting games of this year.

But while everybody lists the positives, i'll list the negatives:

- multiplayer characters dont cross to your single player, so if you begin with a friend you cant take your character and play from that save or that character even.
- there is some really minor, unique flaws with some of the beginning quests. In the ruins, if you make the people flee, lockpick inside, youll go to the 2nd room with all enemies there ready - if you throw grease at the doorway - the door will close and unless you have a lockpicking kit - it will not open. you will be locked in combat unless you individually run all of you and your companions outside the ruins.
- weapons seem really choice based rather than anything else. they honestly dont make a huge difference unless they have perks attached to them and is much more of an individual preference. this is a pro and a con, pro - you can really roleplay as whatever without much to hinder that, con - progression feels slumped and combat is primarily best to just use combat spells instead cause the genuine lack of melee enemies most of that early game.

9/10, prob will win Game of the Year honestly.

I love this game but this "pack" feels like a crime on it's price. this adds minimal content, something thats actually just deluxe edition content for £18. you wont get to use most of this until youre 12-14hrs into the game.
just get deluxe edition, if you really care about the minimal content you get
again, base game is amazing - but this content pack is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing about it

This ♥♥♥♥ is 10/10 GOLDEN but I have problems already where I am beginning to already want more content from this game than it provides. My first day of playing, I played 6-7 hours straight and as of this review, im halfway in to my 2nd day with 16.5hrs.

I'd hope that support continues for DLCs and, god I hope, multiplayer. This would be an amazing base to something much much larger and I hope this is just the beginning of a saga of hogwarts games like this. This really is just a "shut up and take my money" moment.