Recent reviews by Crimson7

If someone was to ask me whats the best non-From Software soulslike I'd say Hollow Knight.

But if thats not considered soulslike enough, then the answer is EASILY Lies of P. Lies of P is so far beyond any other non-FS soulslike its a must-play for any souls fan. If you told me this was made by From Software, I'd almost believe you. In fact, the combat here feels more like a natural continuation of Sekiro and Bloodborne than Elden Ring, which didn't incorporate enough from those games.

How much you enjoy Lies of P will depend heavily on what you enjoy Soulslikes for.

If its the combat, I think theres no question Lies of P has the best combat mechanics of any Soulslike. It doesn't feel as polished as Sekiro but it offers a wider range of playstyles. The bosses are all at a very high level of polish, though none but Laxasia reach the best From Software bosses for me.

If its the lore and the atmosphere, I think they've done a really competent job. The Belle Epoque inspiration is cool and the story is well told and makes you care about the characters.

If its the level and world design, thats kind of where Lies of P is a big disappointment. Lies of P is to Dark Souls 3 what Dark Souls 3 is to Dark Souls 1, in terms of level design. DS3 was mostly a long hallway with a few branching paths. Lies of P has basically no branching paths and no significant exploration and nonlinearity. Its the primary shortcoming of an otherwise great game.

I have a lot of thoughts about this game, some negative and some positive, but overall I have to say that it is very rare to see games that have this level of passion, creativity, and artistry. I haven't played too many games that I consider ART (Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus come to mind), but this definitely should be considered art.

And by art I dont just mean the artstyle, although that is certainly magnificent and one of the highlights of this game. But also the immersion through worldbuilding and historical accuracy, which is surely unparalleled in the medium of gaming. And also the plot. I was sceptical of them wrapping up the plot adequately by the third act, but they exceeded my expectations.

I will say, this game owes a LOT to the novel 'the Name of the Rose', which is coincidentally my favorite novel of all time. In plot, characters, and setting, it borrows heavily from Eco, but I think thats fine. It diverges enough to be its own unique story, and in any case games shoul seek inspiration from high quality literature to lift this medium to reach the quality of classic literature.

Now I do have some gripes with this game. First of all, some of the dialogue is definitely far too long winded and doesn't really build the characters, the world, or advance the plot. It doesnt really seem to add anything and it discourages me from attempting a second playthrough....

...Although I'm not particularly keen on starting a second playthrough anyway because I think this game, like many other 'choices matter games' kind of suffer from an 'illusion of choice' issue. Many 'choices matter' games only allow for some minor divergences or separate paths to solve the same problem. It is understandable because developers do not have the time to implement a branching storyline with multiple forks. But at the end of the day, playing as a hedonist or a bookworm in this game doesn't make a huge difference in gameplay, and as far as I could tell, there weren't that many decisions that made a huge impact on the plot.

Overall I give this a 7/10

EDIT: Let me add to this by saying I recommend this lukewarmly for people LIKE ME. Econ nerds, Victorian era geeks, and fans of Victoria 2. I don't consider this a good game btw, I give it a 6/10. My primary reason for recommending it is that there are simply no other games like this, other than Victoria 2. I still think Victoria 2 is better, and I would recommend HPM over this. But for so long, people have made Vicky 3 clones with rudimentary modding tools. And now we have this that modders can build on. Its kind of BS, but I'm still glad they made it.

As a modder, a phd economist and a huge Victorian Era nerd, this was my most anticipated game of all time.

Now normally I don't even leave reviews for these kinds of games with only 68 hours of game time. But since the top review right now had 4 hours of gametime upon review, I think 68 hours is more than enough.

The majority of reviews right now are just saying this game is bad compared to Vicky 2 after playing it for 4 hours and giving it a thumbs down. I'll actually compare the two in depth. But for people who havent played Vicky 2; Victoria 3 is an incredibly high resolution historical simulator that has good foundations to be a great game, but is horrifically unpolished and stripped down at launch.

Now to compare with Victoria 2 point by point:

Diplomacy: HPM > Victoria 2 > Victoria 3

This is probably the most stunning thing to me. Victoria 2 had an awful diplomacy system that involved clicking a lot of boring buttons to increase relations. Victoria 3 is essentially the same thing but you click less buttons. HOWEVER, Victoria 2 had the excellent sphere of influence system that Vicky 3 should have built on, not scrapped. HPM went further and had excellent Great War mechanics and other things. Given its been 11 years, to go backwards on one of the most important aspects to improve of Victoria 2 is really disappointing. I guess we will get it with DLC.

