Recent reviews by Dagonus

So here's my Dragon Age "chops" :

I played and finished Origins on PS3. I loved it.
I played and abandoned DA2 on PC. I switched systems for that day 1 graphics upgrade and because I always liked PC better. DA2 felt... repetitive and dull to me though.
I skipped Inquisition because I didn't like DA2.
I played and finished Veilguard on PC (obviously?).

Veilguard got a bad rap from youtubers with agendas to push.

Is Veilguard perfect? no. Lets say that to start. Is the writing sometimes less than stellar? Sure, but that's a video game in my mind. I don't expect a Tale of Two Cities while i'm playing a video game. I expect fun. I had fun. Is the writing "bad"? Nah. This isn't Soviet Tim Curry (Which in fairness, was hysterical and FUN, but nobody should think any C&C game had particular good writing, but they were FUN.

The combat in Veilguard is more action RPG than its predecessors and if what want is the old games, then this is not for you. Personally, I ran it on a lower, but not bottom, difficulty and was content. I've also hit the age where I usually don't care about playing on turned up difficulties, especially when it requires reaction time from me. I just want to chill and have fun when I play. I want a light challenge. I don't want to go through the same fight 37 times because I need to dodge precisely 256 times in a row. (I have no interest in how hard can you make a game.) The primers and detonations for the game were alright. I won't call them amazing. I won't call them bad. They were alright. I did feel that it pigeon holed me into wanting to keep certain companions in my party for mechanical reasons when I wanted to roll with other companions from a fluff perspective more.

The companions were up and down. I liked characters some folks disliked and disliked characters others liked. Some characters I started out disliking and later liked. Sometimes you have to choose to send your characters away to do things and sometimes those choices feel like they robbed me of mechanical setups or left me with options for my party that were not what I wanted. At the same time, those situations were usually for a mission or two. Going into them at times I felt I was going to do ABCD with that team only to find that there was a break and chance to reorganize between B and C. So not all was lost. I did feel like I missed a memo on how companions level up and maybe that was my fault. I got to the end and realized a few hadn't leveled up to their max but I had been hammering a few characters a lot earlier on. If I had realized it sooner, I probably would have built more mechanically "bad" parties and just played with everyone. I enjoyed the characters bantering and hearing them develop while we traveled.

I liked popping around the world and solving various side quests. I did everything I could find, hunted down every chest, shrine, thingamabob, etc before doing any main quests. I had fun doing so.

Will I play Veilguard again? Probably not right away. Maybe at some point. What it does make me want to do is buy Origins on PC and then play through that. Then try to force myself through DA2 with the character data connected and then buy Inquisition, play through that with the DA2 stuff and then replay Veilguard. Downside from what I understand is not a lot makes the jump from Inquisition to Veilguard and knowing that I know in Veilguard, I feel like I would need to do certain things in Inquisition to make it line up how I want. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. I don't know if I'll ever do it. But I don't often replay RPGs. I didn't replay Origins. So I'm not the one to ask if a game is worth it based on replayability. I replay strategy games. RPGs I tend to feel I know the story and then I'm done.

You can totally see where publishers wanted a live service game in everything. The world feels built for 100 other players running in your way, bunny hopping around and being online twits. I'm glad they didn't put that nonsense in there, but the world building would have been better had they never planned on it. And better choices in various points would have been made if they had never planned on live service. Unfortuantely, major publishers gotta pay off the VC and PE jerks. I miss the small companies of yesteryear. Break up the monopolies. Bring down the giants. Slay goliaths.

You might be thinking "They said a lot of disappointing things so surely they clicked the wrong button at the top of their review." but I do actually recommend the game. I had fun. I enjoyed my 89 hours in the game. I don't regret any of it. If action combat in an RPG isn't your cup of tea? move on. If the story has to be absolutely perfect and highest quality at all points, I think your standards are too high. The story is good. Its not perfect. It's good. The game is good. The game is enjoyable. The game deserves a better reputation than it has. I'm not saying its the best game I have ever played, but it was worth my time playing it. Good game.


TL;DR: Game is good. Game is not perfect. I had fun with game. Fun games are good games.

It's a good time. It's a classic. I really dig the changes they made. It had some issues at launch but as with most games at this point, after some dlc hits the game is immensely cleaned up and fun. Whether or not you like the face that some of the DLC was needed to get the game really to its sweet spot is another debate, but the fact of the matter is that that is the state of gaming today. I've been playing the series since the original and this one is definitely enjoyable.

So a lot of folks are complaining that its not as deep as EUIV or CKII. No @#)(*. Those games have literal years of DLC layered on them. You cannot simply splice the games together with a Roman skin and expect it all to be there. The very idea is ludicrous.

People also complained about just about every Civ release after III missing some key element they wanted that when it came around in DLC, the game was magically palpable to them.

People complain. They whine. It's what they do.

The game has families, individuals, internal problems, foreign warfare and varied units.

The game does have plenty of room to flesh out. Paradox has already said it aims to flesh things out.

After about 14 hours of play, I can tell you that if you play as Rome, expect Rome to play whack-a-mole with its neighbors. It's troops are better and as it gets bigger that just becomes a bigger hammer to swing. What slows down your expansion is when a general starts getting disloyal or you start bumping into other largish powers like Carthage. The moment I realized a disloyal general held 56% of my army, I had a minor panic and accepted corrupting my consul to appease him. It wasn't a fight I wanted. what's been slowing me down has entirely been the old EUIV manpower wait.

