Recent reviews by Eruannon

AVOID, AVOID and AVOID again. Both developer and publisher.

Frankly, as there was a straw that broke the camel's back - I will go on record to say - avoid this game. Moderation team, either from dev or publisher side (or recruited by either) is extremely hostile to negative feedback to the point of silencing that feedback. Either by telling people to stop talking about what they do not like OR by straight up removal of threads on steam forums.

I have some doubts whether this comment will be stay or be removed or marked as 'irrelevant', but I guess it would further show my point.

Devs? I officially regret having backed You. If time had rolled back and the choice was presented to me again - I would not have given You a cent. Simply because either You, Your publisher or Your moderation team is actively hostile to anyone who dares to criticize You (or Your publishers') faults. This is NOT what You want, especially in development phase, unless You are looking for an echo chamber of yes-men. And that is before we take into account the falsified perception outside of your game's community.

All of that leads to development team and/or publisher to be untrustworthy at best.

Edit: My response to developer is in a comment thread starting at 4:31CEST due to error 15 stopping me from editing this at the time.

For the record - I supported the game before it was available on Steam.

I regret it.

While the concept is great, and can be playable, especially to someone infatuated with navy and customization, and this game shines in aspect of design and customization the other aspects of the game leave quite a lot to be desired.

To list few examples of issues with this game:
- loading times are atrocious to say the least - credit where credit is due, this one was fixed.
- AI is... debatable in quality to put it mildly
- Campaign that includes period of late 19th and early XXth century (which would include such famous combat area as WW2 war for Pacific) does not allow for direct travel between Western US and Japan (yes, really)
- Some aspects of design [mines, subs, depth charges] are as far as I had experience with - merely stat aspect on campaign map, which itself does not even allow for high degree of direct control of fleets.

I would like to also highlight issue of the game studio's quality control. On release, the 1.0 version also failed to be complete, with placeholder texts in the info screens.

But I enjoyed it sufficiently not to give it negative review on Steam. Sure I cannot recommend it completely, which is why until this review I did not make positive review either.

So what changed?
In that state of the game Devs decided it will be a 'great' idea to announce, on May 6th 2024, multiplayer feature.
The catch? They decided the multiplayer feature will be released as DLC.
Now, for the record - I assume it will be paid DLC, as it will not be released as a simple feature update but specifically 'DLC'.

Nonetheless with Game-Labs' record of games by now, I cannot recommend this game in this state, especially with 'Multiplayer DLC' in the works.



For the record - this game has had BEYOND ATROCIOUS loading times.
Let me put it into perspective, as I will compare it to DCS World as that is the largest game on my drives now as far as HDD space is concerned:
Below are times for 3 loading periods of UAD in [minutes, seconds, tens of miliseconds] format. [e.g. 1:45:48 means 1 minute, 45 seconds, ~480 miliseconds (specifically between 475 and 484]. German faction in all cases, UAD is the only software running at that point in time. Timing from pressing 'start' until I can press 'any button' to start the campaign or battle.

1:45:48 - New Campaign 1890
9:21:82 - New Campaign 1940
1:17:67 - Custom Battle 1 v 99

Now, to help put it into perspective:

UA:D takes total 3.66 GB of disk space.
DCS takes total of 380.97 GB of disk space. When I substract from it few of maps it takes 241.38 GB of space.
BOTH are on the same drive.

My full test of loading with DCS took 9:16:73 total.

