Recent reviews by Mathetes tou Megalou Alexandrou

알트-탭하다 재수 없으면 검은 화면으로 나와 게임을 진행할 수 없는 일이 있습니다. 다른 쪽으로는 가볍게 할 수 있고 캐릭터도 맘에 드는 등 다른 요소를 보면 추천할 수 있지만, 저 심각한 문제가 최근에만 일반 게임 돌릴 때 4번이나 발생했습니다.

This is a review covering both 3.8 patch and DLC, and will mention it since the DLC is bound to the new changes in the 3.8 system and those are critical.

Most of the new content is pretty interesting to play with: the Council adds a slight bit of RP (although it could have been expanded upon a bit more with councilor-based events)

Likewise, the Paragons themselves are decently done enough: each Paragon having a extra bit of flavor with their unique set of events makes the Paragons quite noticeable. Being based on RNG has its ups and downs: you cannot plan for certain paragons to come so one cannot for example expect Vas the Gilded who is a diplomatic monster at a convenient timing, but some paragons can feel really good if they come at the right time and you can put them to optimal use. Also, BORIN BEST FLUFFY BOI MUST PROTECC.

The Trait reworks has its perks, flavors and upsides (despite the RNG sometims screwing things over): many traits are locked behind ethics and leader specialization making it in theory interesting to try out different things, and specializes leaders which is pretty good: for example, a Scientist can be a Surveyor type which benefits surveying actions, Analyzers which unlocks perks towards planet assistance, and Researchers which unlock powerful council traits aimed at boosting research speeds. While the exact effects of the traits don't always work out, the rough idea works, at least for Scientists, and the ethics locks encourage different playthroughs using different ethics, which is also fine.

Admirals being able to explore systems is also a nice quality of life change, since it now means if you were unlucky to not have uncovered a system for whatever reason such as nebula blocking one can still enter the system for military (or early secondary exploration)

Democracy rework is a bit mixed, but ultimately is a plus: no longer are democracies forced to quake in fear in the mercy of the RNG spending tons of unity just to stack the deck in the current ruler's favor and even then with a small chance that the RNG can pull a middle finger and screwing everything over. The removal of agendas for oligarchies, dictatorships and imperial authorities is also a plus for democracies as the mandates for democracies pretty much becomes irrelevant outside the early game and the permanent bonuses that agendas provide usually are better, even if that too was RNG-based. It may cause you to change leaders early game before the big party consolidates itself with a ruler, but is far better than the pre-3.8 system.

The Army and fleet UI overhaul is largely good, allowing one to manage army recruitment much more conveniently with fewer clicks. Fleet management being combined with ship design is less good but still a plus, merging the less used fleet management tab with the ship design tab.

As this is coming from a heavily modified user, the leader cap and tradition cap isn't that problematic if you have the mods to expand both. However, the criticism of 3.8 patch is that the leader cap and leader balance is really bonkers for several reasons: No longer are governors providing trait benefits to whole sectors (bonus from levels do apply), so you need more governors to keep planets afloat. Admittedly, the enhanced traits push the player to go tall much like Civ 5 BNW taking care of the few core worlds, which by itself isn't a terrible idea. The problem is that vanilla Stellaris is constricted as heck: now you have to consider Aptitude and Statecraft as another competing tradition when traditions are now more of what not to take asides from the obvious must picks such as Supremacy, Prosperity and whatever tradition that comes with the ascension of choice. Likewise, because you are so limited on your leaders, it becomes less fun to expand your empire. RNG also suxs massive ass when it comes to trait picking: it may come that you want to pick Alloy focused trait on your governor but too often the game says too bad, pick from terraforming, housing and consumer goods and sod off, and likewise there are clear winners on destiny traits and the way that the trait upgrades work is that once you pick a path you are stuck with it.

Agenda system itself is cool, but Agendas themselves are also hilariously lopsided in terms of balance: Prosperity was already a top-tier tradition and it unlocks the Favored Society agenda, which provides +5% specialist yield while in progress (which by itself is while not eyepopping, still useful) whose completion provides a whopping +20% output from jobs for 10 years easily making it one of the best agendas out there. Did I mention that Xenophobe once again gets the better Agenda than Xenophile: Regular pop growth speed will always beat immigration growth as if Xenophobe needs more buffs (oh my god -5% trade value is going to kill the Xenophobe empire with 10% more pops than Xenophiles, and yay +2 to foreign leader pool which you probably ain't touching because you already filled your cap 99% of the time anyways), and the same for Pacifist vs Militarist? Pacifist agenda looks good on paper, except that the border friction modifier isn't permanent and cannot be made permanent due to the cooldown system when it needs to be to have any value.

