Recent reviews by Jermi

Well worth the time.

For some reason, the main protagonist is awesomest of them all.

Excellent modern squad based combat game. Infantry combat is pretty realistic, vehicles have hit points which is a bit meh. Awesome sounds, sounds very real.

It's all fun and games until you run out of room to build, and out of new things to get with your star points. After that the game stagnates and becomes repetitive.

In the beginning I was hooked, being a player who has lived on first the golden box D&D and then Baldur's Gate, Planescape etc. This had the same feel. Playing on the default difficulty was ok for the most part, some battles needed several retries as (as known) certain spells for example at lower levels can turn a fight quickly.

Then you get to the kingdom management, you are overwhelmed with events and opportunities. Your advisors won't have time to do everything, and you have to figure out which events are important to tackle, which can be left to rot. Later on if you haven't been able to develop all facets of the kingdom equally, you will start getting events that are impossible for your advisors, you're rolling against DC 35 with a dude that has skill 12. And some events or projects take such a long time that the "good" advisors can be tied to those for what feels like ages in game time. Kingdom management also is constantly pestering you for attention which takes away from players who want to explore and fight monsters and do quests.

Later in the game also the combat difficulty rapidly ramps up in certain encounters, you might for example make quick work of 90% of the enemies in a certain map but then comes along that one fight where you're fighting a mob that has 40+ AC, saves that make it so that it needs to roll a nat 1 to fail against your spells, and who pumps out a lot of dps. These fights feel unfair, and here I started to turn down the difficulty to the lowest possible to get ahead. Apparently you can complete these on the normal or higher difficulty, but you need a certain party combo and/or spells memorized.

The end of the game I played entirely in story mode just to have it over with. I think this is not a feeling I should be having at this point of the game. The "home stretch" was full of just messing with the player's party, and it felt I was no longer in control of what party I am playing. I was not having fun any more, and the feeling of accomplishment was gone when I finished.

All in all, this game promised a lot, fulfilled some of that promise, let down in other parts.

as a fan of XCOM 2 I was immediately hooked on this game. Enjoy the sneaky aspects and the fact that you are sort of awarded for them by keeping the heat off your agents, and therefore having to spend less money for new identities. The dossier "minigame" is a nice interlude between the actions. Managing your agents is good fun also, with the different equipments and also the enhancements. Have now completed the game on the medium difficulty once, it offered a good challenge and I ended up using about 50h on it which in my book makes this good value for money. Also the fact that they don't let you play the "hidden" background, or the extended campaign before you complete the game once as either CIA or KGB adds at least one more meaningful replay.

More than one way to skin a cat. This game has options for the player on how they want to do things. Some ways are harder than others. On the whole not the easiest game to beat, has some fights in it that will make you try again, and again, and maybe again. But personally, it makes it better. Also have to give a big plus for the lenght of the game, I spent over 100 hours playing it and felt that I was going forward all the time. Well worth the time.