So it's not that bad, isn't it?
It is. Let us ignore for a second almost 1:10 game size. I did say 'full test' rather than 'single load' didn't I?
During the test the following was performed:
- Press 'Play' on steam in VR mode. This started the timer.
- Wait for game to load and start fast mission (quickly generated mission) with one of planes.
- When loaded and in cockpit of plane realize this is small map [Marian Islands]. Return to main menu.
- Load up another fact mission, this time on Syria [largest map available to me], on F-14 Tomcat [largest plane module as per HDD space].
- Turn it off again, as I decided it will be better to dump even MORE stuff into it. Load up Pretense map (Highly scripted, highly cluttered with units custom mission) for Caucasus.
- Realize AGAIN that this is not the largest map and You missclicked, and get back to menu AGAIN to load up Pretense for Syria.
- Load up in order: A-10, F/A-18, F-15E and F-14 by entering their cockpits. Realize You still have few minutes left before the 9:20 mark, and even if You will be 'late' it still is going to show how badly UAD is loading so You decide to start making a meme out of it.
- Take down VR set, go to kitchen. Rinse a mug and start making a coffee in bean to coffee machine.
- Wait for coffee to finish, pick it up, get back to computer and stop the timer.

ALL of it, while UAD is running in the background with aforementioned 1 v 99 battle.

Do You know what is sad about it? I'm not even joking. This was the full process, though admittedly intended to highlight how bad UAD loading times are, and yet - all of it shorter than when starting new campaign in 1940. And yes, the computer is a powerful one, and both are on NVMe PCIe Gen. 4 SSD, but frankly - this only makes the problem more visible.

I will honestly be extremely brief - I've played this game.... nope, I've tried to play this game few times. The hilarious reason why I never refunded it the first time I played it, due to being extremely uninspired and overhyped was... I simply forgot about it.

Congratulations - devs made so forgettable experience, despite being revered as 'next generation MMO' that I literally forgot about it during night sleep for 2 or 3 months. Well.. I decided to review it during the second playthrough after trying it out, again at night only to forget it AGAIN until today, and I recalled it by complete accident - I talked about it with a friend of mine.

And now apparently the MMO part was turned into DLC [luckily - all previous owners got it by default), but frankly I don't see myself playing it much more due to how forgettable it was. I write this short review while I still remember it exists, as if I don't - sure as death and taxes - I will forget about writing the review again.

First of all - this game is supposedly in Early Access and in development at the time I am writing this admittedly short feedback. However keep in mind this game has been in Early Access for over a year, and while it did went free to play in October, it was still purchasable for a duration of more than a year (30 Sep 2022 - 30 Oct 2023, following the annoucements). With that out of the way let me be blunt.

The biggest question I would have is 'how in hell's name did You, the developer, think the current state is viable to get people to pay for it for a year?'.

Second biggest question, that is giving the devloper A TON of benefit of the doubt in the first place is "Do You happen to have ANY quality control for the update You are releasing BEFORE You push the update to 'live'?"

Let me elaborate on few points. "Lobby update" happened in August. As it is now the lobby is practically unusable - ability to even add AI (that is uspposedly - there) is not only unintuitive but also seems to be one way street. If You missclick and add... yourself? (hard to tell given it appears as a copy of your own army) and You remove yourself, the lobby will go bananas and not allow You to add anyone to that slot either. If You start with e.g. few copies of yourself (when trying to add AI) You will end up with no units whatsoever.

For refinery (and other buildings really) there are absolutely no indicators where the units come from, and how much space do they need. Built a refinery too close to the resources without indication you did so? Congratulations - now all of your resource gathering units are stuck completely.

As per factions - it might be a good idea to first make sure You have one faction, and then add new ones, rather than adding multiple factions with no visual differences in the short moment I had control of both. Now, before You say 'but they are different', please keep in mind that out of 5 different attempts to start it up, only once did I manage to be in place where construction area was visible. 1 time I was completely despawned with no units whatsoever, and thrice I managed to spawn in middle of water, with no indication of navy, as all buildings followed the same style as the ground variant that I played in the first place. (That or the nation selector in lobby is also busted if You do not use it in exact way that the developer envisioned),

As there were no visible differences between them in menu I will assume thery are the same. Making 'factions' just a nameswap and icon swap.

You also can also get stuck on building if You do not notice that no, the constructor You ordered decided to sit next to construction site and relax. Ooops.

