Recent reviews by Sss

It has a lot of shortcomings, but it's cheap. And it's still being worked on, so who knows,

Borderlands 3 is poorly made. The maps are linear and boring. The enemies are repetitive and dull. The missions are straightforward and uninspired. The writing is muddled and, at times, incoherent. The characters resemble husks, a victim of the game's poor writing: they're not developed well (even if you have played the first 2 games), and as a result major story beats just feel empty.

The guns might "feel good" to find and shoot for the first couple hours, but in the long term what are you getting out of this experience? Borderlands 3 has nothing to say and nothing substantial to do.

The following review rings true only for single player. For online multiplayer, I have this to say: a toxic, 4-8 hour crusade.
Multiplayer with friends? For the cost of HOI4 and all its dlc without a sale, you could buy Twilight Imperium 4. Think about it.

It kind of hurts to write this, because the first time I saw this game, I thought it looked amazing. The first time I played the game, I thought it was amazing. And then, after a while, the cracks started to show. Patronizing mechanics. Expensive dlcs. Poorly thought out content. Questionable balance choices. But those all pale in comparison to the bigger problem at hand, that I feel like is not just apparent within HOI4 but within Paradox grand strategy games as a whole (and that prompted me to write a review): lack of direction (andalsothedlcbutImean,everyonealreadyknowsaboutthat,right?).

The following 4 points are why I think you should pass on HOI4:

Point 1: Predatory DLC Policy:

When you buy the game, you aren't buying HOI4. You're buying a husk of HOI4, and you better be prepared to shell out 100 dollars (over double what the game costs) to buy the actual game. With that money, you could buy two and one third of a triple A game.

Point 2: HOI4 is too streamlined.

In HOI4, everything is there at the push of a button, or the drag of a mouse. Want to research someting? Button. Want to produce something? Button. Want to do anything? Button. That might sound like a good thing, and I initially loved it. After a while though, I realized that HOI4 is kind of patronizing. It streamlines the game so much that it feels like there is no game. Just clicking 'ok' until you've annexed everything. There's no thinking involved, just mindless waiting. And sure, it's not always bad for a game to be mindless entertainment. The problem is that this mindless entertainment costs 140 dollars.

Point 2.1: HOI4 does war poorly.

In HOI4, war goes like this: you draw an arrow, and you press the go button. A massive downgrade from HOI3. You might sometimes opt for paratroopers or marines (where you draw more arrows), but that's pretty much all you need to do. You can micro, but you don't need to against the AI.

Point 3: HOI4 does historical mode poorly.

In HOI4, if you play the game on historical mode, the way the game plays out is not historical. The comintern. The division count. The plane count. The ship count. Tank designing. Plane designing. The entire China region. Plus, because many countries have focus trees that encourage ahistorical play, historical games will be adversely affected, because each branch is less comprehensive.

Point 4: HOI4 doesn't know what it wants to be.

See, HOI4 started as a world war 2 simulation game. Pick a country, and play out world war 2. A simple concept, but one that HOI4 does not do well. The main problem is that many features in HOI3 were stripped out or simplified when they made HOI4. In trying to appeal to a broader base, they made the game patronizingly simple. Wait. Declare war. Press button. Win. So then, in order to keep customers happy, they diversified. Well, no, more accurately, they streamlined the game. Do you want to be a communist US? Just go down the mission tree and select communist US! Is that a necessarily a problem? No, not in a vacuum. But HOI4 isn't a vacuum. The World War 2 simulation game is no longer a World War 2 simulation game. It is a game that starts in 1939. Except not really, because it has a ton of features that still build up to World War 2. World tension. The two main alliances. Some nations' focus trees. Oh, and who could forget HISTORICAL MODE, the mode that the game is "intended" (based on the achievements") to be played in. So you play in historical mode with focus trees that aren't historical. That wouldn't be a problem if the trees were much more comprehensive than their previous iterations. But at most, they're twice as big. Which means that while sure, the player gets to have a good time, the AI nations get much less to do with their trees. It's a melting pot of "historical" and "choose your own adventure", and it doesn't work.

This game is great. Last stands, suicidal charges (yes, you can do Pickett's charge if you really want to), terrain, range, sight lines, morale, condition, different AIs, casualties that carry on, different outcomes, different victories, etc. etc. It's not expensive either.

Do you have friends? Do you want to play games with your friends?
Buy this game!
Do you not have friends? Are you in need of consolation due to the endless lonely Friday nights spent playing Solitaire?
Consider playing Dwarf Fortress.

After all these years, I think Medieval 2 is still the best total war game out there. Sure, Attila is harder, Warhammer is flashier, and Rome 2... exists? But Medieval 2 is still my favorite. On the surface, it's just a battle simulator with a map, but digging deeper reveals more complexity than expected. Sure the AI isn't the greatest, and general's bodyguard is borderline broken, and there's that two-handed glitch, (and diplomacy is sorta messed up), but I still enjoy the game every time I pick it up. Plus, there's a sizable catalog of mods. Everything from stainless steel, which fixes and adds many features, to Santa's Invasion, which changes the Danes into the North Pole (my personal favorite, come at me), to total overhaul mods like Third Age, which turns Medieval 2 into a LotR game. And even if you get bored of all that, there's still the expansion, Kingdoms, which adds 4(?) campaigns at a very cheap price compared to other CA titles.
This game doesn't feel like an odd cacophony of conflicting and unpolished features, and the expansions don't feel like they were designed by penny-pinching cheapskates (go look at Attila's dlc, for example). It feels like a game.

It's pretty cheap during sales, just get it then.

They abandoned Day of Infamy for this, cut the campaign, and yet, here we are: poorly optimized, lack of maps (which they justify by "the first game didn't have very many maps on launch", to which I say, this is supposed to be better than the first game), weird UI (subjective) which seems to be pandering towards COD and Battlefield players (indeed I've seen a lot of upset Battlefield 5 players who said they would pick up a real game like Sandstorm (which might be a tad ironic, because they were upset over females in BF5 multiplayer, and I'm pretty sure there's females in this multiplayer as well)), less "arcade-hardcore shooter" than "arcade-shooter" now. I really wanted to like this game, but I just can't. It's not a worthy sequel to the original Insurgency, and it was not worth cutting Day of Infamy off (though I shudder to imagine this game if they hadn't pulled the Day of Infamy devs for this).

You may be skeptical at my low playtime of a couple hours and private profile. That's fair, but I wanted to refund it, so I didn't go over a few hours. The profile bit, there's a lot of private profiles.

I:R has potential, but that's all it will ever have. It's core features are quite shallow, and the gameplay devolves into blob, wait, repeat. Given the mile-high stack of tiny 30 dollar dlcs lining Paradox's other games, I'd say that Paradox knew it was shallow and released it anyway. They'd did it so many times before, so I guess they just thought nobody would notice? At any rate, their terrible dlc policy has finally blew up in their faces. If you really want to play this game, then go pirate it. Better than giving Paradox money.

Bamboo EP is a collection of 3 games and an interactive title screen filled with fish, frogs, etc. Its main title (out of the three games) is "Bamboo Heart", which involves you taking control of an animal who's heart was replaced with one made of bamboo. For six dollars, the game packs a suprising amount of content. The controls feel responsive, the action is fluid, Steam has that refund policy in case you don't like it... Give it a chance!