Recent reviews by LP Kaiser

I’d recommend this game if it’s on sale (half price), if you’re a fanatic puzzle gamer or if you enjoy the setting (i.e. disappearance of space crew on Europa).

Pros:
- Story. A deep and interesting story that is both thought-provoking and contains deep dialogues. While some parts are somewhat predictable and others seem to have slight plot holes, as a whole I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the story. If anything, I’d personally recommend The Turing Test for this and not its gameplay elements (though that's not to say they're bad).
- Easy achievements. If that’s your thing. Nothing is missable besides the optional puzzles which you’d have to purposefully skip. Everything else is story progression related.
- Graphics. Impressive, although heavy on the lighting and lens flares at points

Neutral:
- Puzzles. As someone who's not necessarily good at puzzle games I found that quite a few of the puzzles were too easy and required little to no thinking. This is not to say that they were all like this, there was a very small handful that had me stuck thinking that they were impossible for a while. Overall, I feel like the puzzles could have been a little more difficult.
- Length. Although it’s a bit short at 5-8 hours for 100% completion (8 is the time the developers put, 5 is what I had), I felt like this prevented the game from feeling too dragged out and therefore wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, value for money is a problem here.

Cons:
- Motion sickness. The game gave me motion sickness which I've never experienced before, and after some research in the forums, I found out that this is a common problem and can limit some people to only playing for short periods of time before needing a break.
- Replayability. Puzzles have to be solved in a certain way, and therefore the only reason you’d play this more than once would be to explore the story again as you’d remember most of the puzzle solutions.

tldr; If you're looking for a game, I wouldn't recommend this. If you're on the other hand looking for more of an 'experience' then this might be for you.

Pros:
- Artistic. The game is more of an experience than anything else with great visuals and a nice accompanying soundtrack.
- Relaxing. Due to the game's setting and simplicity it can be quite a relaxing experience if that's what you're looking for.
- Easy achievements. If that's your thing. If you use a guide for collectables than you can 100% the game in around 2 hours.

Cons:
- Short. The game took me around 1 hour and 40 minutes to complete, with a $20 price tag it ends up being more than $10 an hour. Not great value for money compared to some other games.
- Simple. There's nothing complex or challenging about this game. No real puzzles (there are collectibles that encourage exploration though) or anything of the like. This causes the game to get a bit stale and gives it little to no replay value after you've 'experienced' the game once.
- Story. Seems quite vague and confusing. There's not a lot there and is open to interpretation, just like a piece of artwork I guess.
- Low replay value. As stated above, there's little reason to play the game twice besides getting all of the collectibles/achievements.

A fun and casual little game that can be played when you're looking for a light distraction in between other games.

Pros:
- Dynamic Story/Replayability. Game changing decisions and the choice between three random missions in between the story missions give the game replayability, allowing two playthroughs to be quite different. Though all choices only have three possible options, so in a sense, this replayability is limited. There's also an 'endless' mode available after beating the story.
- Customisation. A multitude of different minions, enemies, abilities and upgrades that allow you to play completely different each time. I felt that the game was very fleshed out in this regard.

Neutral:
- Length. It takes approximately 4 hours to beat the game, this is quite short and therefore may not be worth the money for some. Though, due to it's replayability, you should be able to get at least 8 hours from the game.

Cons:
- Simple. The game is quite easy. I only failed 1 of roughly 25 missions once, beating it on my second attempt. This left me feeling like there was a lack of challenge.
- “You are the dungeon” feature overstated. It’s really just a turn based battle game, where on some levels, you are ‘holding off’ the attackers rather than being the one attacking the goal personally. This is what is meant by the feature and may be misleading, as it was to me at first.

One of my all time favourite games. I've played through it probably around 6 or so times (mostly on xbox 360 back in the day which explains my low play time here) and would recommend it to anybody and everybody. Seriously, you can't go wrong.


Pros:
- Soundtrack. One of the best, if not my favourite, soundtracks to any game I have played to date. I often come back to listen to it while playing other games, studying or just relaxing (I may or may not be listening to it as I type this).
- Story. A very unique and amazing storytelling experience. Something you will remember for quite a time after playing. Choosing to save Zulf and having "Setting Sail, Coming Home" playing in the background. The feels get me every time.
- Gameplay. A variety of weapons, weapon uprgades, skills, tonics (perks) allowing you to play in many different ways.
- Graphics. Pleasing artstyle that suits the game well.