Scrolling too slow for Your convenience? Tough luck, You are stuck with it for duration of the match as only 2 options in 'options' menu in match is to return to the match or leave it.

Did You leave the match and decided to go to options menu? Tough luck - it got stuck completely. Decided to restart the game and still get to options menu (with button that You actively have to search for)? Tough luck. It's still stuck as if it was not even considered to be working. Basically to move camera You either have to rely on snail pace of scrolling OR use minimap to move the camera itself.

I am aware that this is work in progress, however keep in mind the amount of game-breaking bugs (as in making the game literally unplayable unless it is played the exact way the developer thought about) is way beyond what should be viable for non-tech demo with lobby interface, to the point where I am almost certain that the developer did no quality control at all before releasing anything in the first place, even to the point of asking his own friend "hey, buddy, can You play it for 10 minutes before I push this update and see how it works, without me guiding You through the process?".

Development is in state that I will be kind to call 'pre-Alpha' state rather than 'tech demo', where not only the functionality is missing, but the number of bugs and degree of even basic features missing squarely disallows it to call it 'Alpha' state, where it's at least mostly functional.

And now imagine - up until 2 months ago (October 2023) for a year (since September 2022) it was a paid title.

State, where years ago, before proliferation of Early Access titles would not only not be available at all, let alone as a paid title, but also - it would be testers that would be paid, due to number of basic and overt features that anyone who had some experience with previous RTS titles would be able to list.

And this - the degree and number of bugs that are beyond simple inconveniences, often gamebreaking and are EXTREMELY prevailent is why, despite it being Early Access title.I decided to reccomend AGAINST this title.

P.S. During writing of the review I checked again the factions, just in case - Nope, no visible change, I'd only add 3 more failed starts and 1 actual start, that I didn't really bother following.

P.P.S. The 'received this product for free' is checked on, as despite getting no earlier access to the software I did manage to get access when the product was released as free to play title, and to differentiate from those poor souls who actually paid for this software.

No. Not yet.

Don't get me wrong - the aesthetics are great, and the style is generally consistent, however the direction of changes between last playtest and Early Access release version is... let's say concerning at very least.

Admittedly it might be an issue of overly high expectations, however I had hoped for game that would increase in variety and complexity, rather than active removal of what made one of schools unique.

Let me elaborate: During last playtest (at least early playtest, didn't have chance to play near actual release) Lightning Magic had additional effect of 0.5% on getting 'gifted student'. This encouraged using specialized character (Lightning mages) to summon students. Currently this modifier has been removed as far as I can tell, rather than adding such modifiers to varying 'schools' of magic, each that would encourage using specialists to specialized tasks.

Currently the only difference now, while sure it TECHNICALLY does encourage specialists, is work speed. On lower magic levels the differences are quite notable, however as levels increase the difference between each +1 becomes lower due to linear progression of work speed. This in turn allows multiple 'teachers' and 'students' to work at the same efficiency as one specialized worker.

To put it into perspective. It is as if Leonardo Da Vinci's work had no quality difference from a toddler with crayons, with only difference being how fast they made their art pieces.

Unfortunately this is not the only immersion breaking element of this game, as it is now (15th Dec 2023, soon after Early Access release). And yes, I am well aware that the following list is a subject to change.

Before we start, let me paint You a picture of a grand tower filled with magic and great many students walking through the halls and staircases of temple of knowledge, where experienced and well versed in their fields teachers share their vast knowledge and experience to the young minds, and explore into unknown, protecting and teaching the new generation in the ancient dungeons of this mmagical school, where danger lurks. In the underground both dangers and wealth of knowledge and experience can be found.

Got it?

Great.

Now let us move to the practice:

Remember the tower? It's gonna be massive combination of various jank (highlighted by the roof tool having literal jankiness slider), mostly to fulfill few 'keywords', that will make any mention of semblance of sanity of original architect (technically the player) a joke. Unfortunately 'towered' seems to be extremely overused, as is elevated, which means that the tower will basically often be reduced to single staircase with rooms on the sides, with great care taken not to finish the building by accident.