Is the game perfect? No. As i said, it needs fleshing out and a few QoL features. I expect many of those kinds of things to follow.

What the game does have is fun. The game is also vastly more accessible to new players than other Paradox games. I'm already feeling like I know good chunks of the game mechanics. I keep finding small neat things to do (like making prisoners fight each other in gladiator matches for their freedom), but I don't feel the small things I'm finding are vital to playing the game at the minimal level. With other Paradox games, like EUIV(1117 Hours) or CKII(159 Hours) or Stellaris(322 Hours) you pretty much expect to spend your first dozen or so games cursing at the game that you missed a multiplier someplace, restarting and really not getting very far. I've won in those games ultimately. (I'm not even going to try to figure out the time I spent in EUII, EUIII, HOI and EU:Rome) In EUIV, I played through to the end of the timeline routinely and well. Now, this isn't to say that the difficulty of those games is bad. It isn't I thoroughly enjoy peeling through the details on them and playing the game at the pace it plays at. Imperator is *not* those games. Imperator is a lighter game where you can make quicker decisions and see a war through pretty well right from the get go. Imperator is the game you should introduce people to the genre to. Imperator may become deep like EUIV, but we can't forget that EUIV didn't start as deep as it is and that its unreasonable to expect Imperator to start at the depth EUIV is at.

The bottom line is that Imperator is a series of quick fun decisions if you play the game for fun. If you play the game for "How Hard Can This Be" then you'll be disappointed.

Great TBS game with a deep and immersive story.

Some games get lopsided. Bit units have advantages in group drops.

Those are true and they are lousy.

That said, this game is stupidly fun. I've been playing for years off and on and just keep coming back. I think of it more like a flight sim than a shooter. There's thinking and tactics involved. People who run in wild like its CS die horrible deaths.

Being a new player in this game is hard. Building a good mech can be hard. Checking out places like MechSpecs' website for help or their discord will go a long way to improving such things without going straight to the meta and feeling like all mechs are the same.

At the end of the day, the game is fun. I know some folks get salty if they are having a bad night or other players do stupid things. If you're prone to rage quitting over map votes going to a map you hate or people running off solo and stupid periodically, this is not your game. If you enjoy running around in giant mechs and just shrug and move on when the breaks go against you, then you willf ind immense joy and value in this game.

I still have fun playing the game. Parts of the game are definitely shakey, but this is the most fun I've had in a town building game in a long time. It's sad that the game stopped getting attention after launch. I pre-ordered this game the minute it was available and while a lot of pre-ordering tends to have serious drawbacks, I don't regret this. The original goals of the game were ambitions. The music of the game is fun. The concept of the game is nifty. There's a lot more they could do, but apparently dev on the game is dead. That's a sad place. The currentl price might be a bit steep for it. But if it is on sale and you don't mind some bugs, then it is an enjoyable town builder with some lovecraftian steampunk goodness.

Single player campaign: It's Imperial Navy Only. That said, it's fun. I wish it was an open campaign with the ability to play anyone.
Single Player skirmish: I have fun. Level up ships, try different combinations with different fleets. what's not to like.
Custom and Multiplayer Skirmish with Friends: Tons of fun, especially if you have someone go long and somone go short or try other teamworks things.
Multiplayer Ranked/unranked matched: Havne't tried them. Keep meaning to.

General praise:
Game is fun. That's kind of the bottom line, no?

General disappointed parts:
Really wish campaign would open up to all factions like the original Dawn of War Campaign.
Fleets are too small. I want like 3000 pts. I want to literally cover the map in ships and watch my graphics card scream to life.
I feel like I've generally played very similar styles regardless of factions: Get broadsides, shoot broadsides. Avoid torpedoes because they are terrible, never buy for a ship because of prow batteries. The only changes I've done is take a lot of carriers or take a lot of Nova Cannons. Virtually all of the time I aim for Engines first. So in this way, it does seem a bit repetitve and while I played it for hours on end for the first week that I got it. Now, I boot it up and play for a few hours and then don't touch it for a week or so. Mostly, I get going when I can get together with a friend and do a few joint missions.

I'll pick up the Tau when they come out. I've had enough fun to keep seeing where things go an recommend the game. You should be able to get 30 or 40 hours out of it as without going into online matches. I'm hoping when I decide to do that that it will put some more life into the game. Certainly can't hurt.

Generally good, Not without flaws, but fun.

I'm having a ton of fun. The start up is pretty good and customizable. I much prefer it to just picking a Civ. I actaully feel involved in who I'll be instead of "Sure. I guess I'm good in with Knights..." Affinity points are amazing. Some of the game needs a little rebalancing and I feel like some things needed to be expanded on. More coudl have been done with the orbital layer. Space cities anyone? Or atleast combat in space around the planet. More variety of naval units(on par with naval units perhaps. Something big and slow and melee heavy with just a little range for bombardment(Battleship esque maybe?) something small, fast and melee like a torpedo boat, maybe subs and then something ranged heavy) and a split between fighters and bombers for aircraft would have been nice. That said, I've been pouring time into the game and having fun. Fun is what really defines a game and I'm having fun.

Definitely worth buying. Is it perfect? no. Is it fun and playable? Absolutely.

Worried I'm some new guy who doesn't know what a Civ game should be? I've been around since the original. I remember Phalanxes sinking Battleships.

Just as good as it was on PS3 which is to say amazing. Hands down, my favorite PS3 game. having it on PC is just sweet.

Thoroughly Entertaining