The army UI overhaul is somewhat negated by the fact that orbital bombardments can take cities: it makes armies situational and collateral damage is higher than ever, which isn't too bad but armies and generals feel even more shafted than ever. This is not a good thing combined with the limited leader cap, as this means you do not want to hire generals ever. Perhaps Paradox could fix the situation by creating caps for each leaders (and wildcard caps) and make it so the leader cap increases slowly with bigger empires to fill the need.

This is more about disappointment rather than stuff that hurts enjoyment: the leader customization/trait picking is also a nice change, but the options seem too bare bone and could see some expansion. Likewise, the trait system splitting councilor traits and normal traits pretty much locks certain leaders into councilor spots, and is devastating to democracies and oligarchies who end up replacing their leaders, even if with the 3.8 this is much less likely and it becomes easier for those to keep their existing rulers in their position.

3.8.4 Crusader Spirit change is a personal dislike of mine, mainly because the AI loves picking that stuff more than my liking and causing diplomatic troubles. Admittedly, this is compounded by the Ethics and Civics mod increasing the ethics slot to 5 and likely less of an issue to fit them in vanilla, but even then it feels like AI likes the civic a bit more than I'd like.

Whereas Scientist specialization is largely a success, the other leader specializations are far less successful: for one, Admirals are almost always encouraged to go Tactician especially if manning fleets using single type of weapon, since Artillery Focus's range bonus and damage bonus far exceed the Aggressor's Artillerist's benefit. Aggressors' looting traits are mostly rendered moot late game when economies are big and ship size does not provide bonuses to yields. Likewise, since you'll only want to stick governors in core worlds, it's rarely if ever worth picking Pioneer which benefits primary resources and developing recently colonized planets over Industrialist expanding the potential of already developed planets. Visionary is a bit of a tossup but then it is hampered by RNG the most out of the three so the most consistent option is the Industrialist. However, this too could be remedied if more governors are available.

Ultimately, Galactic Paragon is far above the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is First Contact, but it still could have felt much better. However, Paradox has shown some promise with the patches so I'd reckon patches can remedy some of the issues that plague the state of 3.8 with or without DLC.

An underrated and probably unheard of city builder game. The game has a progression curve: start off small with just farmers and common shops, later expand the city's capabilities through craftsmen and later learned professionals who greatly increase the capability of the city. With that said, as the city grows so does its needs: initially the city does not need to care about things like religion or healthcare, but those become more important as the city grows. As such, it becomes imperative that as basileus to maintain schools to keep the graduates flowing, and likewise gain prestige to allow the city to have more professionals.

Pros:
Undemanding yet compelling challenges: It is covered in depth in the cons, but it keeps the player compelled enough to plan out the city and manage it a bit, and forces the player to think about building placements and later on, graduate management. The game starts off with several fundamental resources and builds up on it in a nice curve: start off managing food and wares, then bricks, then professionals, then materials for monuments and soldiers as well as foreign actions. While the challenge is enough to force the player not to go haywire from the beginning, the demands are typically reasonable enough that a minor dissatisfaction does not prevent the player from progressing.
Availability of a world builder: World builders and modding capability vastly contributes to a game's life cycle (coming from an avid Civ V modder who is 5+ years into the game), and CotN has a world builder allowing the player to experiment and build worlds to their liking. This is more than I can say for many other games, and I'm glad that the developer added this feature to the game.
Cons:
The game is dated as heck - graphics-wise it's understandable and frankly if you're here you probably don't mind retro graphics. What is really a problem is its instability on the Windows 10 environment: it crashes often, and its crashes are difficult to recover from forcing the user to restart the computer. This is probably the biggest downside to the game in 2020.
Demands can be a bit hard to fulfill - Religion tends to be a sour point because priests (who are the bread and butter of the mid-late game) are needed to tend to the shrines but also are needed to tend to the sick, the students and the dead: while shrines can swap to different gods without cost, the city often has people who want to worship different gods at the same time. As mentioned in the pros though, this alone usually isn't problematic enough to derail gameplay, although for perfectionists it can be a peeve to be unable to fulfill peoples' religious demands.
Slow - Even on maximum speed things can be a bit slow, and sometimes one wants to make it even faster than the 2.5x speed setting for lull times.

A good game that has taken some steps forward but with several glaring issues which are far more visible than New Order.