As per experience and well versed teachers. There are 2 main mechanics regarding skill of teachers and students. First is wand - it will define primary magic school skill. No variation here, unless we talk about 'gifted' students/teachers. They will get additional level. On top of that they will get few additional 'points' in non-main magic school. Once student reaches their cap it will STAY that way. No matter the 'experience' they got in real life, rather than throwing a single spell on a magic stone.
Second is 'medal' mechanics, which basically is a set of challenges that students (key word here) can perform to get some permanent bonuses. Did You get promoted to teacher before You got one of them? For example You made 999 out of 1000 casts of spell? (exaggregated) Tough luck. Or more precisely - unable to learn anything ever again.

This in turn leads to 'wise old and experienced wizards' get far outperformed by a guy who got a wand a day before, just because the wand was good enough and the 'wise teacher' just happened to have a glorified stick rather than wand.

This is more pronounced in the non-customisable and randomized 'Founder' ghost. You know... the mage that was competent enough to create the school in the first place, who just happened to stay in the school grounds for perpetual and eternal torture of working. Why torture? Because every kid with a wand will be better than Founder. Thrice in fact in their main specialisation, but I digress.

All of this in turn means that there is no real reason for teachers to go with students into 'underschool' (the dungeons part). Best way to get students to improve?
"This is a door, You have your wand, go kill that eldritch horror that may hide in it. Good luck you're on your own". Why? Teachers get no bonuses from their stature, students on the other hand may and often do have 'tasks' to complete. More students at the same time = more chances to get some of them at least partially done.

So, what do You do with one of Your most advanced and well versed teacher that somehow was too busy to get thrown out of your school for scrolls? (Scrolls being research resource) "Oi, mate, go die in the dungeon. We need a ghost to gather that flower just to make it faster for others to heal up in our hospital".... "oooh, you survived. Shame. Get up from this medical bed and get the heck back there, whan I say we need You dead I meant it".

Wealth of knowledge on the other hand is quite appropriately put. As basically your 'researcher' (usually a guy or gal with lightning wand) needs some scrolls to shoot lightning bolts at specific magic device. Basically scrolls are either obtained from underground, or by what is basically a diploma mill. Get a new student -> give him some basic training -> get rid of him. Sometimes get one of those poor souls that live long enough to survive and give him promotion into academy staff. In package - More work, though given You will be overworked anyway there's less chance that You will be thrown into combat... Oh, and You get older. And lack of future prospects is included for free.

And You could in fact say 'but it's the wands that are the key to skill levels, and that's how it was balanced around'. In response to that I will say yes, this is how it was balanced around. Badly as it is now. Just get more idi... ekhm... 'teachers' to work for no further pay and perspective and get them to work concurrently. Not that it's gonna be needed most of the time anyway as everything is either relatively fast (research is surprisingly low effort if You adhere to eye watering designs forced by (especially 'randomized') keywords. Biggest issue will be construction materials that will be only necessary and problematic early game.

What could be done as alternative is to rather than have hardcaps use softcaps instead, and provide some experience as character works, with 'normal peak' at level that developers find 'good representative' for progression. And here's the trick - increase ALL costs by factor of 4 (for example) if not more. Make 'normal peak' level multiplied by similar value. Make experience needed for every further level exponentially higher than previous. Congratulations - now You simulate trying to push a wand to its peak, rather than wand having 'unfinished user' using mechanics dreadfully common in e.g. 'incremental games'.

In similar notion - unfortunately research is also equally flat - generic scrolls are all that is needed. Perhaps having a series of 'research resources' or at very least different 'magic spells casted' might be a good idea. For now it's lightning only, while different branches are quite 'themed' to say the least. It felt as if lightning needed just 3rd generic 'work type', rather than to put in line specialists thinking how to work on specific task/invention. Think of it as e.g. Corporate recruiter thinking of a way how to raise new types of animals, find new cure for cancer and on the side - play with idea of new decoration or architectural feature. This is current state of research.

