Recent reviews by Zhein

Avoid this game. Get away from it, get away from this dev team. People will tell you to wait a year, seing the mess that is this game even a year would not be enough and some structural problems can't ever be solved. It's a frankenstein creature, cursed to never be a good game, half dead and half alive.

1 - Game is a buggy mess. Nothing works properly. Skills, talents, quest lines, dialogues, random companion banters, nothing works properly. And I'm not even talking about act 3 and 4, the amount of face palm, game breaking bugs, situations not working as intended that I've encountered happened before act 3 is beyond mesure.

2 - Game is a bloated mess. The character creation throws you a ton of stuff, modifiers, skills, talents, and ultimately ? They don't serve any purpose. Your origin, background, class, etc, they only get a passing remark in the prologue. And I think that my backstory entered into play once in footfall, the rest of the time it's just skill modifiers for the pseudo tactical combat game. But then you look at the other skills and you notice that only 3% of them have icons ? That the descriptions are barely readable ? And there's hundreds of skills for the tactical combat game, and they're bad because...

3 - The game is completely imbalanced. It's pretty hard to figure what is bugged and what is intended by the devs. You can enter in infinite loops just by using skills as intended. You can have a character that can shoot an infinite number of times in the same turn. Apparently you're "prevented" from shooting more that 11 times with the same character because reasons, but it's not clear if it's a bug, a technical limitation, a design decision, because it's advertised nowhere, and best of all, see point 1, it doesn't work anyway. Some skills do way more work than others. Why do I have to chose between +5 agility and +10 dodge, when the only thing agility does, is giving me 5 dodge ? And why would I pick 10 dodge when I get 20 on this other skill ? And why would I pick this conditionnal skill that gives me 1 agility every other turn, not stacking, when a demon dance the tango ? This is the level of balance the game presents you, and it's obfuscated behind the bloat.

And I'm not even talking about overtuned fights, skill checks with 0% chance of success even with the best character with this skill check available to do it, the thousand of awareness/tech use skill checks at low success rate for a half assed line of description.

And the funniest part about all that ? You can't respec for free to try stuff. You're doomed to restart the game if you pick a broken combo that unexpectedly gets you in an infinite loop, or screw your end game possibilities.

4 - As I said, the game is a frankenstein creature. The devs thought that Battlefleet Gothic was a great game. So they made their own version of space combat. It's horrible. You can die turn one without playing, that pretty much sums up the whole space combat experience. It serves no purpose except add bloat and bugs. The devs added a colony gestion thing. It's bland, bad, and doesn't give anything meaningfull. But it's a time waster. The tactical combat aspect of the game is bland and just an uninspired turnbased cover based combat xcom clone that is nowhere near as tactical as xcom could be, just a "press the bigger button for bigger damage" cheese fest. By trying to do so many different things, not a single one is really well done, and it's just a lukewarm poridge.

5 - Unsufferable loading times. I have a huge play time. Half of it is alt tabbing because hey, look another bug, let's see what they say on the forum while I wait for this loading. Oh, another loading. Oh, another loading. And I'm alt tabbing and the game is running in the background and I remember 2 hours later that the game is still there, so I do something, and then, another loading or 5 ! Get in a system, loading, get out, loading, warp jump, dialogue "look, a combat !" loading, 5 minutes of gameplay and an easy fight that bloat the play time, loading back, visit the new system, loading, ♥♥♥♥ a space combat, can I get a new part for my ship ? Loading into the bridge of the ship, talk to the npc, see that you can't grind your faction, loading to the space map, start the space fight, loading, die instantly before you even had the chance to play, reload the game, more loading. This is worse than Kingmaker, and kingmaker was already bad.

So after everything, the game must have writting and good story, for sure.
The game has good writting and good story, right anakin ?

Weeellll...

6 - Game is verbose. Way way too much verbose. Sometimes I feel some texts were added just to pad the wordcount because it doesn't progress the story or even the dialogue. It's just "there".

But even then, a lot of things don't make any sense, just because they decided to offer the players the possibility to play "heretic". Sure. You just have an inquisitorial acolyte in your team and when you start to invoke chtuluh he'll just sit there in the corner instead of putting a bullet in your brain. Or how you can order a sister of battle to NOT kill the origin of a demon incursion ?

Or how you're killing stuff that's supposed to be on part with a blood angel terminator ? It's not them that should clear space hulks but you, since apparently you can do a better job than them. A demon infestation, no, do not call the grey knights, we have the rogue trader and his scooby team.

It kinda dilutes the shock value of encountering a ship full of tyranids when "full of tyranids" means 3 genestealers, and when the first one faceplants on the floor trying to reach Abelard, then dies to 300 bolter shots before even having time to get up.

You're constantly comfronted with cutscene incompetence too ! Oh, look, we've been ambushed by the guys that I've already seen in my screen !

I don't fell like I'm a rogue trader. I feel like I'm playing pathfinder with a worse game system and a 40k polish on top to make me think that I'm in a 40k game without thinking too much about how it doesn't make sense in universe.

But, sunken cost fallacy, I'll probably finish it even though I probably should have stopped after the first space combat I've encountered.

I can't recommand this game.

