Recent reviews by Therival

This game is a ton of fun! It is simple but the progression and build diversity are very well done.

Come on you apes, do you want to live forever!?

Game is pretty fun. Campaign was a really solid introduction to the game's first 6 clans. The economy and military balance is very good for players but that is where the fun ends.

One of the main reasons I bought the game was seeing that there was a mode called conquest that was like DOW Soulstorm's campaign where you collect upgrades through the map and get stronger. The really cool selling point of this is that unlike other campaigns you can actually COOP through this. The problem is you will slowly want to pull your hair out because of the blatantly cheating AI.

Now cheating AI in RTS is pretty much a time honored thing at this point and the AI's in most will always cheat on the harder difficulties to give you more of a challenge by having a % more economy or cheaper units etc. But in most games the cheating slowly scales up from hard to extreme etc. The problem this game has is the developers give massive bonsuses to the AI in normal mode and blatantly lie about how teams work in the coop conquest mode. A map will load you in saying it is a 8 player map with 4 2 person teams. So you think alright I need to keep an eye on all these teams and work towards my objective which is randomized between the maps.

The main problem stems from even the "normal" AI having easily double to triple your production. I had a map where I had to befriend a neutral faction with 3 separate friends and in each map the objective was nearly impossible to complete because by the end of the first winter where you are struggling with food the AI is already 30% of the way to victory condition because they somehow have enough food to just trade with the AI. Now most conquests victory conditions are decently balanced, the maps where it is just a normal domination victory or is open to any victory type those work pretty well because the AI will actually try to stop each other from winning. But in the neutral game mode the AI is either programmed to just dogpile the players turning it into a 2v6 or to just ignore each other.

This was one of the dev's responces to me complaining about the anti player bias that somehow makes WC3's look friendly. Link to the thread if you want to read through it.
https://steamproxy.com/app/466560/discussions/1/4417479689934287670/?ctp=2

"The Conquest game mode was added in order to provide the player with a challenging experience.

Having the AI eliminate each other means that the player is free to sit back and turtle. This goes against our vision for the game mode which revolves around domination, hence the name "Conquest".

We want to encourage the player to actively seek out and eliminate the AI, rather than defending attacks and waiting for the AI to grow weaker and weaker.

Of course there will be some variation depending on the Conquest mission and the clan you decide to use.

That being said, we are always open to feedback so thank you for starting this thread. I hope this helps you to have a better understanding of our choices."

Nowhere in that thread did I say that I want the AI to just kill each other while I sit back and "turtle". He says the game mode revolves around "dominion" thus the term conquest... If that is the case, why is one of the missions literally befriending neutrals where the AI has a massive advantage because they all team up to prevent you from attacking the AI that is in the lead even though it will lead to the other 3 teams losing. You cant "actively seek and eliminate the AI" when the ai by the end of the first winter is over 30% of the way to victory because they have unlimited resources to donate.

Game has solid mechanics, the clans are pretty decently balanced, and they each feel unique but they really need to work on the AI's cheating on normal mode. I wont even mention the fanboys that jump down your throat for even suggesting that the AI shouldn't just team up on you when there are 4 independent teams. There is a big difference between difficulty and tedium and this is definitely the latter.

Overall, I would give this game a 6/10, I just hope that the devs are more responsive to feedback for their new Dune game. If they would scale back the AI cheating on normal mode so you could play it with your friends without having to just rush the same meta strats to win it would be far more enjoyable.

Developers seem to care nothing for their customers. Almost a dozen items locked behind having to watch twitch for 6+ hours to unlock them all. Emergency patch the day after release to fix all customers getting the pre order dlc instead of just making it so everyone on launch week gets it. I understand the patch was also because people were getting the dlc character for free but still... $10 for a single guy that is not a unique class or anything and a soundtrack?

The wound system is hilariously bad and way more brutal than xcom that has you know normal soldiers and not litteral super soldiers. Get hit with a gun that shouldnt even pen your armor once? Your out for a week. Turn yourself on fire with a flamer because the game bugs out? Yep your in the med bay for 30+ days. Im not sure if its the developers or the publishers that are tone deaf but the game is in a rough state and has alot of potential but good luck getting any of your friends to buy a game when a dozen items will forever be locked.

They need to add a way to get all the twitch items in game through missions or events or something. Or bundle them all and sell them as a dlc bundle for a few bucks along with the pre order dlc. Dont lock your customers out of content.

Game is great, basically build up on the core of those old WC3 custom maps that we all loved and the other two games. Multiplayer is a ton of fun and you can even do campaign when you only have a few friends to play with so you have the support of 3 bots that are really helpful. Devs are very responsive to any feedback and have been openly discussing the patches they are working on to fix the map desync issue which is the only major bug I have encountered. Overall cant wait to see where the dev team brings this game!

An improvement on the 3rd game in almost every way. The amount of different trait combos alone is mind boggling. Then you add in your artifact trait per creatures and then on top of that all the abilities from the different classes. This game is Pokemon on steroids and without hand holding, I love it!

A great improvement over the first game. I would highly recommend playing with a controller and turning effects quality to low, I have had zero performance problems so far with that setting changed.

Seems to be a very solid evolution of the third game, loving it so far.

A Hideo Kojima Game, that is not for everyone. If you are looking for a game with a great atmosphere and story this is definitely the game for you. This game is both one of the most relaxing and terrifying games I have played. Initially when I picked this up I did not expect it to really click with me honestly but now it has went from a game that I will beat and shelf to a game that I am going to 100%.

This is front runner for GOTY for me right now and most likely the only game that has the potential to take that title away is Cyberpunk. I dont think you can experience enough of the game in two hours if you were thinking about doing that to try it out because of how long a lot of the cutscenes and a huge amount of gameplay features that entirely change how you play slowly unlocking as you progress.

Just watch a few (spoiler free) gameplay videos and read a reviews on it and know what you are getting into. It being on PC now after PS4 gives us the big advantage that we know exactly what we are getting into.

Started at a 6/10 now a solid 9/10, 11/10 with rice.

A little rough but I am enjoying it. I think it should have been priced around $40 but so far I am having a good time. The game takes out the base building from Xcom but still allows you to customize each of your soldiers that you recruit and their weapons. Combat can be very brutal and difficult but once you get used to the flow it is very enjoyable.