TL:DR - Concept is good, there's untapped potential. A lot of it. Unfortunately - untapped.


Edit log with changes and additional notes in comments due to char. limit

Software hanging: The game.

Within 12 minutes before requesting a refund, the game hung more times than I dared to remember. First 10 minutes was basically an issue of trying to get through the first spell cast without crashing, as it was crashing in exactly the same spot, exactly the same moment. First 'normal' battle? Take a guess - another hanging.

Now, I use the term 'crash' and 'hang' interchangeably here, as while it does not crash to desktop, it simply hangs to the point where forceful closure of the game is necessary, which is indistinguishable from normal crash. While concept is promising, the execution is poor to say the least,

The most concerning part is I can't even have much to tell outside of that as the game even didn't allow for that little.

In short - one of the most addictive games You can find on Steam, and frankly speaking I am extatic to see the work that is being done on a DLC. With hours of enjoyment I have received it will be certainly product that I will support further as it is worked on.

Highly recommended time devouring monstrosity. More detailed review incoming.

First of all - forgive my langauge - I played demo that was available temporarily back in October - it had potential, however not once would I have expected the developers to be so incredibly sloppy, that the game is quite literally unplayable once you start it up. I will for a minute ignore atrocious layout of the UI - you could technically live with that, but seing this after loading and restarting:
https://steamproxy.net/id/Almaravarion/screenshot/2037366476154350141/
and then this:
https://steamproxy.net/id/Almaravarion/screenshot/2037366476154350840/
after respawn is a mark of sloppy work far beyond just an Early Access release. If you start up Early access release You expect it to work. Not work well mind You, or in a stable manner, both of those are parts to be fixed in early access, but work AT ALL in the first place. Which is staggering, that demo itself happened to have worked well at the start, and with no issues whatsoever.

With such a sloppy work (and mind You - it is not a first few minutes after release, and I doubt somehow I am the only one around with the issue), I have no trust in development of this game. Shame as I was looking forward to it.

Count me out, and good luck. I may take a look at it when it leaves early access... IF it leaves early access as intended in the first place.


==P.S.1 - 19.07.2023;==
It seems, according to pinned note on the forum, that the issue stems from incorrect settings being applied as default depending on some system locale.

sooo, everything is good, problem found and I can get back to recommending this game?
Hell no. If You go to Steam Store you will see a list of 10 languages that are supported.

Non-English regional settings will leave derped out settings system.
On top of that - even if language IS set to English, but other OS elements are set up to regional, then it will STILL derp out the settings, due to the game itself not respecting the language choice.
On top of THAT even IF you swap both of the above you should not even dare to try using default settings anymore.

If you ignore all of that - the 'supported' languages will have translation which are.... doubtious at best.

The question now becomes - what do the DEVELOPERS, consider as SUPPORTING a language, in a product they charge 30 USD for? Certainly it is neither the language technically, and certainly not a region.


==Update/reply post-dev reply; 19.07.2023==
Thank You very much for Your response. I appreciate the relatively swift fix, and I am aware of the issues regarding localisation. I also am aware that increased number of supported languages lead to higher presence on Steam Store. My biggest gripe with it was quite stark incompatibility using default settings; Issue that frankly I strongly believe should not have appeared, given its systematic, region wide presence.

Honestly speaking the quality of translation itself is not as high priority as far as I am concerned, it was used more as a highlight of the systematic issue, as frankly there were cases where the translation was seemingly software translated, or translated outside of context, and I am not going to blame You for that.

The hotfix itself, did indeed fix the issue that prompted me to write this quick opinion piece (as frankly I am nowhere near comprehensive enough to call it truly a review), unfortunately the core issue behind the lack of recommendation was based more on the 'location' of the bug (pun unintended), being first thing that appears when launching the game, as well as regional presence (basically all countries using , and . in a different order than e.g. UK), rather than the severity of the bug itself, which might indicate the amount of testing done on out-of-region testing of the interactions with the world.

