Recent reviews by Raystanz8

Sooooo I know bangers... and this one??? Banger.

This game is by no means perfect right now in terms of balancing and a lot of features are still to come; but what is here is super promising and even in it's early stages very fun and interesting. I can firmly say that I am confident in the devs and their drive to improve and listen to feedback from the community, and I am very excited to see what they do with the game.

So far this game has been a great time, regardless of it being in early access. The devs have inspired a lot of confidence and trust from the community by making it a priority to address feedback, and with future updates adding new features and units as well as an already active modding community, it feels like this will be a must-have title for a long time.

rough period of dlc there but devs have brought it all the way back, peak total war

I am a lightning rod for His will.

I want to start this review off with this preface and basic summation of how I felt prior to Dynasties: I am a long time historical total war fan, I remember trying desperately to get Empire and Shogun 2 on my moms mac so that I can play them, and for well over ten years now I have always been a die-hard total war fan. Since Attila fell flat on its face on launch, TW has struggled to really get a historical title out that was either interesting or complex enough to match earlier entries. When Pharaoh was announced and the scope revealed, I started to feel that the grand historical titles of the past were to never again be recreated. While I love the Warhammer titles and think that Warhammer 3 offers some of the most impressive and fun experiences of any total war ever, every enjoyable moment I had in that game was somewhat haunted by the fact that I missed historical TW.

For me, Dynasties came out of nowhere as I never purchased pharaoh and thus never paid much attention to news surrounding the game. When I heard what the devs had done, all on a free update to pharaoh owners, I felt somewhat obligated to give it a look. What I found was everything that I have missed in the last DECADE of gaming; a fresh, fun, massive total war game with insanely fun combat, complex strategy and management and seemingly endless replay-ability.


The combat in Dynasties feels really, really good. Again, I did not play the original Pharaoh, neither did I play Troy, but as a huge fan of all of the major historical titles and the warhammer games as well, the combat in dynasties comes pretty close to being the best feeling out of all of them. I'm not sure if its the sound design, the unit animations or what, but the combat feels really fun. My only complaint in this sector (and one of my only major complaints about Dynasties) is how weak cavalry and chariots feel. Cav and chariots should to some extent be some of the weakest units when it comes to taking missile fire or being in prolonged melee, but the impact of cavalry charges isn't quite big enough to justify taking them in your army over speedy infantry that can tank missiles while also slicing through other units. In other words, cav needs just a little boost to their physical impact and mass on the battlefield in order to justify their usage and truly kind of complete the rock-paper-scissors formula here. Warhammer 3 and older historical titles like Shogun 2 did/do cav charges very well and would be beneficial to try and at least somewhat incorporate those feels into this game.


Honestly, the campaign here in Dynasties is some of the most deep and impressive that a historical title has ever seen for total war. Factions feel different from one another, and every faction, major or minor, has the opportunity to replay them and get an entirely new experience with totally different mechanics. On top of the wide array of faction mechanics to explore, unit variety is about as good as it gets in a historical title. While it seems there are around 8-12 types of units across the whole game, the difference between one factions two-handed axe units and anothers can be enormous, and unique abilities and formations for units guarantee that every army you build will have some unique strategy you can utilize to gain an edge. While there are some points where this game suffers from the Warhammer 3 classic of being declared war on by factions that don't make sense, most of the time the wars feel very logical and diplomacy feels way more weighty in this game than some other historical titles.


While this sort of ties into the campaign part of things, it is important to applaud the decision to remove immortal, singular country leaders and introduce the new dynasties system. Fans of other historical titles will recognize this family tree mechanic, where you get to create your own family and watch as sons grow into powerful generals/kings and daughters grow and get married for vital political alliances. While this system doesn't demand your utmost attention at all times, you can use it as much as you want to and honestly watching your son grow from infancy to leading a campaign and then into taking over the kingdom feels very nice when you actually pay attention to the system and try and make sure he survives and gets good traits.


