Recent reviews by mtm70

1100 hours in annnd...

The game is fun, no doubt about it, but for the most part it's a prettier Warband. Without mods the game is pretty barebones in content. The game is not hard. Once you've hit lvl 30+ a few times you can steamroll the game.

If you are going to make you own kingdom, in order to recruit other lords you will have to chase them down to give gifts or release them after battle to get your rep with them high to recruit them.

If you have multiple towns the rep notifications from the Governor with the merchants of the town is non-stop. Each notification has a sound. In my current playthrough I get so many that they actually queue and lag behind.

With the Perk system, some are useful. Overall most are worthless. This is due to the fact that each perk has a role. Like, Personal, Captain, Governor, Party Leader. Governor perks are worthless to player. Players can't be governors. Others are role specific Surgeon, Scout, Engineer, Quartermaster.

Companions are essentially non developmental. Scouts will increase their Scout skill. Surgeons just stop at 160ish. Engineers won't go higher than 100ish. They learn other skills at an abysmal rate therefore they barely level. Maybe 2 levels if you're lucky.

Sieges are plagued by the AI and player controlled soldiers not using ladders, siege towers and engines in a reasonable fashion. If there are 2 ladders to one side to scale a wall, only one will be used. Some siege towers have 3 ladders. Typically 1 is used normally but you might see 2 every so often. Very rarely 3.

Now what I consider to be the absolute best part of the game. You will spend 90% of your time on the campaign map. Moving around fight, recruit, siege, defend, etc. You will do this all at a whopping 6-12 frames per second. The menus load slowly. The last 3 to 4 patches have dramatically reduced the campaign map performance to a level that is 1 more headache away from never playing again. Battles are just fine and have normal FPS. Taleworlds is indicating this might, could possible be a bug and have no ETA on a fix or if there will be a fix. With release happening this year.

The very fundamental basics of a good game are there. Taleworlds just hasn't done anything with them. They also haven't appeared to want to do anything with them either. Rumor is they've moved on to another game or are working on DLC leaving this one to wallow in the depths of slow development.

Would I recommend this game? If you like M&B and have the cash then have at it. If you're on the fence, buy Warband instead.

This game.It's difficult to put into words what exactly is going on in the game. The game provided little to no information about customers. Some people will say you can look at their satisfaction. You can, but it doesn't mean anything. Everyone is 97% satisfied and yet you're losing money. Doesn't tell you what they want. Doesn't tell you anything about how to set slots, set hotel prices, set theater prices. The game will tell you what "satisfaction" is at a current price but this doesn't really have any bearing on the gameplay at all. There is no way to influence customers. There does seem to be a mindset that if you let customers win a lot, they will spend more. Seems counter intuitive. Through my gameplay it appears to be more of a customer comes in with $200 and that's all you get. As your casino get's bigger it loses more and more money. With no explanation as to why. There no in game info and no "manual." It's decent. In retrospect, I wouldn't purchase it. Hindsight being 20/20 and all.

I can't in good conscience recommend this game at this time. The game plays well. I haven't had any issues. The main issue for this game is there is nothing to do. The game does provide the player with tons of info about what is going on, but once you get past your initial building there isn't anything there to do. I understand that the Dev has posted a roadmap. While that's fine, there is also quite a lot of silence from the Dev. The game has potential to be a good city builder but as it stands right now, it isn't. I would keep an eye on it and see how it progresses. IF the dev is adding items from the roadmap and is closer to release might be worth a buy.

80 hours into the game. I do have some buyers remorse. After 80 hours it becomes very apparent that the game's mechanics need redone.

An example of this is by decorating, unlocking, and gathering recipes for Townsfolk or Nobles you make equal or less than you do catering to the distressed, outlaws, travelers. The favor mechanic is another mechanic that needs help. If you have 3 factions unlocked the game will balance all three even if you cater to only 1. Thus you can never raise your favor with 1 group any higher than the average of all the groups unlocked. With 3 unlocked you get 33% for each, with 4 25% with 5 20%.

Employees in the Inn constantly going on break and the better tier the employee is the longer they stay on break. This is meant to be resolved with shifts. There are 3 shifts. You can assign each worker "break" on a specific shift. If you have 50+ employees you will need at least another 20 to cover shifts. Also the size of the staff and number of beds is ridiculous. All employees want to sleep on breaks.

Adventures are essentially useless. They have little to no chance of success and the rewards aren't working. Vedetas serve no purpose. Bards are at least entertaining, but I haven't seen any direct affect on customers.

Having a room at high rating does nothing.

Employees often wander off without completing jobs.

Multiple sub windows in the game are non-functional.

The finances tab only records and displays data for 90 days. The data is charted in a bar graph.

The more you play the game the more you realize how bad the mechanics are. It's ultimately a question of will the devs take the time to resolve some of these glaring issues or not. I bought the game based on the fact that they seem to be addressing things. It's the core mechanics that kill the game and are what needs addressing. In addition to the numerous bugs. At a later date the game may be worth picking up on sale. Until such time I'd wait.

**Update*** with 2.0.8 it is clearly evidenced that the devs have moved on from resolving in-game issues and mechanics to releasing scenarios or content. Unfortunate really. My previous statement regarding wait has now changed. I would not recommend buying this game at any time for any price.

**Update** Today 12/5/2019 the Devs just announced, via their Discord, they will be producing a console version and announced "new cool expansions for PC" and there will be a MAC version. Instead of putting out new content and new version the Devs actually try to resolve some of the ongoing bugs in the game? Fix your game first then move on. This team is absolutely mind boggling. I don't begrudge them wanting to make some money, that is the goal here, but the product needs to be in better shape than it's current state of bugdom.

Why there are 2 versions of the Game of the Year is either the dumbest thing ever or the smartest. Smartest from the standpoint of how many people have bought the game twice to get the right version.

GET THE DELUXE EDITION.

While really a review of valve, the game it's self is just fine. It's a classic.

I cannot recommend the GOTY version only. You must have the deluxe version.

In many ways I'm deeply disappointed in this game, but most if that disappointment came towards the end of the game as I was finishing it.

First off, this is a dinosaur simulation game with very minor park building aspects.

I'm not going to rehash what a lot of other players have already said.
I found the mechanics easy to cheese and lacking any depth.
The system for assigning various tasks clunky and oh so tedious.
The dinos boring.
The screen to incubate the dinos has no customization or sorting.
The contracts are uninteresting and flat.
In the movies the amount of land is huge. Here each island is teeny tiny with not much room for anything.
The buildable area boundary marker is terrible.
There is some information about the dinos that the game doesn't even provide in any way. Looking at you Welfare Penalty.
I've had multiple ranger jeeps get hung up on buildings they are trying to drive around when there's plenty of room.
There is no explanation of the metrics the game uses for assigning Stars to your DInos or Facility.
For anyone who has played any of the great simulation, city-builder type games, this game is the dichodomy of those games. For all this game is, it falls terribly short of being anything worthwhile. Let alone for 55-60 bucks.

Basically what has happened here is that a game was made to profit off an extremely popular movie franchise with disregard to making a decent game. The game feels like a cash grab and plays like a cash grab.

My best advice is to completely avoid this game. There may be some point in the future that the game is actually decent, but today is not the day and seems very unlikely any time soon.

I payed 59.99 for the digital deluxe version. I have 5 starred every island.