Recent reviews by Leb

I've died to blowing myself up more than I have to the enemies.

10/10

It could use some QOL (like a pipette tool, or menu hotkeys), but Timberborn far than makes up for that in it's current state as a spiritual successor to the likes of Banished. From a design perspective, the main difficulty driver being a droughts in which water mechanics and beaver damns makes for the the most adorable "beaverpunk" experience one could ask for.

Preface: I grew up on Civ. I remember sitting on my dad's lap as he played Civ 1, Circa 1995. Civ 2 was embedded into my childhood, I didn't know how to read, I remember being spammed by unrest notifications and dismissing them because I had no idea what to do about them. I remember finding the cheats to build ICBMs and nuking my medieval era opponents and laughing at my advisers losing their ♥♥♥♥.

Fast forward to Civ IV. We had a bootlegg copy on a USB in high school, we would pass among friends and play via LAN on weekends. The colors, characters, and overall mood of Civ IV was truly beautiful. There are some LAN games from that era my friend's and I will still joke about, 15 years later. It set the standard of a great 4X for me, and nothing has quite tickled me the same since.

When I first saw the Old World on steam I loved the art, and focus on the classical era. When I saw it was designed by Soren Johnson, the lead designer on Civ IV, my interest peaked further. When I saw DLCs in the $5 CAD range offering a wealth of scenarios, and new depths in storytelling, I had to jump in.

The Old World is an open challenge to the state of 4X games out there on a number of key design elements. I won't go too far into that in this review, as many other reviews have done the description of these shifts adequate justice. What I will say is, it's brilliant. I have not found myself "one more turning" so hard in quite some time. The storytelling is great, and if for whatever reason that is not your cup of tea, the game settings are highly customisation to whatever style of play suits you best.

Unlike newer renditions in CIV, which play quite predictably, Old World's story telling can strike you with moments of luck or misfortune that open up your playthroughs in interesting and dynamic ways. I won't forget playing in the Rome tutorial and the Queen of the Danish raiders falling in love with me, due to how much of a stud paragon chad I was. While this didn't stop our war, I started to receive messengers from her warning me of raids coming from her lands. I also won't forget the random idiot who showed up in my court causing a ruckus, who I kept around for the lulz, only to find he was heir to the most powerful nation outside of mine, and pledged himself as my ally due to my good treatment of him.

I've put in 36 hours so far and while I've seen some repetition, there's quite a bit of dynamism which offers a lot in replay-ability. There's also a weekly challenge, which is a set map/faction/game rules for the community. It's also a great solution for those of us who struggle with figuring out what kind of game we want to have next. It's fun to give those a stab and report back on discord on how you did.

This game has no right to be as addictive as it is

It turns out I like trains

Warhammer 2 has had years of post launch support that have made it one of my top played games on steam to date. This was done by a dedicated team by CA over the years and encompassed the many great DLC we saw for the 2nd game. CA has been open and transparent about their development process and that in order to provide this level of support, the team responsible for post launch WH2 content and WH3 are two different teams.

Understandable, however it's clear that as the former team patched and improved WH2 to the level it deserved, fixing issues with tech trees, skill trees, and overall providing a more polished and varied playing experience across factions - the WH3 team was working off of the WH2 baseline. The things that have made WH2 great over the years are glaringly absent from WH3, and as a veteran of the series it has made this title feel immediately stale.

There are aspects of WH3 I am eager to fully explore - in particular the improvements to diplomacy and siege battles are welcome. But the above issues, combined with poor at launch performance & a non-optional "on the rails" campaign system really have it feeling less like a sequel and more like a warhammer 2 1.0 mod

The soundtrack makes me want to punch a hole through the wall. Listening to these ripping guitar licks while I defend the final bastion of humanity form righting its last wrongs for good, I do so head banging.

In typical rogue-lite style, you are not meant to win in your early runs. Get as far as you can, get unlocks that make the next runs easier, learn from your mistakes, and progress further and further.

From an Early Access lens, the game feels well polished and good to play, but certainly some work to be done in terms of balancing the various weapons, skills, and enemies. I'm early into my journey but there definitely seem to be some skills I pick every time vs others that are almost entirely ignorable, maybe later play-throughs will teach me more though

Criminally underatted

"What, are you playing Civ for babies?" - my wife

Have had my eye on this for sometime now, but listened to the fan sentiment and stayed away.

As a fan of both PDX games and Total War, I was really hoping PDX would do something interesting with the era.

And with the latest patch - they really have. The UI could be a little more helpful, but overall the game does a good job of introducing you to it's concepts through the event trees. I believe these are unique to the main factions (and expanded upon with DLC), but as such it makes Rome the best place to start. You've got mutliple trees to take after the first, allowing you to both learn about the history and politics of the era , but also make alt-history decisions along the way.

Later into the game, the beauty of the population system really starts to shine. You can visually see your cities grow as more buildings pop up. Your large civilized ports swell with migrants from across your empire. Your libraries and temples educate those willing to the ways of your culture. While it took me a little time to get when to assimilate and when to integrate, once I did this system really brought the game to life for me. Watching my lands become more "Romanized" and feeling the benefits of the manpower, research, etc. is very rewarding.

Yet all that can be taken away. You can win a war in the usual PDX fashion, but if you are sloppy and allow your cities to be sieged - your pops are killed and enslaved! Your troops also call on this same population pool. Your people are a literal resource - as they should be!

That said, certain systems could use some 2.0-esque love. Mercenary bands are stupidly large. Trade is lucrative but not a very fun system - and makes playing one way (commerce) much more worthwhile than the alternative (tax).

Overall - I'd put this up there with CK3 as my favorite PDX has to offer, and I'm sure I'll be putting in many more hours.