- The interface. Oh god, the interface. Everything about the interface is bad. Modifying a train route is a pain. You can't program trains at all. "Take this, drop that" is the max you can do. You can't give conditional orders, ever. Conditional repairs ? Nope. Conditional buying ? Nope. Transferring goods from the warehouse to your factory ? You need to click on the warehouse, click on the ressource (and on the right factory, or else its sent elsewhere). But you can't click on the factory to get it from the warehouse. It's just crazy how bad the interface is.
The thing is, it's like that for everything. Laying tracks cost money, and the cost is dependent on bridges, tunnels, working soil, crossing through hills and... You don't control how the track is layed. You click, and it gives you a path depending on how you move your mouse. You click again, and it build that part of the rail. You go from point A to point B, then to point C, but it's pixel based. It's hard to explain if you've not played it, it's not tile based, you don't control the pathing. I'll try as best as I can to explain it, but for exemple, depending on how you approach your mouse of a train station as destination, the layout will vastly change, and the price you pay accordingly. This forces you to play cat and mouse with the game to find the most efficient angle that will give you the best layout that will cost you less money. Except... You don't know what will cost you less money, because, once again, the interface.
You have no clue what will require tunnels or soil working or bridges *before* building the track, there is no indication to it. I've crossed mountains without tunnels, and other mountains required multiple tunnels (and moving my mouse a few pixels, goes from no tunnels to a lot of it). So you go from point C to point D, notice that suddenly the price spike, you can't exactly know why, so you roll back to point B to change where you put point C, but it doesn't change, so you move again, etc. You're constantly fighting the interface.

- The campaign. I've started the campaign twice, and it's bad. You'll keep getting surprise objectives that are nonsensical, but that you need to do in order to receive experience points to unlock stuff that makes the other maps doable. Most of the objectives require you to lose money. "Hey, send there 20 stuff. Oh, obviously, you won't get paid to do it." Mission objectives are unfun, and in order to complete them all, you have to restart the map ; I have an exemple of the game requiring me to build multiple steel mills, surprise, the next mission requires you to deliver weapons... factories being on the other side of the map of my steel mills that I built ! Great, I can start again because it's impossible to complete now ! Map layout is disgusting the further you progress, ressource loops require rails going through half of the map because the only village producing wood is opposite of your starting point. Halfway through the campaign, the game resets your research because why not.

- It's a train game, and the interface for building rail is horrible and unclear. It should be enough to keep you out of it. Why does this rail cost 20k, and if I move it 5 pixel to the left suddenly it costs 45k ? Why do I have to hunt in mountains the right pixel because "This road collides with another structure" ? Apparently, building a tunnel is impossible if you already have another tunnel before it ? You can't build a line between two stations if those are not connected to your because you can only buy trains in your starting city. You can't build passing loops (you can technically build one, but they do nothing : there is no signaling in game) You can't have more than 3 lines going through a station. Etc, etc. All the train gestion and rail layout is so much bare-bone that everything in the game feels like a chore.

All in all, I think more than half of the time spent on the game was actually spent on something else, the game running in the background. I dread discovering what new objective the game will give me on a terrible map, and the devs mocking me.

Edit as of.. I don't know. I've stopped following the game. It's abandonned, and it never will be fixed. Look the other way and don't waste money on it.

Edit as of 1.0.2 patch : And now, the game isn't even playable anymore in multiplayer. What a success. My review stands.

First of all, the video review : https://youtu.be/wPUjffmWv0Y (Warning : It's in french but this review will be in english)

I've played many paradox games, starting from EU2. Hell, I've even played Sengoku.

We will start there : Do I recommend this game ? No, not in this state.

Imperator is lazy. The devs were lazy.
The game feels... Empty.

Imperator is supposed to be a blend of multiple paradox games, and it shows. But it shows also the lazyness that went during its developpement. We have some mechanics that are inspired by EU4, CK2, and Stellaris. And obviously, EU-Rome. It could have been a great mix, played during a great period of history. Sadly, those mechanics are uninspired. Everything is in Imperator :

- We have a macro builder, just like in EU4. It's empty. No information. You can't even seen what the building will provide in the city you build it. Everything is clear in EU4 when you use the macro builder. Here, it's not. I feel like a dev whispering in my ear "Be glad we put one".

- We have families, characters, heirs, wives... But we can't do anything with them. Raising you heir like you do in CK2 ? Stop dreaming. You have only basic interractions. Less than basic. You can bribe people for loyalty. Something you can put them in prison if they answer to some weird criterias. And that's it.

- We have populations... But they don't migrate, they don't change with time, you don't interract with them. I mean, even in stellaris they migrate by their own free will (depending on you laws). Here, you are suffering food problems ? They will stay and die in the city. You can have a roman slave for a hundred years in persia, he will still be roman. You have to actively change population culture. You have to manually move them, promote them, convert them. Or ask your governor to do it. Nothing is organic.

- We have wars... 2 differents CBs. Claim or no CB. Yes. That's it. No CB is one of the 2 CBs you have. No humiliations, no insults, no commercial CB, no raiding CB. Claim or no CB.

- The interface is useless, you can barely find what you seek. No ledger. No population detail. I can find how many persians I have in my empire, but I can't see how many persians I have in a specific province, I have to check by hand, city by city, and add the result to find out how many persians I have in this region compared to how many romans or other cultures. This is unacceptable. Victoria 2 did a better job of presenting information and it's a 10yo game. I can't find why population are unhappy without clicking city by city and checking the pop one by one.

- 7 traditions. 7. For the whole world. Germans have the same traditions as picts, as celts, as iberians. "Barbarians". Great. Egyptians have the same tradition set as macedonians. The same as the Seleucid, or Sparta. A bland "Greek". Even at EU4 start there was more National Ideas than that, and less countries.

- All the governments feel the same. A Monarchy and a republic play the exact same way, that is : pretty much ignore them. A small bonus, different for each. That's it. that's all of it.

I can excuse Stellaris, because it was the first of the genre. I can excuse HOI4, because they changed a lot of stuff and an opposite direction from the previous title. I can't excuse Imperator. For me, it has the same feeling as Sengoku : an unfinished game.

Maybe in 6 to 12 months.