The New Colossus is well, a Wolfenstein game and the gunplay is satisfying as ever, no, in fact the gunplay itself is actually better than New Order: New Order had foes such as the supersoldaten, feuersoldaten and raketensoldaten who absorbed hits like heck without flinching which could be frustrating and frankly not fun to fight. On the other hand, in New Colossus, even supersoldaten may flinch when hit enough times, making the shooting experience much more satisfying as is the times where you do end up butchering Nazis quickly and they scream "Oh god he's butchering us." The gunplay feels GOOD, and while the enemies sometimes take too many hits for my liking, if gunplay is what you're looking for, The New Colossus does that well and better than The New Order: The New Order's dual shotgun mayhem was good, The New Colossus's dual shotgun mayhem's even better.

Graphically New Colossus is a huge step over New Order as well, which is also a nice icing on an already solid game.

Now for the bad parts: There are two particular big issues that hold New Colossus, and one of them is level design. It is quite difficult to navigate around the Eva's Hammer and some of the levels are quite unclear as where to go: notable examples include the section after the player shuts down the HUGIN control center and climb up the robotic arm, and the Sektion F mission where Blazkowicz must find a switch to open a door which isn't immediately visible to the player.

The next issue is weapon cycling. The New Colossus tried to expand on the dual-wielding system which added a great deal of fun in New Order by allowing players to use different weapons in each hand. However, it's quite unwieldy mainly because one can't immediately switch the weapon on the left hand: So if one wanted to wield a schockhammer and maschinenpistole and you only had 1 schockhammer but two maschinenpistole, you'd have to equip the maschinenpistole first, dual wield that, then equip the schockhammer. While the weapon wheel does exist to facilitate that, it isn't helpful in a fast-paced combat situation which is the norm in The New Colossus.

Difficulty is a mixed bag: The New Order is far more forgiving: I easily beat the game on the standard difficulty, whereas The New Colossus has difficulty spikes that can be frustrating even on the second easiest difficulty (admittedly, I'm a FPS newbie and suck at it). In fact, a recommendation I have is to forget about being a "hardcore" player and save yourself the trouble and stress, play on "Can I play, Daddy?" difficulty, because The New Colossus's most fun when you are crushing the Nazis. Assassination is sometimes almost impossible too: in The New Order it was hilariously easy to just pick off the commander, but in The New Colossus sometimes even reasonable stealth kills with silenced weapons can trigger the alarm in some missions (such as the Penthouse Uberkommandant mission). Stealth isn't useless in this game and in fact is rewarding in certain situations, but one can't rely on stealth alone in this game as in some sections it's nearly impossible.

One small issue I have is with the secrets: The New Order secrets were mostly manageable and concept art was given to the player by simply playing the game, but in The New Colossus one must collect gold to unlock concept art, which bloats the secret-finding elements of the game and not in a good way.

Ultimately, The New Colossus has improved over the predecessor in some elements well enough to prove itself a worthy successor to The New Order, but the problems unique to The New Colossus is much more glaring than problems in The New Order.

A good game but not without its flaws

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a great revival of the awesome fascist killing series, and the gameplay is solid: the gunplay is good, the perks and collectibles increase replay value not expected of a linear single player series, although it's the solid gameplay that ultimately gets one back into the game even after one has beaten it: It's not just some 10 hour campaign that you play and drop after you finish the campaign, and that's more than what most can say about many other modern single-player FPS experience.

The level design of couple of levels also rewards observant players who want to go stealth, as there are hidden routes more convenient for stealth hidden throughout the levels, with the best example lying in the Lunar Base. Although such hidden routes aren't in every level, but in the case of the Under Attack mission, it's for the better: you just want to dual-wield shotguns and shoot some nazi scum burning down your home.

However, being forced to do the "cutscene" like gameplay can be a bit tedious: trying to replay the last chapter is particularly tedious because one has to go through the cannonfire sequence, and while the castle destruction cutscene is cool, but being unable to skip that part after so many replays does get annoying. This is even worse in the Berlin Catacombs section because the first half of it is simple exploration and that loses its value when all the collectibles are collected and you're replaying the mission for the xth time. Because of this, one often replays chapters with least amount of such things, like the U-boat and the Lunar base where it's not that long before one jumps into the action.

Even with the advent of Civ VI, its somewhat reasonable diplomacy (which isn't saying much, although a hell lot better than sorry ass state of initial launch Civ VI's AI), a large library of mods, modding accessibility make this one of the best game experiences that I had. While Civ VI has the potential to become just as good if not better, agenda garbage, the incomplete state of lua API in Civ VI that prevents easy debugging (IGE anyone?), and the ease of the system makes Civ V the current go-to civ game.

Civ V is by no means the perfect game: Civ V base game has the tendency to pigeonhole players into certain build paths and poorly planned modding will make it worse. But do it right, and Civ V will consume hundreds of hours and make that 30-60$ that you spent more than worth it.

However, it should be noted that new launcher suxs: game is still good, but ad only update is terrible.