Recent reviews by Dalv

Way better than the version from Extended Edition

The more DLCs, the better. Long live AoE!

Awesome!

A classic city builder in the style of Impressions Games. It's gotten way better over the years compared to launch. Definitely worth playing now.

One of the best games I have ever played.

Macabre world design at its best with mute story telling which is extremely well executed and an ending that sticks with you for a long time. It is the kind of game that you need to digest after you have finished it. I have become intrigued by the lore they managed to pull off and I haven't been so engaged when playing a video game in a long time.

Absolutely fantastic. Beautiful graphics, funny moments with units flying everywhere when hit, awesome god powers, glorious titans. No, it's not just nostalgia, this game really was so good and still is. The campaign is still one of the best ones out there.

I couldn't play much more than 1 hour. The graphics and entire artstyle are just too ugly. I have seen ugly games before, but there were high expectations from this so called "next gen / future of RTS" game. The fact that it is early access is not going to change the artstyle, nope, that is here to stay. It lacks any personality, it's just bland and uninteresting with the units, buildings, universe and lore they are trying to go for. I have no idea what they were thinking with this game, but this is not the RTS to look forward to.

Edit: It's gotten better after updates, but no one is playing it now. So if you grab it it will be just for singleplayer, unless you have friends who want to play it. I do recommend it for nice visuals and some Homeworld vibes.


MULTIPLAYER

If you are interested in a multiplayer review, here it is. Decided to focus on this, since the campaign has been in the spotlight here plenty (although I will mention the campaign at the end too). And it makes me sad to write this for a game I waited for so long and wanted to enjoy, but here we go:

- Multiplayer is peer to peer only. This doesnt only have lag implications. If the player who hosted the game leaves the game, then the game has to switch host to another player. This process takes a long time, I'm talking minutes, but most of the times it just doesn't work, the game freezes while waiting for the host transition. So 2v2 or 3v3 games are almost unplayable.
- Liniar tech research instead of Tech-Tree research meaning you have to go through all units regardless and it's just a numbers game, no different strategies. Everybody has something from any unit. It's just a rush for whoever kills the enemy mothership first and meta is to rush with your mothership spamming all kinds. The only complexity should come from positioning but units dont react as they are told either, many times they seem to bug while trying to shoot or move. The end result is usually a big blob of units mixed together.
- visibility of different unit types is problematic. Even many of the big units have similar design.
- engine trail colors are only available in 4 colors now (and only if you bought the premium edition that is) and this adds to the lack of visibility because most times different players will have same engine trail colors
- no sub-systems targeting like engine, frigate production etc
- no full post match stats like resources collected by each player, upgrades made, units etc.
- if you quit a game before it ends, you dont see post stats (as minimalistic as they are now), only back to main menu or desktop
- teammates not grouped together auto, but each have to pick slots which makes hosting a game seem like herding cats
- above mentioned position slots reset when new player joins
- new joined player gets team 4, 5, 6 etc instead of just 1 and 2
- games lobby very small only a few games fit in same screen, like it was designed for a small LAN. You cant see which player is in that game, no information other than game type and how many players joined. You join just to find out the extra players are AIs.
- while in a lobby/hosted game, you cant see the main lobby with other hosted games
- no matchmaking for teamgames
- no ELO or ranking system to differentiate players skill, only the level you unlocked in wargames is shown
- maps are too small and too few. Only 6 maps out of which only 1 is for 3v3
- no 4v4, what happened to that? The max is 3v3 now.
- no spectator mode
- replay mode not functional lacking even things like which player is who and only the PoV
of the player who recorded it can be viewed
- no team chat, the enemy sees all your messages as well
- in lobby chat if someone sends msg while you were typing, you have to type all over again
- wargames is a new mode with rogue-lite elements, unfortunately it gets boring fast after a very short honeymoon. It has many design drawbacks like players often separated from eachother which makes playing with someone pointless, and you only have access to a few units with which you have to constantly shoot at bullet sponging enemies later on. There isnt much to see here unfortunately.

I have finished the campaign as well, and while it didnt bother me as much like others, but it was waaay too short (it took me 4-5 hours only while I heard ) and the story just forgettable.
But for me campaign is just an introduction, while multiplayer is the main thing which keeps an RTS alive on the long run. I am so sad to see that a game that I have eagerly waited for such a long time turns out to have so many shortcomings after being in development for so long. Some of these can be easily patched and improved, and I hope they will be, other are there like that by design unfortunately, but the damage has been done and it saddens me like I said in the beginning that HW3 turned out like this after eagerly waiting for it for so many years.

We are talking 5+ years of development here, and the game feels like an expansion to an actual complete game. It feels like a game that is made in 2 years. There is absolutely no way you would work continuously on this game for so many years and it turns out like barren this. So in all honesty I tend to think that they kinda pretended to work most of the time in order to lengthen to development period as much as possible so they'd get paid easily for as long as possible, I wouldnt be surprised if this was true.

I will say this, it's worth buying it only at a big discount later, and only if you are one of the following 2:
1. An RTS addict that plays most of the important titles in the genre or a HW fan.
2. Want to have a visual treat with some nice graphics and sounds, or if you want to test your graphics card or monitor, because it does look absolutely gorgeous.

Finished the North African Operation campaign (the classic style one, not the open map one) and I quite enjoyed it. The game is not bad like people say. If I were to come up with some criticism it would be the camera which can't be zoomed out at a satisfactory level, and the sound effects which are not beefy (at all) as they used to be in the previous two games. There is something wrong with the audio for sure.

Other than that, at a big discount the game is totally worth it. Also tried some skirmish 4v4 with AIs and it was fun. The game is more fast paced than the previous 2 CoHs I would say. Worth it if you are into RTS.

I get the nostalgia thing, but come on, this shooter is very outdated in every department.