I absolutely love this game. I love all kinds of strategy, from grand strategy to the simplest, most casual tower defense games, and I play a lot of strategy games. Very rarely does a strategy game scratch the right kind of replayability itch to keep me crawling back. There are three games thus far in my life to have done this: Age of Empires II, Nobunaga's Ambition series (recent), and Old World.

Old World combines the dynasty gameplay of Crusader Kings and its ilk with the 4X gameplay of the Civilization series without becoming so over-complicated that it takes you a ton of time just to get a grasp on the basic mechanics. You decide which civilization to play as out of a handful, and can choose from a myriad of options to set up your game. Other than civilizations, you can play with tribes and barbarians (barbarians are just fodder for XP while tribes aren't as strong as civilizations but have some diplomacy options). You can also choose the type of succession, which is fun to play with. I often set mine to allow only women to inherit, or women to inherit before men. You start out as a character that will rule and die before the end of your game in all likelihood; it's up to you to marry, procreate, and build your civilization from the ground up while paving the way for your successor and dealing with outside threats.

Old World is extremely easy to learn for a game of this breadth, and highly addictive. There are so many options in setting up your gameplay having to do with difficulty, map size/type, types of victories, etc. This is one of those games where losing doesn't hurt, because you had fun and wrote your own story along the way. Events and options pop up quite often, leading you to make decisions that have lasting consequences. You have to balance loyalties between your people, noble families, and other civilizations. Each character has their own relationship with your leader, affected by your actions, your religion, and your personality. You can gain or lose traits depending on what kind of leader you are, and when you eventually die and pass along the torch, you have an entirely new leader and personality to mess with. This gives you an excuse to play under different rules and with a different mindset and it's so much fun to adapt to as you play.

I could ramble on about all the things I love about this game, but I won't. I'll simply say a few more things about what this game does right: playability, and replayability, whether you are looking for strategy first or a simulation first, the difficulty modifiers will get you there. The graphics are beautiful, and the game runs well, only starting to slow down on giant maps and once cities get sprawling and established. I bought all DLC at full price to support the game and haven't been disappointed. More storylines and civilizations to play with, all quality. The game throws challenges at you through achievements or other means that are actually fun to strive for, like completing a game only using one city. The only thing I have to say that could be construed as remotely negative is how difficult it can be to move troops across water until you get used to the anchoring system.

Old World is just a wonderfully addictive game that I keep coming back to and out of all the games I own on Steam, it's one of fifteen or so marked as a "Favorite." I highly recommend you try it if strategy simulations are at all your cup of tea.

I absolutely recommend Star Valor if you are looking for a top-down space RPG that gives you the freedom to do whatever you want to do. One review I read that encouraged me to buy the game at full price to play it right away was this: it's like SPAZ without the zombies. I loved SPAZ, but I'm tired of zombies in games. Now that I've spent way too much time in the game after buying it two weeks ago, I full-heartedly agree with the other review.

Star Valor gives you a ship and a gigantic procedurally-generated universe and hands the reins over to you. There are multiple factions that are warring that you can join, take advantage of, or ignore. Allying with each faction unlocks various missions and ships. You can choose to become a pirate, a trader, a mercenary-for-hire, a fleet manager, an explorer, a scavenger, a craftsperson. You get XP for everything: fighting, completing missions, exploring sectors, crafting, scrapping equipment to learn blueprints, mining, trading. Over time, you unlock the skills and tools necessary to fly gigantic dreadnoughts with space pilots surrounding you and fighting for you, coming back to dock on your ship to repair and fight again. One of my favorite perks in any game is to lead armies or squads, and Star Valor does this. You can outfit each ship, give each pilot a nickname, etc.

The largest problem I've come across in any space game is ease of learning the gameplay, systems, controls, etc. Star Valor is extremely easy to learn. As is the case with most games like this, gameplay is a rinse-and-repeat cycle: explore new sector, do what you want to do there, find jumpgates, move to next sector, repeat. That's not a criticism; I found myself coming back to Star Valor night after night to do more because there's a constant sense of progression. I played primarily as a miner and fleet manager of fighters and support ships. Mining asteroids is consistently satisfying, and I always had a goal: upgrade my ship, a fleet's ship, max out my weapon levels, have nine fleet members, etc. It is stupidly addictive.

Star Valor is not the prettiest looking game. I do prefer the colored themes of SPAZ's systems. There is some of that here, but very little. There are various types of systems (pitch black, nebula, asteroid rush, etc.), and the procedural generation is done really well so that you don't always know how sectors will space their resources, space stations, etc. There are really cool background aesthetics at times, from the planets you fly by or the asteroid fields in the distance. It's also not a terrible looking game, and it runs extraordinarily well.

Overall, Star Valor is one of those space RPGs that you can play regardless of whether you're really determined to fight everyone and rise through levels really quickly, or just be lazy and relax, exploring or mining wherever you choose. There are tons of options for however you want to play, and the open-ended nature of the gameplay encourages many playthroughs for different play styles. I know Star Valor is a game I'll keep coming back to to scratch this particular itch, and I hope Rafael continues to thrive wherever his developer skills take him.