Recent reviews by Putlats

I'm giving it a positive review out of potential and the starting hours of playing megabonk, but a lot of the game gets really really really RNG dependant as well as not using one of it's mechanics to the fullest extent which REALLY hampers how you build characters.

It is one of the best games in the type of, auto attacking bullethell type games that was popularised by vampire survivors. This is a statement I'm not willing to budge on but there's absolutely problems that seep through after the wonder and fun of unlocking a vast majority of what the game has to offer runs out.

But the majority of your time will be spent having fun (hopefully), one of the largest reasons will be the movement as the games movement is extremely fluid and nice (it can hinge on RNG for a lot of the cast tho), it uses it's movement in a way where the game is very largely based around how good you can be with the movement itself (as well as rewarding you for being absolutely goated at movement, something I am not sadly) to survive the hordes of enemies and to kite bosses to kill them.

I don't have too many hours on the game but I can already tell where I love and hate this game, you can tell movement is one, but another is just the fun that comes with unlocking characters, the characters are all decently unique and they start out with a weapon (ofc) but that allows them to all start in a different position even if you disregard stats.

But here's where I want to be negative.

I do not like the scaling in this game, I downright hate it. The fact that level 1 is way too easy compared to the final boss feeling level 2 and the extranormously hard level 3 is too much whiplash for me to enjoy nearly like... we'll say 80% of my runs, so it leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth whenever I think of how much time you're meant to sink into the game just to get a halfway decent run that doesn't have you die in 3 hits to any enemy past stage 1 even tho on stage 3 even if you built for sustaining yourself you're normally still gonna die in 3-4 hits. Though you might just say, well then build for sustainability.

Tomes.
I do not like how they work in this game, you are limited to 2. only 2, you might get lucky and not need to use 1 of the 2, but then you're only limited to 3. XP and Luck tomes are damn near mandatory, if you don't use them you are absolutely hampering yourself in the worst ways, you can say "well if I can choose to not use them I won't" you will be resetting way more than everyone else. and you only have yourself to blame, I don't go for leaderboard runs but I've heard that Difficulty is ABSOLUTELY mandatory for those so if you want to be number 1, have fun choosing 1 tome. Only 1. I have 0 clue on what needs changing in this system but all I know is after 5 minutes if I haven't been offered 1 tome of xp or luck, I'm resetting. Which is just, not good.

The Final boss, I hate it. Genuinely, it's just not fun. The gimmick of stealing items and having them returned is fun, I like that because it rewards you for building up your items leftside first, or only focusing on your main item. Which is what I like to do anyway. But the fight itself is like just a combo fest, the final boss hit you up into the sky? Have fun getting comboed to death by the stupid dumb projectiles he summons that will probably be faster than you and do like 20% of your health in one hit. The gimmick of charging 3 shrines before he can be hit again after every quarter is also, just not fun. You're exposed and running around when he has a move that can cover like 90% of the shrine area??? like you're forced into this box when normally there's a move coming to catch you that WILL do extreme damage? it's just not fun nor fair (not saying it HAS to be fair but at least be fun.) Also this boss fight WILL be basically impossible if you don't build movement that's all.

The game is extremely fun and I'm happy to have my mind changed about the negatives, I always like to be positive about games, especially about games like this which are fun and have an extreme amount of charm to them. I just don't want to play for 80% of the time because I'm running a dice rolling experiment about how long its gonna take me to hit snake eyes. I would say to get this game tho, because the experience of unlocking things in this game is UNMATCHED... just remember to unlock the XP and Luck tomes first, otherwise you'll have a lot of dead runs on your hands.

I have around 2200 hours on this game, I have a fair few problems with the game that lean more on the negative side but I will start of with the positives.

Doctrine system is really well implemented and is WAYY more fun to go down! I think some of the selections are way more OP than others but in this humble peasants opinion, I'd rather have more OP stuff than underbaked and underwhelming selections. The faction system is also just fine which is alright because it's more that understandable that the factions are more or less used to make the players goals flexible and able to be rewarded, such as expanding a faction and being able to set rules and stipulations, a lot of the new faction mechanics (theatres, spies and research) are all fine, they work and that's apparently a goal. To just get it to work.

That's it, the focus trees are completely and utterly garbage, China is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥, japan can steamroll them in 1 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ year, that's the AI.
The Japanese AI can steamroll china in 1 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ year. That's absolutely absurd and decimates the enjoyment of playing as anyone who banks on doing anything in China as you either will be WAYY too sucked in trying to stop Japan from securing all the resources in that area/just building up.

Now when playing as China, or the Communist China you will realize that everything is not very fun to go down and you'll just be staring and waiting (we HATE 70 day focuses, make them a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rarity if you're gonna make focus trees this big, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥). This is a horrible absolute issue for the Communist Chinese since half of everything you do will mean nothing and normally is extremely easily counterable, as China you can use some of the new mechanics to stave off your death but it's a really slow buildup which is understandable but you get no real big bonuses or incentives to continue playing, which is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying since if I'm playing as a underdeveloped region of the world, the last thing I want after winning a massively annoying and boring war of just waiting. Is no reason to continue playing!

