Recent reviews by Zuriki

Unplayable, it's insulting that they continue to sell this.

Somehow more broken and worse than it was 10 years ago...

Stronghold Crusader x They Are Billions x Total War Warhammer

Has a learning curve like a brick wall, but so much potential.

The full game is launching soon and yet it feels as unfinished as the first early access release. Game breaking issues like troops not climbing ladders during sieges and instead pooling up at the bottom to be a fun target practice for the enemy. Enemy troops getting stuck inside walls preventing battles from ending. Simplistic AI that causes blobbing. Clumsy controls that prevents using tactics (boiling down to F1, F3 bum rush or F6 and let the AI do it).

Remnants of unfinished systems are also laid bare for everyone to see, there is one character in the main quest that has half of her lines voiced and seemingly no other - not even her counterpart character.

Other systems have been culled or severely cut back, settlements no long have land plots for redevelopment (build castles, different types of farms, mines or stables) nor technology trees. There is no way to adjust parameters such as tax rate, militia size and work effort. Villages no longer have any development and castles and towns just have small incremental stat upgrades which replaces all these mechanics.

Criminal enterprises that allowed you to evict gangs and set up your own criminal enterprise have been cut almost entirely with on the vestigial (and entirely unimportant) "gang member" NPCs that just offer repeatable quests - objectively some of the worst quests in the game and they're entirely unimportant.

There were hints to other potential mechanics like seasons which may or may not have had gameplay altering effects, but are also seemingly absent (or so toned down that I haven't noticed them in the 100 hours I've put into the game).

Sometimes listening to the community is not in the best interests of the game, but the developers seem to have taken this to the other extreme and completely ignore the community - beyond improving modding tools (a happy accident of simply improving their own development tools) they have no regard for the modding community that has kept Warband alive for over a decade. They have certainly not learned anything from the kinds of mods that have been produced for both Warband and Bannerlord, the game design of Mount and Blade has not progressed from the first game in the series despite a wealth of examples of what could be done with the formula. The developers seem afraid of even wading in the kids pool of innovation as demonstrated above, cutting everything that even remotely approaches a new game mechanic.

In summary, Bannerlord is *fine* and likely with time the community will develop content that will ultimately make Bannerlord a good value proposition as a *platform*. But ultimately as it stands there is so much missed potential and the game can be generously called a better looking Warband. But Warband is the greater value proposition due to the wealth of mods that are already available for it and the fact that it is considerably cheaper.

I don't hate the game, but I am extremely disappointed that we had to wait 12 years for what amounts to a coat of paint and more bugs.

Real talk: The story is ♥♥♥♥ and makes no sense. But the game is alright if you just want to play something relaxing.

EDF is the B-movie of videogames. Ridiculous, fun and unpolished. Stilted and poorly translated voice acting delivered with over-the-top acting. Must play.

Almost all negative reviews so far have been because of technical issues, but generally positive about the gameplay. It is a great game, a poor port. But it does work for a vast majority of people. Reviews account for less than 1% of purchases, only around half of that 1% are negative. Very vocal minority.

Buy the game, if it doesn't work for you, refund it.

Take2 setting the lawyers on modders like rabid dogs. Modders who added value to their product, through love and asking nothing in return. The whole point of this charade is Take2 wants all your money. Not just some, not just a lot, all of it. So the response should ultimately be give them nothing.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, if you really must play it, find another way - borrow/buy a second hand copy on console so T2 and R* get nothing, the experience will be mostly the same anyway since mods are all but banned.

A good successor to MoO2. It's a lot simpler than the old MoO games, and it mixes in a lot of light-hearted humor.

The only major problem I have with this sequel is the "Tactical Combat" section, which is... well, just not worthwhile using: simulated combat will almost always give better outcomes and there is almost no tactics you can employ, the classic MoO2 turn based combat system was infinitely better.

I feel as though they should instead take a page out of Fractal Softworks' "Starsector", where you can maneuver ships to spread damage across different areas of the ship in a semi-realtime fashion.

Another major flaw in the game design comes in the form of the fixed warp points, something which other games do, but in this implementation feels very flawed. In a few of the games I have played on medium sized galaxies I have been confined to an area of approximately 8 stars, with one enemy race. Unable to get out because of the unstable warps blocking off the remaining 75% of the galaxy.

This situation never would have happened in the classic MoO games which all inter-stellar travel was purely based on distance. If you had a ship with infinite distance you could warp from the top-right to the bottom-left star system.

This game does not perform well. Even on the lowest settings I am able to achieve around 10fps. In direct contrast I am able to achieve 60fps in GTA V on high (not the ultra settings), Dynasty Warriors 8 on max settings and so on. This game does not look good enough to justify the performance requirements.

First game I requested a refund on.