Recent reviews by Kelderon

The devs have addressed most of the issues around the rocky launch. We have real skill trees now, the weapons feel generally better and more balanced, and the main game loop is genuinely fun to do. Still waiting on an overhaul to the tedious crafting and weapon progression system but it is not bad enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game.

Definitely worth the purchase price (especially if you pick it up on sale) but it does have its share of bugs. There are a few maps with glitch spots where you can fall through the floor or into a railing and if you are playing one of their alt-modes dunk/hockey they seem to occur much more frequently. To be fair to the dev, they are significantly more rare than when it was in alpha and I can't say I have experienced any in the regular golf mode since it left early access.

This game definitely needs some work and polish but it's still good fun on its own.

Most of the negative reviews seem to be from people who think the game is lacking content compared to other Paradox titles like EU4 and CK2. While true I think the typical life cycle of a Paradox game needs to be considered. Games like EU4 were not the fleshed out, content-filled games they are today on release because the Paradox model is to release a game with essential features and support it for years with content patches. All the current Paradox games get frequent updates with new mechanics, re-working of old mechanics, and bug fixes and I expect Imperator to be the same.

If this is not what you want, fair enough, buy it in 5 years at discount or skip it entirely.

With that said I think that for anyone who is willing to deal with the growing pains of a new game it is a good entry in the grand strategy library Paradox has.

I'm not going to sit here and say the game doesn't have problems, it does. So far, I have experienced some glitches but nothing game breaking (i.e. cape glitching while gliding but only one occurance so far). The batmobile controls are also kind of... tricky. Using WASD as driving controls is never really nice and this is no exception, taking turns usually ends with me slamming sideways against the wall (maybe I just suck at driving?) so I'll probably leave a 360 controller plugged in for extended batmobile usage.

As for performance I am running a GTX 760 (2GB version) and an 8320 and I left my game locked at 30 FPS (why a game in 2015 is locked is beyond me), and low settings; I usually get no less than 28 but almost always solid 30. My GPU is not pushing at its limit, and NONE of the stuttering other people have been reporting. I could probably unlock the FPS and get a solid 50+, I'll probably try it tomorrow and revise my review as it's late now. I feel like my GPU should be able to handle more than low preset with this game (I get medium on the Witcher 3 for example) but it looks good so I won't complain too much.

Negatives and performance aside, this is a well crafted game and logically improves over Arkham City (seeing as Origins was a different studio altogether, I am comparing to City). For example, the combat is very familiar and plays very much the same as City but with refinements and improvements that keep it fresh. The first thing I saw was the Fear takedowns, if you sneak up on a group of enemies you can use the fear takedown to quickly dispatch up to 3 of them and terrify the rest (so you could, if you are stealthy enough, take down some of the armed henchmen in a mixed group to make the rest of the fight easier). Another is the throw takedowns, if you move towards an enemy and counter just before they hit you it does a special throw takedown rather than a plain counter. Not something terribly different but adds a new layer to the combat, I appreciate the changes. I expect to see more as I play (after all, just 2 hours so far).

Gadgets also got a nice redo. While I haven't tested it yet (haven't unlocked the skills in the tree yet, which also has changed a lot since the previous iteration) it looks like some of the stuff will be fun to play with. A few of the skills I noticed were the ability to use batarangs and explosive gel while gliding. Probably will update this part of the review as well, once I try them out.

Hopefuly Rocksteady and Iron Galaxy (mostly Iron Galaxy) fix up performance on AMD cards and improve general performance so everyone can run this. Very sad to see such a good game have such low ratings because of a botched launch. Warner Brothers, please learn from this and put the resources required into making your games run on PC. If you insist on having your studios developing for consoles first and porting to PC at least give them the time & money to do it well. GTA V, we cried and complained that it got delayed over and over again but they released a solid product DAY ONE. Gamers will forgive a delayed launch but are slow to forgive a botched one.

Great game, even for an early access.

Obviously, a lot of things missing since it just came out and its early access. However, what is there is nice and polished, plays well, and really feels like work went into it. Bunch of people complaining about only having 3 maps and 4 classes, they are idiots. Its early access, if everything was there already why the hell not just release it in full? What matters is that the content already added works.

Perk leveling is a huge improvement over KF1. If it annoyed you that you spent hour after hour on a perk only to see almost no change in the bar then you'll like the new system. Rather than having goals (like the time consuming Stalker kills on Commando) there is just EXP, which is earned by doing perk-related activities. Plus there's many more levels with smaller gaps between them (but they may have to be extended, I'm already seeing level 18 perks).

I'm neutral on the ability to sprint but I would like to see a return to improved speed if you have a knife out. Not necessary but it was a nice little feature.

I only have a few negative things to say, more critiques of the game as it is rather than reasons not to buy it. First, the balancing needs some tweaking. So far I find Scrakes are by far the hardest enemy, as opposed to KF1 where the Fleshpound was what set you on edge. I barely even care when I see a fleshpound, a couple shotguns can eliminate him fast. Either give the FP a bit of a boost or the Scrake a slight nerf. Honestly, just reduce the spawn frequency of Scrake + slight FP boost (there always seems to be 4 or 5 scrakes at the end of each round, everyone just scrambles for ammo and takes them down one-by-one).

Another negative thing is the player info above their heads. I don't know if its just me but I find it VERY hard to read the info there. The health and armour/kevlar bar is very clear, but the player name and class info is in white text which makes it unreadable when near a light source or in ZED time. When making calls (or asking for dosh) it helps to know who is who. I would like to see either a white font with black borders (one or the other should be readable) or dynamically set the colour to inverted background.

Lastly, the gun reload animations. It bothers me quite a bit that the timing on them is slightly off. Often I feel like my reload should be done and I switch to another gun. Shoot some stuff, eventually switch back, and my gun isn't reloaded! It seems to me like it takes a moment, not long, after the animation finishes before the gun is actually reloaded.

Overall, the game is still really fun despite a few issues (which I'll overlook for it being still unfinished), already sunk 16 hours and likely to put a lot more very soon. They promised guns, gore, and English accents, they delivered.

Overall a pretty good game. The AI could definitly be better. Sometimes it acts intelligently and flanks, but it will usually just rush your front gates, which makes it particularily easy to win once you get the hot oil gate upgrade. If you are fighting outside of a city the AI will usually make more intelligent decisions. Naval combat is quite a bit better and more challenging (or maybe I'm just not as good at it). The campaign map AI is also significantly better, they don't just let you walk right over them.

AI aside, the core game is well done. After a couple patches my performance increased greatly and the game looks great. The new game mechanics such as new diplomacy options work very well. They overall did a good job with city management too, with just slight tweaks between Shogun 2 and Rome 2.