Recent reviews by Holo

2 weeb5 m3 0/10 5/7 9/11 no quikscoeps

Feels like World of Tanks, except with romans and greeks. Much more arcade-ish than a regular Total War game, but with a lot more options to customize and unlock new and better units. Really good for a Free to Play game, and there are no real pay-to-win factors in it either. Easy to learn, easy to play and extremely fun.


This game is not pay-to-win, more like pay-to-progress-faster. You can buy gold for real money, which can be used to do the following things:


-Buy more color packs which are used to customize the looks of your soldiers. Doesn't affect gameplay at all, other than your troops looking more customized.
-You can buy certain troops that can only be purchased with gold. My experience with them is that they look cool, but they are nothing special in their actual combat effectiveness.
-Convert your gold into commander exp (Free exp) or silver.


Silver is the only currency that is actually useful, and it is easily obtainable by playing the game. Factors like friendly fire and how much damage your units take decrease the amount of silver you earn from a battle, however even with those factors chiming in you will usually earn several thousand silver from every battle.

Overall a great arcade free to play game. It lacks the feeling of accomplishment that you will find in regular Total War games, however the game can not really be compared to any of the main Total War titles.

I was one of the many who pre-ordered the game back when the hype was off the charts. It is no secret that the release of Rome II was a disaster and disappointed thousands of fans. The game did not live up to its hype at all, and was riddled with bugs, full of obsolete features and lacked many of the best features from previous games (Like the family tree). If I wrote this review back in 2013, I would not have recommended this game to any one.

As it happens though, I am writing this review in 2015, one and a half year later. CA might have let the community down with the game release, however they did not let us down in the way they handled it. After 16 significant patches, the game has went from being one of the worst to one of the best Total War games. On top of that, we have been given lots of free-DLCs, and even full expansions like the Emperor Edition by CA as compensation. There are still things I do not like about Rome II Total War, like for example how most factions of the same culture are almost identical. However, it needs to be said that this game is a ton of fun, and it is very easy to get into. The only thing that is confusing about the game is the politics system, which I still think needs a complete rework.

The community itself should also be credited for their effort in making numerous fantastic mods that have improved the overall gameplay by a lot. This game has so many mods covering the so many different needs. Even if you eventually grow tired of the vanilla game, you can still add hundreds of hours of gameplay with the help of mods.

Now about the game's DLC policy. I want to state that this game do have a lot of overpriced DLCs. As an owner of almost every DLC and expanision, I will tell you to stay away from most ''culture pack DLCs'' unless you are especially interested in one of the factions it adds.The so called ''additional content'' are usually 3 factions with identical unit rosters to already-exisiting factions. The only ''essential'' culture DLC, is the Greek Culture Pack which adds in Athens, Sparta and Epirus, all three which should have been in the vanilla game to be hounest. The only other downloadable content that is worth getting is definitely the Blood & Gore pack, which adds a ton of entertainment to battles. Any campaign expansions like Caesar in Gaul, Hannibal at the Gates and Wrath of Sparta are worth getting if you are interested in any of the specific factions, characters or historical events. The game is worth its full price, but its DLCs are not. You should not buy anything from CA unless it's on atleast 50% sale. Trust me, buying these DLCs at full price is not worth it, except for the Blood & Gore pack and Greek Culture pack which are rather essential.

To conclude this review, I want to say that Rome II is in its current state a fantastic entertaining strategy game. It's not 100% historical, so don't buy this expecting everything to be historically accurate, but the alternative history is an essential part of the Total War franchise. The sheer amount of factions and units in this game is simply amazing, even though a lot of units are very similar or even identical, especially amongst barbarian factions. The game is easy to get into, and probably one of the easier Total War games in general. You can spend tens of hours with each faction, and personally I have played over 170 hours of this game and I have only touched a few of the many factions that are avaiable to play. This game has gotten a lot of hate, and rightfully so, due to its problems at release, however the game has reached a state where it's much closer to the ideal Total War game.

I'd give it a 9/10 at its current state, but due to the many problems in the past and the ridicolous amount of crappy DLC I can only give it a final verdict of 8/10. It's a super entertaining game, but it's a bit too easy and doesn't give too much of a challenge once you reach mid-late game in a campaign. If you want a challenging Total War game, get Attila: Total War instead. It's better than Rome II in every aspect, except for its timeline.

Recently bought this game after seeing some videoes of it on Youtube (Thanks DiplexHeatedHD). Hearts of Iron 3 is a game that takes place in the years right before and during WW2. You can play as any nation in the world, though I can recommend playing as some kind of major nation (I tried to take over Scandinavia as Norway, didn't work out too well). You can align yourself towards a faction (Axis, Allies or Comintern) and once you join that faction you no longer control your own diplomacy. So if you want to be a rogue state and follow your own rules, keep yourself away from joining any of the three factions. Be aware though, that a lot of the major nations guarantee the lesser nation's independence and you can end up in deep trouble if you get an entire faction on your tail. However as a rogue faction, you can potentially exploit the world war by grabbing territories from unaligned factions creating yourself an Empire, or you can join a faction and fight for victory in the world war.

I gotta say, the game is surprisingly good. Once you jump into a session it's very hard to quit, like today I played as Brazil and I ended up sitting for 7 hours straight because it felt so satisfying when accomplishing stuff such as liberating countries, annexing neighbors and researching new technologies. This is my first paradox game and after playing this for only 15 hours I already feel like I have to buy the expansions in the future and perhaps other paradox games such as Victoria 2.

A great strategy game if you like to micro-manage an entire nation's economy, diplomacy, military, technology, politics etc.

9/10, would definitely recommend to all you history-lovers out there.