This, together with positive outlook of a demo and Your swift response, certainly does promise this project to have a good future, and I will certainly follow the updates, I am not so sure I am eager to recommend this game as it is currently yet. You may consider it erring on a side of caution.

Nonetheless, I wish You best of luck (both in-development and overall), and I must admit that I hope to see the day, where out-of-early-access version will join the list of games that I will be happy to buy multiple copies of, both for myself and my friends.

While the premise is quite nice, the execution seems lacking. The difference between weapons seems to be almost non-existent or even cosmetic at most, which is especially notable in the sword type weaponry, to the point where I didn't even notice changing between normal, one handed gladius (in-game called 'roman sword'), and longer(?) sword with multiple gripping points (Ranger Sword). Mechanically combat seemed to be similar in both cases, and it extended even to maces. Position of belt is also a problem if autocallibration derps the height at times, making it hard to take a weapon from opposite side of belt, which might end up with You realizing this problem only when you have an enemy attacking you. Well.. at least the first time around.

The ability to recallibrate bows is not there, which may be a problem, though crossbow is immersion breaking due to ease and speed of reload, making it possible to create nearly machine-gune speed of reloading if you move your hand fast enough.

Finally - setting up the game to be in English was not as easy, as it seems the game has autotranslation function implemented to whatever is the default system language, even if the language itself is not supported. In order to put it really in English, and not have partially translated text all around the screen I had to change the language to chinese, apply it, reselect English and only then it worked as intended. The translation also seems to be... half baked, with 'gems' such as 'brutal level', when selecting what seems to be level of gore or 'brutality'. Bugs like these in full release (rather than early access) do discourage, as full release is basically supposed to be 'we consider it to be complete' release, and is considered baseline as 'good enough for public release'. Sure the developer mentioned further updates are going to appear, alas - as a full release I will simply note it as if it was released as intended.

Finally difficulty. I went through entire first area and almost full second area (all that was left for me was 3 part dungeon in second area - the necropolis), and frankly - I simply was mostly bored. Truth be told it felt as if the main challenge lied in enemies being more of a bullet sponges, rather than being actually more difficult. It is supposedly 'getting better soon', as in 'in few more levels', however the question becomes 'how long do I need to slug through it, to get to the good part?'.

Don't get me wrong - the game has quite a lot of charm, music and sets are quite pleasant to the ears and eyes respectively (I especially enjoyed the second dungeon that I went through the first segment), though unfortunately the levels seemed to focus on time padding rather than being interesting, as the AI seemed to remain mostly constant (or rising slow enough not to make much difference) within a single level, which makes adding more of trivial enemies a bit redundant for progression. Perhaps early access to the arena mode of sorts, present in demo, might have been a good idea for those who want to polish their skills at specific skill level, rather than pad the time on main levels.

A bit disheartening were also 'duel' type missions. Getting in I expected a single good enemy. A stand-alone boss duel if you will. Nope. Some other, random enemies were present as well, just not to kill the boss too quickly. Boss whose main difficulty was in it being a damage sponge, rather than being genuinely difficult.,

I also enjoyed bow combat, to a degree (see the callibration issue), Crossbow on the other hand, was I mentioned - felt far too overpowered due to speed and ease of operation, then again - access to ranged weapon laser targeting from the first mission onwards if player chooses is a bit of a joy killer. IMHO perk like this should have no place in combat game like this, if the design is to look like the player becomes better and feed the power fantasy, but this is my two cents.

On related note: I am aware that it is possible to play badly in order to get the difficulty I need. It is possible to e.g. play with a single hand behind you to limit your options, or try to do hollywood style spintard attacks. However I do not feel like this is a good sign if you have to rely on that to get some difficulty out of the game.

It is certainly not an atrocious games, alas the little things stacked quite unfortunately. Though frankly it is not the first combat game that suffers from those issues.