Recent reviews by Marklar

I will be approaching this review with the perspective of someone who 1) missed out on the apparently huge modding scene on the first game, 2) enjoyed the first one but by no means was good at it or played more than a couple hundred hours, and 3) GENERALLY prefers turn based games with more room for imagination/creativity.

Sins II is a flat out improvement over the OG. The dev team, running counter to modern practice, launched the game with ALL of the content from the first game already available instead of going the Civ route and stripping everything to sell us a tiny core experience. Their new engine is incredible and I look forward to them licensing it out for more games like this. My machine is no slacker, but as a parent with a middling income at best, I don't have the funds necessary to get the latest and greatest tech every year, so I appreciate beyond words the genuine care this team put into efficiency. Late game slog is a BIG problem in 4X games and while I, as of this review, have not played a game beyond 3 players, I have had precisely zero issues thus far. The other reviews seem to indicate that massive battles later on will be equally smooth. Seriously, this reminds of the launch of Doom Eternal with how efficiently everything operates.

Now, onto some more mixed thoughts. I wish there was a campaign on launch. I get why there isn't, and I am excited for the launch of said campaign later, but without the creative freedom something like Stellaris or AOW4 offers, I would really like more "guided" game modes to compensate. I also wish they added a little bit more content over the first game, but that is the most minor of nitpicks.

Personally, I think the balance could use some work. The racial uniques are interesting: the TEC get trade which is a huge economy booster, the Vasari get Resonance which imo is the weakest (I will elaborate later) bonus, and the Advent get what I look at as essentially Generals Powers (where my C&C Generals dawgs at).

All 3 of these unique abilities require investing in Logistics slots, which is fine as they are your primary limitation for economic planning and these abilities SHOULD have some kind of opportunity cost. My primary gripe is that the Vasari feel VERY limited, and the Advent system should be expanded so EVERYONE gets access (again, Generals Powers) to those. I think varying superpowers for each faction would be a lot of fun, and giving the Advent something less fun and powerful would make me less salty about preferring the Vasari. So the Vasari get a TEMPORARY bonus after entering a gravity well, and these bonuses are wholly dependent on how many of their specific structure you build (limited by logistics slots and 1-2 per gravity well), not to mention they are, again, TEMPORARY and extremely weak. My last game was a 3 player match with 6 or so fully developed planets by the end, and despite my investment I was getting a tiny ship speed bonus, fire rate bonus, and ability cost reduction. Devs, if you read this, the Vasari Resonance abilities should EITHER be way stronger and shorter to encourage the hit-and-run playstyle, or permanent. Possibly even unique "capstone" buffs like all frigates are immune to mind control or something.

Also, I understand the critical HP system, but when a ship is in a critical state, it shouldn't be able to keep fighting. At the least, don't give the critical HP system to Starbases. ♥♥♥♥ takes FOREVER to get through.

All that being said, this game is a solid 8/10. The devs deserve all the praise for the passion they poured into this, and I eagerly anticipate the upcoming DLCs. I would like the balance to be worked on a bit more, and some fresh content would be incredible, but this is the exact baseline for how a sequel should launch: vast improvements with all the previous content available, at a reasonable price (looking at you AAA devs for launching digital-only 70 dollar games with microtransactions).

Really great so far! Seems like PW 1 with a bunch of improvements, which I am into! The guns feel good, the enemies blow up nicely, 570 fking enemies on the first level is awesome, sound is good, love having cooldown abilities now, just a couple gripes though.

Personally, I prefer the smaller bite size levels with a hub level break over the chapter-sized levels we have now. That's simply a personal preference.

Please, please, PLEASE can we have directional audio? I want to enjoy this game on hard but when enemies ALWAYS sound like they are 2 feet behind me it is impossible to know where anything is until I get shot. Can we also make the small spider enemies a little bigger or brighter? They tend to get lost in the ground clutter.

Overall, solid solid boomer shooter. Sewer section in the first level is gonna make Civvie mad though.


