Recent reviews by CHI LONG QUA

Every map has the same design problem: it's too large, making it take ages to move from point A to point B, or to replay the scenario.

And the way the excessive size of these maps makes replaying tedious is a big problem, because these are difficult scenarios with a lot of custom rules to learn. I don't really have any other criticisms, I think these scenarios would be excellent if the area of the maps was reduced by at least half.

(I have made a lot of scenarios for a different strategy game, so I know what I'm talking about: maps shouldn't be massive for no reason).

There is one other problem which is the voice acting is a British historian-sounding fellow. Very dry. What happened to the hammy ethnic voice acting of the original aoe2, which is much more fun and immersive? Did some anti-racist rats infiltrate and ruin it?

CiV 4, with mods, is by far the best in the series.
Some of the best mods are
-Fall From Heaven 2 and modmods, this has a huge range of spells and monsters
-Dune Wars Revival
-Realism Invictus
-Sword of Islam

Music is 10/10
Visuals you can see for yourself how good they are - but what you won't realise from trailers is how varied they are and how much different art and design there is in this game.
Story/Setting is 10/10, very unique, expressed in a very minimal and subtle way. The vibe is extremely strong.
Everything is very polished, whether UI or dialogue or areas, everything is smooth to play, little extra details are abundant everywhere, there's a huge number of secrets.
Discovering every secret in this game will take a long time and a sharp eye, and the rewards are worth it.
Combat is smooth and fast and fair, and the game is designed to be a serious challenge.

Everything about this game is top notch.

This game has a limited scope, but what it does, it does very well. It has very solid mechanics, unit diversity, soundtrack, and - especially - a UI practically dripping with excellent convenience features.

It has a solid MP community, and many fan-made campaigns with rather good stories and a sense of adventure.

Badly mismanaged development leads to a crudely foreshortened final act. This is a decent game but far too short for the price.

The botched final act is why I left a negative review. All that time looking for a way to fix the resonance chamber but it just floats into the room after half an hour offscreen with a Mazzof who was still covered in Bloom vomit. In general the areas are quite claustrophobic, with some cut entirely. You can see the loose ends of cut content in many places.

Also the setting is too much random, disconnected atomised trinkets, with little or no cohesion. The frustration from that is exacerbated by the overly adjective-heavy writing. Sometimes less is more. Plus, I don't find an endless series of literal Deus Ex Machinas a satisfying narrative device.

The character portraits are apparently photos of faces that then got surrounds painted onto them - Aligern's face is set square to the camera while his body and head are at an angle. Not only that but I saw some much better alternative portraits, which Inexile made, which looked far better than those used ingame, for Tybir, Callistege, Aligern, Matkina. The ones in game are expressionless; that's arguably fitting for Matkina and Aligern and Erritis, who are cold, depressed and vacant respectively. But the alternative portrait for Callistege is so superior - it expresses her personality very well. Reminds me of an exgirlfriend of mine.

Also, what's with the lighting being so flat?

However, Rhin is not only good, but is something I've never seen in an RPG before. very unusual concept. It's a decent/good game but it's so obviously worse than what it should have been, it pisses me off.

An extremely deep strategy/tactics game and best of its genre. Exceptionally cohesive and clear sound/graphics design.

Despite many valid complaints, most of the time the matchmaking system is very good unless you are extremely high MMR. Usually when I search for a match it puts me with 9 other players of very closely equivalent skill and only takes 3 minutes to do so.

Had to uninstall before it ruined my degree

Far better than Kotor 1 which is a classic