Recent reviews by Shockwave

The game was fine, even great, hell even better than Warband until the 1.7.0 update, then it became literally unplayable and now they're planning a full release in October after they've managed to destroy the game. Heres what i mean:

Before 1.7.0 you could separate your troops into 10 (1,2,3...0) independent units, and you could assign whichever troop you wanted to those numbers - so if you wanted a separate unit of say, Cataphracts and ONLY Cataphracts, and a unit of Vlandian Banner knights, you could do that.

After 1.7.0 its just sliders of "inf, ranged inf, cav, ranged cav, etc", so guess what, you want your first line of soldiers to be just Imperial Legionaries? well F/U/C/K you because theres 34 Vlandian Sergeants standing with them, oh and guess what, heres a khuzait footman as well because they're all infantry and they all have shields so theres literally no difference between them.

Oh whats that? you want your crossbowmen, skirmishers and archers separate? what, you stupid or something, they're clearly the same unit so they're gonna stand together stop bothering us we're working on a full release and a console port.

You want to send peasant recruits and NOT your elite guard into the fight because you a) dont want casualties for your guard or b) want your recruits to share all the XP? well buddy, they are both walking on feet so they are both INFANTRY and thus THE SAME GROUP.

"Oh well you can manage all that with... le sliders" yes I forgot, they added a really fun mini-game, so now you can sit hunched over at your table, going sicko mode with your mouse and swinging a slider around until it just so happens to give you the troop composition you want.

Also guess what, if you want to be creative and have, lets say the only 1 type of Sturgians to be your shock troops, and only 1 type of Vlandians to be your crossbowmen, and only 1 type of imperials backing your rear guard, you know just to ROLE PLAY in this RPG game... well you cant - STOP TRYING TO WHATEVER YOU WANT IN THIS SANDBOX VIDEO GAME

Ok lets divide the game into pros and cons.

CONS:

1) What is this dialogue, did a 23 year old buzzfeed writer watch Guardians of the Galaxy and think to themselves "I can do that too"

2) What is this setting/atmosphere/vibe, can you imagine bradford watching this happen, ah yes you were genociding us for 20 years non-stop but now its ok i guess you were "Just following orders", here lets be friends and sound like we're all 17 year olds with le quipy dialogue, isnt that quirky and fun?

3) What is this gameplay? interchanging turns is the worst thing you can do if you want this to be tactical, now its just "kill whoever has most initiative over you" and wait for the next enemy that is in that situation. and its not like theres something stopping you from doing that too, in XCOM 2 high-damage enemies usually had ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of health so you couldnt outright kill them. every map is basically the same from what i've seen both in my gameplay and watching others play through. No permadeath is a joke and makes the game a chore to go through if you lose a character on a mission. Strategy layer is even more barebones than XCOM 2 and i can just imagine Long war 2 developers getting ready to hang themselves.

4) absence of customization could have been forgiven if the characters we got were worth anything, but as i wrote above, they're basically teenagers and all of them are insufferable, writing wise - none of the squad members here compare to the that one random rookie in XCOM 2 that carried the bleeding out Major out of the battlefield and saved your campaign. lore-wise this game walks all-over the franchise as well. who the hell is director kelly, some rando just rose through the rank of XCOM in 5 years and became the director? where the hell did bradford and Commander go. (honestly, i haven't finished the story yet so this might be explained.)

5) Story - really? the bad guys are whit--- I mean human supremacists? this is how much the developers wanted to have an allegory to the evil alt-right that they compromised the setting of the game? theres so much more you can do with post XCOM 2 world and you chose to go with the most basic premise ever? "We can be the bad guys too guys, cmon, let the muton in your home".

PROS:

1) Breach mode: this is a great idea and incorporated with the overwatch ambushes from XCOM 2 could actually be a great gameplay feature, however in this game it is overused and gets tiring real quick. it should be a single use thing like concealment.

CONCLUSION/TL:DR: This is a game i would have fun with on the toilet on a phone or a tablet, but because characters are so insufferably terrible and the fact that im constantly reminded of the fact that this is an XCOM 2 world/universe, I can't even enjoy this while taking a ♥♥♥♥.

If you are a fan of the franchise, DO NOT BUY. Thankfully i got this game as a gift from my brother but to me it isnt even worth the pre-order price of 5 dollars, I will never boot this game up again. if you wanna play as aliens download that mod for XCOM 2.