Recent reviews by Karl Franz

Its an amazing game. Take combat from XCOM, and mix it with a rich story like Baldurs Gate 3 in a Warhammer 40k setting and you have this masterpiece of a game.

They are not joking when they say they have over 120 hours of content, and from the looks of it they plan on adding more. (there is certainly enough room on the map for it.)

The first 2 chapters are very well planned out. Very open, and consequences for your actions are very real. Chapter 3 is very different from the first 2 but is a nice change of a pace, although much shorter. Chapter 4 is where things kind of...narrow down, so to speak. It could have a bit more to it, but overall is decent. Chapter 5 its rather short and linear for the end chapter... I hope they add more for it later.

Only major complaints I have are the lack of voiced parts throughout the campaign (you will be reading ALOT). As well as bugged quests that usually require a restart/save reload, or are completely shot.

Going to do a second playthrough on Daring and see what happens.

overall solid 9.5/10

TLDR: It's Oblivion like us older gamers remember but better.

As someone who played back in 2006, I came back to this game with as big of memory gap as possible. I've forgotten 90% of the game. This is as close to as experiencing a game all over again as you can get. The parts I did remember were exactly as we left them storywise.
Some voice lines redone, some replaced, all have been updated with Unreal to run exactly like it used to (jank NPC's and all), but with a fresh coat of paint. Tons of QoL updates from other Bethesda games that make navigating the tabs and your equipment much easiere than before (though some improvements still need to be made)
It's an absolute jewel that we needed to keep ourselves occupied until the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout.


Still, it's a Bethesda game...which unfortunately means alot of bugs and quite a few crashes.
Most of my crashes have been a GPU dump error, which seems to happen once per hour, mainly while transitioning between the open world and building/caves and other environments.

Overall, a 8/10. Would be higher if they fix the crashes.

This IS the Total War: Bronze Age you are looking for.

Its a simple but great game. It knows what it's good at and sticks to it. It has decent comical world building at the start to set the stage for you (think starship troopers, dialed up to 11). The gunplay is good for what the title is.
The devs are constantly putting out updates for new guns, armor and vehicles, with some guy named Joel acting as a world GAME MASTER.
There are microtransactions via battlepass, but you can earn the super credits (premium currency) in game via missions. You also can unlock it thru said battlepass (effectively refunding you your credits by the end)
Overall, don't take the game too seriously. It's meant to be a great co op shooter where you take out objectives while spreading glorious democracy to bugs and bots alike. Whether they like it or not.

Probably one of the best RPG's Ive played... and Ive played quite a few.
The storytelling/writing for this game is comparable in quality to either Larian's previous titles like Divinity or remind me of older titles like Dragon Age Origins in terms of quality and story choice impact.

This game is like what battlefield used to be. Smooth game/gunplay, decent maps and large player matches. Sure the graphics are basicly 32 bit, on par with runescape or minecraft, but that doesnt matter. If anything it helps keep the game stable when you have 256 players trying to sync up for a game.

Okay, So I slept on this series (as well as Paradox interactive as a whole) for awhile.
I bought this game three days ago...and Have played it 12 hours each day since.
If you have played other strategy games such as Civilization or Total war, this game is a good mix of both.
Massive military campaigns in space with an overarching economy that spans the stars with many resources and ways to manage your empire. It is however a Real Time game, not turn based. However you can set the speed of the game with some in game menus or outright pause it to issue orders or manage planets without having to worry about the rest of your empire or some Galatic Senate meeting going on without you.


The game can be a bit overwhelming for your first few playthroughs with the sheer amount of stuff to do. So I highly recommend only getting the base game to start out, then buy DLC as you adjust or learn more about the game. (Maybe get some species packs for flavour if you'd like)

In terms of mechanics, light leveling, and UI? definitely an improvement. (Though alot more could be done to balance this)
Strand as a class is definitely fun and interesting to play with/as. Its main thing to me seems to be mobility (I only have played as Titan, dont know how the Others play as yet).

In terms of storyline, character dev and writing? Atrocious. Its like they had an AI watch all of the marvel movies with the bad one liners/comedy moments, and it then wrote the storyline for this DLC. Any moment where things have an impactful moment, Nimbus or someone else makes some cringy joke to utterly ruin the moment. You cant take anything that happens seriously.
Example without spoilers: Caiatl has several moments where she is confronting Calus via dialogue, only for Nimbus or Ghost to ruin the impact of the moment but saying something asinine.
This whole DLC was suppose to be about the Veil. Everyone in the game talks about how important and powerful it is like you are already suppose to know what it is, and gives us NO context on it. The game does clarify Light vs Darkness to a certain degree, but overall this DLC was lackluster at best. More so in comparison to Witch Queen.

So far, most of the leaders are just reskins of previous ones with or two changes. out of the 9 that have been released so far (3/1/2023), only 3 have been actually noteworthy in terms of change or were new civs entirely.
Also if you play on Mac (Why would you do that to yourself?) it apparently doesn't work?

Game is legit fun. A vast improvement over the original title, and without the toxicity/racist community of Mordhau (mostly).
Where Mordhau is a game you'd have to play endless hours on in order to try and close the skill gap, this game seems to be more about having ridiculous fun with friends since the mechanics are simple, and easy to learn. Consistently has more active players for the 32 vs 32 match.

Downside seems to be balance between Offense and Defense modes. Offense seems to have a clear advantage in terms of being able to achieve the objective.
Multiplayer balancing it another complaint, either with lag, or team switching. (Still better than Mordhau though, where you cant even start on the same team as your friends)
Overall Id say its mindless bloody fun for a group of friends. Needs work in some area's but overall a solid 8/10