Military: HPM = Victoria 2 = Victoria 3

Victoria 2's military system was awful and involved a lot of micro. Victoria 3 removes the micro but its still an awful system and is clunkier than I thought. ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS PORT OVER BASIC HOI4 FRONTS PARADOX. I guess we will get it with DLC.

Flavor: HPM >> Victoria 2 >> Victoria 3

Victoria 3 is so devoid of flavor its insane. While each nation has one or two unique goals, and 3 or 4 unique events, thats basically it. Playing Russia should not be as devoid of flavor as Ethiopia. I guess we will get it with DLC.

Internal Politics: HPM > Victoria 2 = Victoria 3

I'm not sold on interest groups replacing parties. Its not bad but theres so few ways to interact with them. After 11 years I expected better. I do really like bureaucracy. Its a reasonable mana tool to have in the game. Authority not so much.

Pops: Victoria 3 >> Victoria 2 and HPM
Not much to say here. More pops in Victoria 3 that more accurately reflect the workforce. I particularly like construction and shopkeepers.

AI: HPM >> Victoria 2 >> VIctoria 3

The AI at launch is utterly horrific. It feels like I'm playing in a dead world where nothing happens and on the odd occasion something happens, it ends in a ridiculous circumstance.

Economy: Victoria 3 > HPM >> Victoria 2 (WITH CAVEAT)

Now, the most important part. And I'll say this. IF you are playing a planned economy in Victoria 3, then the economic simulation is fantastic. Theres lots of things that need to be adjusted, like the treatment of peasants not being realistic to the actual rural-urban migration, but overall it is excellent. And thats the main part of the game and thats why I do recommend it.

ON THE OTHER HAND, there IS no alternative to a planned economy in Victoria 3. Every economy is planned. And I know theres lots of arguments for why this is, but at the end of the day if I'm playing Laissez Faire or a Planned economy, it all feels the same to me.

And that is a ridiculous thing in an economic simulation. Theres no rational agent investment.

All the other problems I mentioned are probably going to be fixed in DLC. This problem of capitalist investment though, is not likely to be solved as its game philosophy. Personally, this breaks the game for me and I need to mod it.

So overall, I'm quite disappointed. So why do I recommend this game? Because, at the end of the day, no other studio has the guts to create a game like this. And if I have nothing to compare it to, it is a one of a kind product, and its a niche that I'm happy is being filled even if its not to my exact taste. Time to mod it I guess.

I'm afraid I must change my recommendation for this game after 4 years.

When it first released I praised that the foundations of the game seemed better than CK2. Stress was a system that could force roleplaying. Army compositions had promise. It had many of CK2's mechanics from the start.

And yet, 4 years later, the developers have shown no understanding of solving the basic problems with the game.

First and foremost, the game is unbelievably easy. Even without minmaxing, if you are remotely competent at the game, you will breeze through it. There is virtually no challenge that you do not have to force to create yourself. The developers are not interested in creating a challenge, and therefore there is no need to interact with any existing depth in the game, nor any need for developers to add any further depth or mechanics to the game. And thats all fine because the playerbase they've attracted is not interested in anything complex anyway.

In the past 4 years practically every single addition to the game has just been extending the power fantasy. Now you can throw feasts to get more prestige, pilgrimages for more piety. You can accumulate massive artifacts, and great courts, that give you permanent buffs for the rest of your playthrough. Lifestyles buff it even further. Dynastic legacies. Cultural legacies. The buffs accumulate, the obstacles do not. Its literally just a power fantasy.

Any attempt to immerse you is just a bunch of random events that pop up every 10 seconds which become extremely repetitive very quickly. After 50 years you'll have seen every event that exists in the game. And long before that you'll become bored by the painstakingly dull writing, on top of none of these events even mattering because theres no challenge and you can see the results of your options rather than needing to read. Because, again, games that require reading might not sell well.

The entire game is built for memes and realizing power fantasies. If you are looking for depth and complexity, look elsewhere. You'll find more in Risk, and thats not an exaggeration. This is easily the worst paradox game ever made.