One of the big changes in Dynasties is the new lethality system, and it has been one of the most talked about mechanics so far in the games release. While I do understand most of the complaints or calls for tweaking for it as it stands, I won't lie and say that something about watching archers be able to shred infantry units who aren't shielded not only makes sense but is super satisfying. Ranged units, especially archers and javelins, should be deadly if given the opportunity to get clean shots on your unarmored or unshielded units, but I do for sure agree the system needs tweaks. For example, units that have shields should have a significantly easy time block arrows, especially if they aren't in combat and facing the volley. While some formations do increase missile block chance, it is still frustrating watching your slow, shielded spear units get torn to shreds when they are in a formation that specifically is meant to block arrows/ranged weapons. Additionally, the difference between essentially militia and trained archer units feels way smaller than similar gaps between infantry. So, buffs to shields and tangibly worse performance of lower tier missile units I believe would help make this new system more balanced, in addition to the changes to cavalry I mentioned earlier that should be a much stronger counter to ranged units than they are now.


The area for my biggest critique of this game is multiplayer. Not only are there de-synching issues that have plagued every campaign I've tried with a friend, but the fact that I have to even deal with non-simultaneous turns in 2024 is crazy to me. I'm not a serious game programmed or dev by any means, but I do know that Warhammer 3 has simultaneous turns and that they work very well in that game. Furthermore, Warhammer 3 has options for actually joining your friends battles and being able to help them by taking command of troops, or even taking command of the enemy army if you want to challenge (or troll) them. So why aren't those features here???? If I were a dev for this, I would understand that phenomenal and working multiplayer experiences not only boost enjoyment of the game but can actually boost sales as well, by attracting certain players on the cusp of getting into total war but would feel much better making the purchase if they knew they could play with an experienced friend. Furthermore, why are multiplayer campaigns limited to two players? This game has such an enormous map with so many different factions, but is smaller in every way than Warhammer 3; which already has the ability of having campaigns with more than two players. If you just ported everything you can do in WH3 multiplayer campaigns into Pharaoh, you'd be looking at the single GREATEST historical title in terms of multiplayer capabilities. Instead, it feels the same as playing a Rome 2 campaign over a decade ago.

I will say, when the co-op campaign works (not de-synching) it has a lot of potential to be fun, especially with the cool ambitions that are specific to them. However, it will always be a what-if sort of thing with this game unless they introduce multiplayer features from WH3 at the very least.


Overall, Dynasties was exactly what CA needed and what players wanted, and while it is by no means perfect it undoubtedly proved that the devs can absolutely dish out a fantastic historical title and I am honestly proud to support this game and the devs who again seem to actually care and listen to the fans.

This dlc was really everything I hoped it would be. While there were some bosses in general or specific moves that I think may have been a little cheap, complaints about difficulty seem to stem mostly from new players or players who wont use in-game systems (fragments, summons, etc.). Of complaints around the dlc, performance critiques definitely have the most validity as there were several moments in the world or even moves from bosses that would shatter frame rates, however these were pretty rare.

In my opinion, these issues are very small compared to the sheer volume of content in the dlc, I dumped at least 40 hours if not more into it with my first character and plan on bringing future characters there as well as it really is filled with high quality bosses and gear that, combined with the variety of enemies and cinematic fights, makes it a must-do for each run of the game.

Overall, several dlc bosses do in fact make base game bosses seem silly, especially the final boss, but I really enjoyed pretty much all of them despite their difficulty and the density of content in the dlc is really staggering, and worth the price of admission any day of the week.

I LOVE DEMOCRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything I've been waiting for. It is finally harvesting season.

One of the best Grand Strategy games ever made, EU4 has anything you could ever want in a grand strategy. From the most complex diplomacy I have ever seen, to dozens of mapmodes that provide tons of information. What good is controlling a nation without a military? The military mechanics and this game are great, especially the inclusion of manpower, which plays are huge role in conflicts, because it controls how many men you can have and how many you can replace.Technology is another great part of the game, but one of my favorite parts of the game is the events. They truly forge you empire, and some are unique to each country, such as the Polish one in which you control Lithuania. Overall I give this game a 10/10, because it's very few flaws are swiftly wiped out by everything else. The major flaw, though, is not in the game. It's the dlc. Just look at the dlc if you're curious what I mean.