Reseñas recientes de Manny Stillwagon

Is it entertaining? Sure. It can be fun. Is it $60 worth of entertaining? Absolutely not.

Apparently the devs forgot to mention that they stripped out all the complexity in the game somewhere along the way. Now it's 2 hours of exciting discoveries and then grinding till you're done.

Fallen and can't get up. Don't send help. I'm perfectly fine staying here.

Plot Hole Simulator 2015: 8/10
Would abandon logic again.

In brief: A game with a fantastic concept that lacks the depth and balance to hold the player's attention.

In not so brief:
I was really excited about this game. I saw some gameplay and got it on the Steam Winter Sale after waiting forever for the price to drop. I was excited by the combination of strategic overworld combined with tactical combat and thought it would make for dynamic and immersive gameplay. To go with the Civilization comparison I had always wished the combat there was more detailed / more engaging and I thought this was the answer. Unfortunately I fails to live up to expectations.

You choose class and race and those determine what "special units" you get and some specialized bonuses and abilities. Unfortunately, the special units are little more than reskins of the same basic types. You have infantry, calvary, and archers. And your specialized units are only "special" in a few details. Once you get to mid-game you've figured out the most efficient way to conduct your battles in the tactical map and so just rinse-and-repeat through the entire late-game. You end up hitting "auto-combat" more and more because it's no longer exctiting to spend 7 minutes to crush some bandits. And at that ponit you're no longer even playing the tactical portion. Every tactical map is effectively the same, and so each battle progresses the same way.

There is no other choice than "crush all your enemies in combat". While in Civ you can win through economics, diplomacy, or culture, in AoW III it is ONLY through conquest. Well that's fine, right? Because you came to play a fantasy strategic/tactical combat game. That's what I thought. But this affects the AI a LOT. Peace treaties are a joke. The AI will propose them, and then break them only a few turns later. There's no real penalty for doing so and in the end they have no other choice. They HAVE to fight you at some point. So forming alliances in game doesn't really work. As a result, the AI is pumping out units at a high rate. Which just turns the game into an arms race. You don't have time to focus on the unique terraforming spells or anything that's not directly combat related. It's just a sprint to get to late-game units so you can stand up to the AI. Which means you probably get there before even exploring the entire map. So the late game is dominated by just cleaning up the rest of your opponents. Sure, now you have the flexibility to play with terraforming or something, but why bother? The game is almost over.

One final thing is that some of the background game mechanics are broken. Empire Happiness is notably problematic. You gain happiness for a number of things but most importantly for conquering other cities. You lose happiness for such things as losing cities. Happiness determines how well your troops perform in combat. The result of this is that once you get an enemy on their heels it's lights out. It becomes a runaway effect where you just get better and better and they get worse and worse. Instead of long campaigns being tiring for your troops, it's almost invigorating. Additionally, your throne city is EVERYTHING. As in, if you lose that, you lose it all. Literally. Keeping your throne city is a victory requirement. So you can't turtle in a lesser city off to the side to make a brilliant comeback later. If you lose that it's game over. So the easiest way to defeat an opponent is to walk past all of their other cities, go right to their throne, and take it. The end.

I could say more but this review is already overly long. I really, deeply wish I could recommend this game, but it's simply not worth it. Like I said a fantastic concept that falls flat when it comes to execution. If you want to play a turn-based strategy game, play Civ. If you want to play a turn based tactical game, play X-COM. If you want to play a fusion of the two, wait for something better to come along.

Incredible. Really picks up the spirit of the Heart of Darkness. In a market of repetitive, forgettable, blase FPS, this redefines the genre entirely. It's not just a game about shooting things, its a game with awareness and impact.