EDIT FOR THE DEVS: After reaching E1M4, I encountered both a bug and a massive balancing issue. The bug occurred after I died in the middle of my flamethrower spell. When I reloaded the flamethrower progress bar was on my screen but I was using my guns like normal. The cooldowns were disabled as the game thought I was still casting. Saving and reloading did not fix, nor did restarting the game. For the balance issue, the necromages are FAR too powerful. I haven't had many issues to this point as I am decent enough at shooters, but even with 60+ hp and a ton of armor the mages STILL one-shot me. The projectiles curve so well I can run in circles and still not escape them. I've gone from one or two deaths a level to at least 5 every time these mages spawn. It's honestly a little ridiculous; lower their damage or lower their tracking. I've never felt like this game was unfair until now, especially with the lack of HP on this level. My save has 69 HP (nice) and I still die in a single hit from them. This has almost completely halted my progress in the game and I can't recommend it until this is fixed.

UPDATE UPDATE: Spoke to the dev, was very kind and was able to assist them in reproducing the issue. My balance questions are being addressed, as is my weird ass bug. As of now, due to the devs response and quick turnaround, I am changing this to a wholehearted recommendation.

I had previously left a VERY negative review, very critical of almost every game system. I have since played a fair bit more and realized I was just using Civ as a basis for judging this games balance and growth model. I was wrong about the way the growth and cities work, it is more about specializing and only building what you need thanks to the way district costs scale.

This shares very little with Civ, having Total War-ish battles, a high dependency on terrain bonuses, and less of an emphasis on blazing through the tech tree (though that is a legit strategy). My first 10 games or so using the standard 300 turn limit never got out of industrial age technology, though whether that is borked science scaling or my own inexperience remains to be seen.

Combat has a lot of nuance, such as placement of armies, retreat paths, attacking to get the first move, defending key areas, engagement zone size to determine reinforcements, and even (later on) artillery and air support.

Unfortunately, there are a huge amount of absolutely inexcusable bugs. Combat remains buggy, occasionally causing units to get stuck "processing" their orders and being unable to progress the turn until saving and loading. Air units are completely broken; the support function 100% does not work mid-combat and in fact can trigger the aforementioned "stuck after orders" bug. Artillery support is similarly busted. Using air power in a non-combat setting (think Civ-style tile bombardment) works fine, I have no idea if air-to-air combat works as my AI never build fighters.

Additionally, I have lost an entire save file due to some kind of stacking movement order bug with the AI (they give all move orders at the same time). I have seen another bug with air units where their support cost was increasing logarithmically every turn. Unfortunately I only noticed after I went several thousand money in the negative (previous turn was a few hundred positive). Doubly unfortunately, disbanding ALL air units in my empire stopped the growth but left the extra several thousand in support in place, effectively causing me to permanently piss thousands of money away every turn. Only fix was to start a new game.

The events are utterly forgettable and completely inconsequential late game. The civ-type powers (buying land as expansionist, drafting civ units as militarist, etc) are a cool concept, and can be a little broken at times.

A small gripe is that the AI moves at the same time you do, so while you are dealing with 15 popups each turn their units instantly attack before you reposition, often putting you in a bad spot before you can even respond. Also, the AI has perfect map visibility regardless of difficulty and always grabs ALL of the goodie huts in the first era. That needs to be toned down at easier settings, or removed altogether.

There are some cool ideas and some really pretty visuals in this game (except when they bug out and all that remains of a district is a gray hex), and the system of spreading districts for raw output and infrastructure applying to every outpost attached to a city makes for some very strategic decisions. It's hard to recommend as it definitely needs some rebalancing in terms of cost scaling, some of the unique units and their associated AI weights (AI absolutely LOVE hunnic and mongolian cavalry, building them exclusively), and tech progression, in addition to all the bugs.

As it is, I wouldn't recommend paying more than 40 dollars for this one. Once they make your avatar choices matter, rebalance some things, and fix the absolutely stupid amount of bugs in the late game, that may change. As it is, only pick this up on sale and only if you know you enjoy 4X games.

Rob banks. Only 30 bucks. Lots of progression, randomization and difficulty levels. Tons of fun gameplay for cheap.