I'm gonna add a new aside just for communist china, genuinely so much worse than they used to be, they used to rely on just justifying a wargoal on the states next to them to instantly get some land and be able to start the industry going. Now that was pretty unrealistic and I get that, so now. you do... NOTHING!!!! You get a bunch of divisions, if you're lucky you get a decent, (note: not big) industry and do NOTHING! You get no land, so when you run out of people. Welp. Rely on AI china and do nothing! What a fun nation! I want to go back to ahistorical landgrabbing day 1 if I can, cus this is absolutely unfun.

Now Japan, it's a grabbag. The Historical and Monarchist paths are sorta intertwined but they shine because of China's complete dysfunctional tree and the absolute EASE of how easy it is to decimate China in like, 1 year to months.

Japans, democratic and communist path though? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you'd think they'd learn from Germany's tree to make a civilwar sorta quick to get the player into the fun of the tree, sadly the civil war for japan is either "decently quick" (which is good) for democratic or for communist japan "SLOW as HELL" meaning that a lot of the time you get out of the civilwar and you're already ready to wrap up the game and go onto somewhere else, Paradox SHOULD of learned that giving the AI 20 extra divisions just because you didn't, (because you can't) start the civilwar is a stupid as ♥♥♥♥ decision and just feels like the games TELLING you to ♥♥♥♥ off and go somewhere else. The rest of the paths are inoffensive and just sorta like alright. You can really get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by how long the civilwar is for either of them so if you get LUCKY (everyones fav mechanic in any game; RNG) you

The phillipines. It's alright, nothing big except for being able to annex South american countries with the click of a button but like I said, I'd rather ahistorical and fun paths being overpowered and fun rather than boring and completely useless to go down. It's made for flavour and just being able to ♥♥♥♥ around and I genuinely respect that. But the rest of the tree apart from the OP fun path is completely boring. Because even with the OP stuff. It's long, and boring.

The game could use maybe 2000 touch ups and maybe some bugfixes, I would love it if they would go back and fix their mistakes from this DLC but I'm deathly sure that they won't and will just fix bugs, so get used to having a japan that spams 300 divisions and has uncontested access over all of china.

OH ♥♥♥♥ I DIDN'T EVEN GET INTO COAL!!! it's just a new resource that's used to cap factory count...
Except it's just annoying to maneuver around and all it does as a minor nation is ♥♥♥♥ you for trying to play the game for about the last 50% of the game if you don't have any. (OR if you play Italy, you're not a major anymore since about 40% of your civs go towards buying coal). If any of the 4 nations who have coal go on limited export literally like 80% of the world is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I am not joking.

But when all this goes south, this game is still saved by one thing. Just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mod the game, basegame might suck but mods will save it. That doesn't earn the game any points or anything, but at least mods are here to save your experience.

(This is unrelated but I genuinely worry for the focus trees for Indonesia, Siam and Australia. I genuinely think that they might make a worse tree for Australia than its current one and genuinely, that would be an AMAZING achievement. Imagine instead of a 70 day focus for a +50 opinion modifier we get a 140 day focus for 1 civilian factory! What an amazing idea!)

It's very clear that this DLC was made after they realized that the focuses in south america were OP and therefore plenty of fun to play. Many of the industry focuses in the paths of Iran and Afghanistan are 70 day focuses that give you... 1 Civilian factory! Don't worry! You only start with around 10 factories all and all, so these nations end up being extreme slogs to get through with PLENTY of waiting around doing nothing with them. A rule of thumb for this DLC's is that the Communist paths are all pretty worthless to go through as there's nothing to do other than "be in the soviet unions faction" and that's basically all. The other paths aren't TOO much better but all except India has basically nothing to do. It's very disappointing because with some tweaking and definitely a little more to do these would be extremely fun.

I love this DLC the colour pallets add a lot to the experience, please God I would pay 20$ for Azreal please pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease pleaseplease please

One of the best rhythm games I've played, ♥♥♥♥ microsoft.

This lets me fulfil my dream of being a 3AM influencer.

Perfect

A great game, but I cannot recommend for the anticheat alone. Just look it up, it's not really worth it when it's a PVE game with the strongest level anticheat, more than many MANY PVP games.

If they change the anticheat. Consider this null and void. but until then, It's not worth it

This is one of, if not one of my favourite games of all time, every single character is fun and relatable to me. The gameplay is fun and dynamic, this is one of my favourite games to replay when I don't know what to do.

this is for me the definition of a perfect game, it's just fun. The End

One of the easiest Paradox games to get into for everyone, extremely fun for friends and single player alike.

A really in depth historical simulator of the Colonial period of Europe. A really good game if you want to go in depth or have a friend willing to drop money so you all can play the actual game, I would give it a neutral review if I could just for that. 700$ for an actual experience is incredibly overpriced, I cry for the friends I can never get into the game because of that paywall.