This is by far the best Paradox game. HOI4 is about war, EU4 about empires, CK2 about characters, and Victoria 2 is about Economics. And the game does its central theme far better than the other paradox games do theirs. The economic system here is actually quite great, primarily because of the EXCELLENT Pop system. The other mechanics in the game are not quite as well fleshed out (particularly diplomacy, which is mind numbingly tedious), but the number of events and some very polished mods like HPM add a lot to the game.

This is definitely not a game for everyone. Get it if you enjoy historical simulators or macro economics.

Well, I've never cared much about graphics but to get it out of the way, the graphics suck. I think they were downgraded intentionally to be able to support a move to mobile platforms. Well, no thanks.

The bigger problem: The AI sucks. The AI sucks so bad that playing this game is entirely pointless singleplayer, unless you love playing God. Me, I like a challenge, and the AI cannot provide one without 1000 bonuses.

Other problems: The game only now has the same number of features as 5 and is far more expensive. Mod tools are more limited. Many new civs are silly, and several choices of the leaders are just plain stupid (Catherine Medici for France?) Well I guess they had to satisfy their identity politics agenda, and therefore had to cram as much diversity in as possible. Virtue signalling over anything else. I mean, I like seeing more women representation, but not when it causes you to choose unfitting leaders for civilizations.

I guess this game is tolerable in multiplayer. Thats it.

Well, its about time I reviewed this game. I've actually played it for well over 100 hours and modded for it too. This game has great ideas, and many great mechanics. But put it all together and you get an extremely flawed game. The base AI simply does not work. I can be playing Italy against France ( a superior army) and the AI will suicide 3 million troops to my 1,000 casualties and then collapse. Brilliant. Expert AI (a MOD) makes this slightly better, but the core of the game is not accessible to mods, so there will always be silly things like my slightly better equipped Americans landing on Normandy and inflicting a 200,000 casualties to 0 (yes ZERO) of their own. That entirely ruins immersion for me.

And the only way for the AI to put up a decent fight is to give it cheats that just makes it much stronger, not smarter. Kind of ruins the immersion of a historically accurate sandbox.

Not to mention the devs of this game keep updating it in horrific ways. Broke the navy, broke the launcher. Still haven't given a LEDGER, which the main dev on the forum keeps insisting people don't want despite multiple people asking since the games release.

Much of the game (Like the UI, trade, or the lack of a ledger) seems like an arcade game, while the other part is very complex.

I feel like I have to write a review to counter the new complaints about 2.2.

The latest update - 2.2 'Le Guin' - adds many layers of complexity to Stellaris. It should honestly be called Stellaris 3.0, because the game post-patch is extremely different. Planets actually make sense now, and the whole system is far less arcadey and is more reminescent of Victoria 2 with its 'pops' and stratified workforce.

It's all done exceptionally well. HOWEVER, many players will complain because they don't like the added complexity. These complaints are absurd. Stellaris, like most Paradox games, was never supposed to be a casual arcade game. It just was like that because of lack of content and depth. Now that Paradox added content and depth to it, the more casual players will find issues with it, but those players looking for meaningful gameplay will find that Stellaris is much improved.

More and more devs have been removing content and casual players have been embracing it because lack of content means yay LESS MICROMANAGEMENT! What they call MICROMANAGEMENT I call actual depth of gameplay. And that's what Stellaris added in 2.2. Thanks Paradox for rehauling this game and making it a much better experience.

This DLC is one of the best that Paradox has released in recent years, for any of their games. HF adds a lot of important new mechanics, and makes pagans and Catholics a lot more fun to play. It's a must buy DLC, and well worth the price.

Fairly good game. The base mechanics are quite good. The number of events and stuff isn't really, and I personally find that the game can sometimes get a bit boring and repetitive. That said, there is nothing else out there that is like this at all. You can actually play as a noble family from 770 to 1453 AD, scheming and fighting your way to the top. And that is quite fun. It's very moddable and mods like HIP or CK2+ propel the base game into truly great territory.

HOWEVER, I think Paradox's business practices are absolutely shameful. It is not acceptable to have a 7 year old game cost 40 dollars, or its old DLC to cost 12-20 dollars! The full game experience costs 200-300 dollars, and that is just not acceptable.

Get this game on sale, and never any other time. Not because it's not good, but because the price of entry is so steep.