Recent reviews by Mackeroni

There's a solid idea, but there's also a lot of jank and it's sadly a bit undercooked. This was one of the earlier titles that was developed when Kickstarter had become a big thing, so development was apparently a little weird with a lot of vertical slices and some inexperience.

Still, I do recommend it. There are some seriously good ideas and game mechanics, even if they're janky.

If you pick this up and even though it's your first playthrough, I wholeheartedly recommend the Terror from the Void mod that basically overhauls and smooths out most of the mechanics and balance. It's on the workshop, so yeah.

Apparently this Music Pack DLC has some extra missions in it. I don't think I ever actually played them. The music is that good.

Get it on sale, though.

Our industrious little villagers will travel through the cold, the rain, the deserts, for hundreds of miles to help clear a farm of harvested crops ... while their ACTUAL workplace sits empty.

Charcoal Burner workers for examples are the most service-minded people you know, because they'll sometimes not merely drop off their coal at the nearby storage, but instead hand-deliver the coal to whatever industry needs them, whether that industry is close by or on the other side of the city. This is bad, because now they're not working in your Charcoal Burners, turning your wood into coal, actually doing their job.

Hauling should be the job of the Laborers and the Hauling Service. Why are the actual workplace workers going around helping farms and hand-delivering resources?

There's also a big emphasis on trading, which is with a global market that has unlimited resources. I'm not sure if this is (was?) some placeholder for the future or not, because it seems that with the inclusion of AI cities, that you would all buy and sell to each other. One city could produce a lot of wood and thus sell that to the market where others could buy it. There is absolutely no reason to interact with other cities right now. The game is also 3 years old by this point, so I don't know where that's going.

Stupidly good if you like logistics and can get pretty damn difficult if you enable all the game settings. You pick your difficulty.
Like a fusion of Factorio and Cities Skylines. Love it.

The crustiest game you'll ever play, but good god does it have a lot of meat to bite into. You don't get 700 hours for nothing.

If Death were to suddenly appear behind me, explaining that due to a clerical error I would have to be brought down into the underworld to fill his quota. (But, being a nice guy, he allows me to select a single video game to play for the rest of eternity) That game would be Dwarf Fortress.

It's not the most emotional game, nor the most intuitive game or even the most fun game. But this game has depth on par with the Mariana Trench.

Knights of Honor 2 is the most sequel-y sequel I think I've ever seen in a game - to a straight up impressive degree. Nearly every single feature of the first game is here, with more things added (which is great, as I was a fan of the first game)
... To the point where I almost suspect that this first started out as a remaster in early development, but the developers just continued with it until it became a sequel. The diplomacy UI with the parchment and all is literally lifted from the first game for crying out loud.

Anyway, you might not be a returning player, so here's the short version: Take Total War and Europa Universalis and put it in a blender.

The longer version is that you select a country from three different points in history. These only affect the nations and borders, as time does not progress until an eventual "end date" like in a typical Paradox game. Each nation is similar, with slight differences: Religion and culture. Religions have different effects and features, while culture can change which units you can recruit or unlock unique ones.

Your nation has council slots which you can fill with different roles by hiring knights (And your children/family members when they grow up) who can take different jobs: Marshal, Merchant, Diplomat, Spy and Cleric. However, you are limited to a max number of knights, so as the game progresses and you expand, you have to pivot appropriately to make room for other types that might become more important. For example, early game, having many merchants with small trade routes are important. But late game, you should focus on fewer but consolidated "bigger" long-term trade routes to make room for other types of knights.

The actual close up combat is pretty lackluster sadly. The first game was in 2D, which was pretty rare even for its time as most games had transitioned to three dimensions, but it helped make the units respond, move and act pretty snappy and on point. But the transition to 3D has caused something of a hiccup here I think, as it's lacking polish. Units tend to get stuck on each other a lot and charging cavalry tends to suddenly stop when it meets a single straggler unit that's out of its formation, letting the rest of the enemy squad run away. Chasing an archer squad with your cavalry can be a hit or miss, with either your cavalry properly charging into them or getting hung up on squad stragglers. The unit stats are also still fairly fuzzy. "Bigger numbers are good", but it's hard to know to what degree.

Having the game be real-time instead of turn-based on the campaign map feels fresh. The building system is hugely improved and has surprising depth with the upgrading system.
Building your military is also tough, as manpower and population can be brutally difficult to build (And rightly so!), meaning it's not just gold that's the deciding factor.

I like this game. It's not revolutionary and it doesn't re-invent the wheel. But what it does, it does well. 45€ is a fairly large asking price, though. Wishlist it and wait for a discount however small, don't let it drop off your radar if you think it sounds interesting.

*Chef's kiss*
Pretty much every feature from the previous games have been improved: Diplomacy, sieges, animations, effects. The works.
If you've never played Total War before, I highly recommend this one as the introductory game. The prologue is a fantastic tutorial.

Just note that you need a chonkier computer for Warhammer 3 compared to 1 and 2. As of this review, the recommendation is to turn down the shadow quality and change the anti-aliasing to FXAA or even off.

Edit: I almost forgot! There are no microtransactions. It's a passion project, so nothing like that is even designed around it. You can donate if you want to support the dev team by buying their donation badges on the store.

It's a fantastic RTS. Up there among Company of Heroes 1 for me. The physics-based warfare never stops surprisingly you with what you can do. As of right now, someone blocked a nuke by parking his hovercraft over the launcher, causing the nuke to hit the gunship and exploding on launch.

It's easy to learn, but difficult to master. Good graphics, great considering its a free title. Some nice shaders doing most of the beautification. If you plan on playing on the 16v16 lobbies, be prepared to decrease your graphics settings if you don't have a beast of a computer. With my 6-year old potato I have to put it on minimal setting for the 32 player games. Which can get ridiculously large. But fun.

I'm glad it's finally on Steam. I've been an on-again off-again kind of player with Zero-K for many years. Occasionally popping back and seeing all the progress it's been going through. But back then, there was a distinct lack of players due to its obscurity and it did turn me off from playing for any extended periods of time.

But now that it's finally on Steam, the lobbies are full all day, every day, with FFAs, massive Teams matches and chicken AI. It's really great to see it finally get its many years of development see some proper audiences.

And please:
If you're joining up a server and need help with build strategies or what something does, don't be afraid to ask. Some of the veterans have been playing for a lo-o-ong time and will definitely want to help you. Communication is key. The campaign is pretty good for learning the basics.

Hasn't worked for a long time. You've got maybe a 1/10 chance of actually running this thing on a modern computer.

Damned shame. This was a fun little game.