Recent reviews by Ava Sans Frontières

It's a quite good StratSim Wargame.

It does about everything right.

I'm a bit worried with the potentially obnoxious monetization, but so far it's mostly cosmetic.

I recommend it.

Arguably the best ARPG I ever played. And I played a lot.

So if you like ARPGs, or are looking for an entrypoint; I recommend Grim Dawn.

Arguably the best Warhammer 40k video game in existence. I love it.

From what I tried?
It has to be the most boring, least engaging, badly and boringly paced passive waitfest autochess I ever tried.

I don't know what I thought it would be. But it sold itself as a "strategy game".
There's no strategy to it.
In fact you do nothing.
I didn't have any pre-impression of what it should be and how it should be.
But ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it bad.
That was just sheer disappointment and jadedness from match start until I finally quit.
And yes the entire time spent was in a single match.
That's how long-ass drawn out it is. I played for an hour.
Wasn't even halfway through the match.
Wasn't even like 1/4 towards being anywhere near done.

So yeah I definitely can not recommend this.

It's not that it's buggy or lacking. It's not that it's heavily monetized and obnoxious. It's none of those.

It's just straight up boring.

I love it

I've played some TW3K now, and it was... Well it was entertaining enough. Here's my rundown.

Overall I'd give it a 5/10 (median)

Pros:
+ Good campaign map
+ Several viable playstyles (tall, wide, trade, etc)
+ The game runs excellently
+ Short loading times
+ Both romance and records mode
+ Battles are fun again
+ Unique lords and characters
+ New and improved diplomacy, espionage
+ Population is back!
+ Roads are back!
+ Good settlement system
+ MP Campaign victory conditions have been reworked into the same one campaign

Cons:
- Combat animations are bland for regular units
- Music is bland, most of it is from previous TW games with a "3K take" on it
- Voice acting is so horrendous I've started turning off my headset when booting up the game
- Maybe 4 voice actors in total
- Severe lack of unit variety
- Despite faction uniqueness the campaigns feel samey due to the goal fundamentally always being the same (suddenly the several viable playstyles don't feel so viable)
- Graphically it's nothing new from a TW game, slightly more refined in some areas, even more dull in others
- Outside faction mechanics the unique lords are terrifyingly similar
- UI is horrible and it looks like a mobile game
- Day 1 DLC (which is in itself only bleh at best)
- Tech tree is slow to boot up, it's pretty, but annoying
- No teching up rate, just reforms every five turns, for everyone
- I am not at all interested in the setting and the game does very little to try and sell any of the unique lords, meaning I don't really feel like playing any of them over any other
- Game assumes I know what's going on story/history-wise
- Campaign AI can be absolutely braindead at times
- Battle AI is just bad. It has small glimpses where it seems good, like any TW, and then it just completely goes "nah I can't think"
- You can't build roads
- Population doesn't really... Play into the game a very much at all
- Most of the new and improved diplomacy feels like I've seen it in the old school TWs too before newer installments removed it
- Cinematics department was satisfied with some showreels of the same 4 or 5 stills
- Romance mode has literal magic abilities like fire wave slashes, while records mode removes all activated skills for generals, including stuff like "rally", which feels like they removed a bit too much to the point where the generals lost their ability to speak
- Retinue system feels nice enough on the campaign map, but it's an absolute horror to try and rearrange units in combat order
- Great naval combat (joking, there's no naval combat, no navies, nothing)

-Legacy bugs and glitches still there, it's honestly about as stable as Rome 2


Sum:

I recommend it, I got it as a gift myself and liked it well enough. I wouldn't pay full price for it, and I'm probably not going to play for more than the 35 hours ish as of writing, bar if someone invites me to some head to head.
5/10 (median)
Compared to previous installments: two steps forwards, one step back, one step forward, and then two steps back.

It's great. Much fun. Such ambience.

I mean it's what you want to be playing if you're into action RPG or Warhammer.

I'm loving it - so much repeated fun.

Definitely worth a try if you like PVP games

I bought the digital deluxe edition, I bought about 12 copies for give-away and gifts.

I did not imagine PDX would let me down that extremely.

I'm too monetarily invested in this ♥♥♥♥ to say it's ♥♥♥♥.

So I recommend it.

Top delicious game, totally going to devour me.