Recent reviews by Comrade Orleen

I'm pleased with this game, it's a worthy successor of the original Knights of Honor. Most of the game is decent, so I'll only list the somewhat negative things I experienced:
- the music is great in the political view, but the music when leading battles is no longer as epic as the original.
- these events called "popular rebellions" can really mess up your game. even if it happens for your faction, it still takes a very long time for it to complete.
- leading battles has clunky animations. I don't know if I'm not doing it right, but controlling units manually is always inferior to just letting it complete via the auto battle.

But this game is still highly recommended especially for fans of the original series. I'm looking forward for mods for this game to made, since a larger map would be awesome.

Compared to AoW3, the new mod system for every unit is a good addition to this game (although in AOW3 you can have unlimited levels for all your units making them quite broken). The sci-fi setting is just okay, the "races" are just mostly a bunch of humans in different colors and ideology. I didn't bother with the campaign though, just the empire mode is fun enough.

Imagine if we keep all the good features in this game and switch back to the old fantasy setting, that would be awesome, and that's what I'm hoping AoW4 will be when it's announced.

The game looks pretty and the gameplay is okay. Problem is the game is obviously undercooked, so many things need to be improved starting from the tutorial (which is very tedious) and many other basic time-consuming mmo things. Additionally, the only server is in EU, which makes lag horibble.

I'm giving it a thumbs up because it's F2P anyway and may have a decent future if more work is put into this game.

Good mindless fun just like the first Chivalry. This game is more "casual" and has a lower skill floor but that's a good thing since there will be less spinning ballerinas like in CMW or Mordhau. Hopefully the devs can release more maps and weapons soon, and improve their security (LOOKING AT YOU ASIA SERVERS).

Gameplay wise, the class weapons are fine but some "ultimates" are obviously better than the others. Horn and flag give major points while most other sub-classes are stuck with low point utilities like the footman's health bag. I actually like the Ambusher despite it's basic primary weapons, but the ultimate is just too awful, it even has an incorrect animation!

Yet another wasted opportunity. Despite SAO being a mediocre anime/manga series, it has a legion of fans who are just BEGGING to have a good game since 2012. Since Hollow Fragment, the developers/publishers never figured out how to take advantage of the setting and every single game in the series feels like it was made by a group of unmotivated college graduates working on their first game. Each game, including Fatal Bullet, always end up being overly complicated, uninspired, unpolished and amateurish.

• For 70% off, the game gives enough busywork if you need brainless entertainment for tired people after work or school. Please never buy this game at full price.
  
• Acceptable character creator. It's not the best but it has enough options to please players who like making anime girls.
  
• The "gunplay" is alright, just needs a little more polish to be good. *Update* The looting and shooting gameplay loop is good enough for mindless entertainment worth several hours. This loop also mixes well with the very long grinding you need to do to increase character relationships. Levelling up skills is horribly designed however,
  
• The music is actually good, I'll give them that. I'm a sucker for dynamic music that changes depending on the situation.

• The pacing is bad in the first 80% of the main game, it really tests your patience. After creating your character you get to do the tutorial after 20 minutes of introductions. Then I got to the actual gameplay bits after 90 minutes worth of voiced introductions to Kirito's harem, and that's with a few skips here and there.
  
• By MMO standards, GGO is a dead game. I laughed when the player "logs in" to the glorious MMO called GGO, but it appears to have a very low population. Is it really that difficult to at least fake a living and vibrant mmo? Even the first depressing hamlet in the Witcher 3 (2015) feels more alive than the entirety of this supposedly popular mmo.
  
• The graphics resembles PS3 quality. Being made in unreal engine 4, I don't understand why the graphics looks worse than a pre-made UE4 tutorial project. *Update* the game does get some nicely designed maps around 3/4 through the main story, but the initial four maps and dungeons you explore are quite ugly, I'm not sure why they purposely wanted players to have a bad first impression.
  
• The online co-op is extremely limited. Though you can party with a friend after the tutorials at level 2, it's limited to pve boss battles and the first one is level 25. You can unlock extra boss battles as you go through the main story but it's still very limited. Has it ever occurred to the devs/publishers that SAO has a HUGE story coop potential? You know, like how an actual mmorpg would play? *Update* the inability to coop with friends in story mode really hurts this game. If Saints Row 3 can execute this nicely back in 2011, why can't this one?
  
• The story dialogue choices are limited to (1) Yes and (2) Yes.
  
• If you play a female character, you will notice that you're sucked into Kirito's harem against your will. Is this the true power of Rei Kawahara? I wonder if it's twice as creepy as a male character, but at least you'll be with your male harem members - Klein and Agil, which are cliche but funny dudes.
  
• The actual story? Why bother? Just watch the abridged version instead! *Update* The story (and graphics) seems to improve 80% into the main story, which is strange because wouldn't this give players a really negative first impression? (looks at number of DLCs) oooooh, so THAT was their plan. I don't know if that was a good one or not. Regardless, if you got hooked just make sure to buy all the dlcs during a big sale.

Could the next game, SAO Alicization Lycoris, be good? Who knows, but then again you'll play as Kirito yet again. Sigh.