Neutral:
- Length. Only a 5-6 hour story. Though it doesn't feel dragged out or too short. It's a good length for what it is, though it may leave some wanting more.
- Replayability. There's pretty much only the main story and a few side challenges you can do. You can't go back to story areas after completing them. Though, there is a new game+ and score attack mode to keep things a little fresh after completing the game once and idols to modify the difficulty of the game if you want a challenge.

Cons:
- What is it bad for? Absolutely nothing! SAY IT AGAIN.

Hearts of Iron IV. I am almost certain that this game has been hijacked and tampered with by French nationalists. The reasoning for this is that, due to the horrible AI, the French rarely ever surrender (0/10 very unrealistic) as the Germans decide to declare war on the allies while stationing all of their troops on the danish border (Maybe they are trying to beat their previous world record of forcing the fastest capitulation, though 3 hours is pretty difficult to top).

In all seriousness though, as a huge Paradox fan and as someone who has spent over 1000 hours on their other games, I can sadly not recommend this one in its current state.


Pros:
- Alternative history. I like how easy it has been made for alternative history to play out (with this being an option, so if you want everything to roughly follow its historical route you still can). In my very first game, I turned Australia nationalist and formed a faction with Japan where we reigned terror on Asia and the pacific.
- Large mod support. Want to play as North Korea in 2016 and nuke the USA? Download the modern era mod and go for it. Want to try and hold back the zombie horde while the Allies and Axis trade fronts? Download the infection mod

Neutral:
- Large amount of replayability. Being able to play any nation in the world and take it in any direction you want gives you many opportunities. The focus trees (though only available for majors as of now) help this out even more. However, with the reasons listed below, you're not going to want to play for that long anyway in it's current state which is why this is neautral.

Cons:
- The AI is terrible. They will often leave fronts completely unguarded while stationing all of their troops on some arbitrary border of someone they're not at war with. There will be many "what the hell" moments as you question the AI's choices and intelligence.
- A simplified game. It's lost a lot of complexity that made the previous Hearts of Iron games great. It feels hollow. As usual, I'm sure they'll flush the game out with DLCs but that shouldn't be the case. Other paradox games take upwards of 100 hours to learn. I felt like I knew everything about this one after just 10 hours or less.
- An easy game. Due to the two above reasons, the game is ridiculously easy to play. Playing as one of the major powers is pretty much pointless as you will steamroll the world before 1941. This makes it no fun. There is no strategy needed and I'm sure a 10 year old could pull off a world conquest as Ireland.

At one point in my life, I played this game so much that I even started dreaming about playing it. 10/10. Would dream about staring at a map of the world while plotting France's doom again.


With my large play time (but not abnormal for the player base) you can probably figure out why. I can see myself playing this game for many hours to come too, and I've barely touched the sea of wonderful mods that this game has that can extended the longetivity and replayability to the point where you will pretty much never get bored. Hours disappear quickly. Playing as one nation from the very first start date to the end date will take around 24 hours, depending on the play speed setting you keep it on and there are hundreds of nations to play as with each feeling unique.

Pros:
- Complexity. This game ruined the fun of many other strategy games I used to play, like Civ due to me finding them so simple in comparison now. The only saving grace of Total War is the real time battles or it'd be gone too.
- Replayability. As stated above, and by looking at my play time, the replayability is HUGE.
- Fantastic mod support. Want to play this game but set in the modern era? Download the mod. Want to play it set in the Game of Thrones universe? Download the mod.
- Continuous updates and support , even years after the game has been released

Neutral:
- Steep learning curve (can take up to 50 hours to learn the basics, and many, many more to become a master of the game. I'm still learning new things) but this complexity is what makes the game so great.
- Large quantity of DLCs with prices that really add up . This is neutral for me because the game has been updated enormously since it was first released. Along with every DLC comes a large free patch (for example, the art of war DLC came with 900+ new provinces and 100+ new nations and many more features), so I see paying for the DLCs as a way of thanking them for continuously improving the game. Plus, they are very frequently on sale for 66+% off.

Cons:
- GET OUT OF MY DREAMS
- DLC restrictions though I understand the DLC policy and the need to make the DLC's worth purchasing while still giving out the majority of the updates in free patches, at the current state, the game pretty much needs the Common Sense DLC to play as any nation that's not in Europe efficiently. This is due to changes that were made after release of the content pack i.e. they built new features requiring previously released paid features