Recent reviews by Olagarro

I have played this over 500 hours and it pains me to give this game a negative review. I love the base Battlefield gameplay in this game, it really feels like old battlefield...but....

It all changed yesterday with the release of season 1 and the incredible amount of monetization, locking things behind the new Battle Royale Mode, a cash shop, skins that absolutley do not fit the genre and look like the are from 80s laser tag cosplay. This combined with the PvE rug pull of not allowing weapon or character progression playing the game in PvE.

Essentially EA is forcing everyone to play the game THEIR WAY:

1) Everyone forced to play Battle Royale instead of classic Battlefield
2) Everyone is forced to use the cash shop rather than unlocking things in game
3) Everyone is forced to plav the game in PvP where there is so little teamwork and everyone is bunny hoping, sliding and generally CoD'ing their way all over the map. The maps are way to small and there is no real way to play defense as almost all points are undefensable (intentionally)
4) Everyone is forced to to play the game for 100's of hours to unlock all the challenges, an example here being to repair 6000 points of vehicle damage in a single game. Tanks count as 100, which means you need to fully repair a tank 60 times in one game to unlock this challenge.

Amazing game. Runs great, great art. The quests are more interesting than EL1. I really like the direction Amplitude has taken after leaving Sega. It seems like they have followed Sid Meier's rule of thirds: one-third traditional gameplay, one-third is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new. The new factions, even the limited 5 ones you get in EA are all very different and interesting. If you like ANY kind of 4x, you will like this game!

I really hope this means we will be getting an Endless Space 3!

The optimization is terrible. And the implementation of frame generation and DLSS adds stuttering. Its really hard to tell whats going on because Denuvo is ALSO causing stuttering.

So far every single game that uses UE5 or Denuvo has had stuttering and performance issues and this game uses BOTH.

My advice is to not not buy it unless you have a 5 series Nvidia card, and are ok playing on medium or lower settings.

Needs lots of work still, nowhere near Gloomhaven

AWESOME

Finally a good arpg. Great combat, great exploration.

The changes made from 6 are amazing and I love it. The core of the game and the landscapes and leaders look amazing.
I would give this game an 11/10 if it wasn't for the very amateurish and inconsistent UI

The Good:

1) I love the separation of leader from culture, lets you try lots of "what if" scenarios and mix and match starting biases , etc

2) The new age mechanic is great, how its makes a long game of civ, essentially 3 smaller games chained together

3) The visuals of the leaders and the landscapes are amazing and the best civ has ever had

The Bad:

1) good luck trying to figure out where to put new buildings in your city, there are no arrows for adjacency bonuses, and you have to literally mouse over every tile to figure out what to build with / over

2) looking at your city in the city view is just a giant mess of buildings, its even hard to tell which is the city center

3) many ideas and concepts are not clear, I did not even realize adjacency bonuses went away in the second age until my fifth or sixth play through

4) no clear way to know how far your cities and towns can be from each other in order to be in the resource network, same goes for trade routes, it is totally not obvious where and why I can send certain trade routes and not others

5) no comprehensive empire screen showing bonuses from every city

6) criminal lack of info in mouse overs

7) non re-sizable UI, you either get giant console UI or tiny UI with microscopic fonts

8) lack of variability in what you can do to get path score, for instance in antiquity, you are going to be building buildings to hold your codex's every single game if you want science path score, and you are going to be acquiring resources for your cities, unless you don't get a camel or two, then you are screwed

Way better than I expected, the campaign is fun and engaging even having to do the same thing 2 times.

However once you creep to the end of the campaign, the end game or try to ascend, things really fall apart and make this start seeming like PoE1 all over again:

1) WAY too much going on on the screen, you cant tell what is good stuff / effects and what is bad stuff / effects

2) Way too many on death effects, this does literally nothing except remove fun from the game

3) The economy needs a lot of work and it needs an easier way to buy things from others, the current method is NOT compatible with someone who does not devote many hours to this game

4) PoE2 was supposed to slow things down and make things feel more tactical, well that only applies to YOU, the monsters still jump all over the map like crazed chihuahuas and the amount of time you have to react to things is microseconds.

5) WAY too many "What the heck killed me?" - Living and dying is essentially binary, there is no recovering from mistakes

Absolutely love the game, an 11/10 so far, performance is amazing. Story is amazing, visuals are amazing.

I have not played a game this good since BG3 ( I know its a completely different type of game however)

I'm giving it a thumbs down until Denuvo is removed.

Definately needs some work to be a full game. Like understanding just why the 10 houses sitting next to a market stall with 1.2 carrots are complaining about food.

But what IS here, is amazing. This is going to be a REALLY great game