Recent reviews by integ3r

As far as divs go these are interesting to play and offer good variety.

Berlin Command, 35th US, 27ya and Rügener already makes the pack worth it.

It's not all super meta or competitive but the divisions have unique gimmicks and units which makes them fun to play.

Basically if you want more divisions, this is definitely a good pack.

56-ya is a neat division with some interesting gimmicks and units.

But unfortunately 101st is a really poorly/sloppily designed division and to compensate for this it's just given some tanks and chapparals so it will at least be playable. For how little effort and thought put into it unfortunately sours this DLC and deserves a thumbs down.

Anything cool about it like the Stinger Apache is tainted by the fact that AA helicopters have such immense trouble aligning their missile to shoot at anything and it just ruins whatever fun could be had.

Airborne vehicles don't have enough availability to have fun for more than 5 minutes and the helicopter transports are overpriced to prevent "spamming".

Would only get this if you really want to play 56-ya.

FInal boss will make you develop reflexes you didn't know you could.
"Cat-like" reflexes one might say. 🥁
10/10 would git gud again

It's more elden ring, what's not to like? More bosses, dungeons, weapons, armors, spells.

However, dungeons and areas do have a habit of just being "corridors/spaces with enemies in them" with little else going on or interactivity with the environment. Fun enough but also a little stale as it lacks any real surprises.
Every time the game goes a bit outside its established conventions and has a "puzzle" it "informs" you quite heavily and so ruins the surprise. Given the online message system it makes little sense why the devs would go out of their way to hint the solutions to puzzles for you.

Weird and esoteric mysteries would be one of the strong suits of such a community focused game, but doesn't really try.

Still, "more elden ring" is cool enough despite not blowing my mind.

Post-completion:
There's some impressive vistas and art but still it may have lacked a bit of creativity in the actual gameplay, level design and enemies although bosses were generally good in this department.

Difficulty-wise it was challenging which was good and not "too hard". Any boss that ended up doing way too much damage to me (i.e. one-shotting) simply meant I had to go explore for more blessings and come back later which made fights more bearable. Only a couple of fights were quite challenging to the point where "not holding back" and using spirit summons still provided a significant difficulty. It usually just came down to tailoring a strategy, weapon, buffs, charms, armor etc. to defeat the boss which is how it should be.

There's basically no (known) interactivity with the base game, which is a bit of a shame.
A little disappointing in terms of what I expected, but still a good time with a good portion of content.

"Oh yeah? You make a card."
Immortal, self-destructs dealing 10 dmg, costs 0, gives 1 energy.
10/10 would break the game again

Surpasses the old cRPG legacy it carries. A bit buggy and rough around the edges in a few spots but this is a real diamond.

Maybe people had different expectations at release and ofcourse expectations of some ascended greatness owing to the fact it is a "Deus Ex" game.
But for a game that's quite cheap now and looking at it in isolation this is game is alright.
The sneaking around is fun, levels, while quite linear still allow for a variety of approaches.
There's even a side-mission with some minor consequences where deciding to go non-lethal in one instance has that character come back to try and get you again which I think is very neat and something they should have explored more in depth, putting into question the morality of holier-than-thou non-lethal runs. There's also obvious bad-guys who get away if you go non-lethal.

There are plenty of tools for going non-lethal. Right off the bat you get a silenced tranquilizer sniper-rifle which makes things too easy if you ask me.

The game gives you a lot of tools to solve any challenge. However, the levels are often made with the premise that you don't reaaaally need all these tools. The consequence of this I think is that some levels become a bit too easy. One can always challenge oneself to not use the tools, but surely using the tools to breach an even harder level made with these tools being requirements would be fun.

The game isn't as "brainy", informed or philosophical as the original Deus Ex which I think is what people are hoping for and leaving them disappointed. Maybe a product of being a "modern game" where games can't be politically or philosophically deep for fear of offending or causing controversy.
The plot here is straightforward. Get the bad guys but uh oh you need proof they're the bad guys.

Just like with the stealthy side, there's plenty of options to go loud and this is also quite fun, almost a shame the pacifist achievement is there.

The character interactions are nice however you spend alot of time going from character to character who are for the most part one-offs. It would probably have benefited a bit more if it reused some of the more interesting characters throughout the story instead of using and discarding so many but this is more of a nitpick as I'm essentially saying, not enough interaction with all the "good" characters. Even the main villain could have benefited from more interactions and screentime.

Visually this game looks very nice. Artistically it is stellar as environments, models, clothing and such is all made in style as if they think they're a final fantasy game. Maybe thats the Square Enix influence showing.

For completionists there's lots of things to do and find. All in all this is quite a competently made game and although people seem to have been harsh on it I think in time (which has now passed) people will judge it less harshly despite it not being an "ascended masterpiece".

Playing this fresh in 2023 with no nostalgia-goggles it's clear why this is a classic: WARNING! OLD MEN, RUNNING THE WORLD
This game is DANGEROUSLY based.

There's good stuff in here and it does things no other games do...
There are alot of systems in this game, and every single one of them so incredibly half-baked.
You can tell there's a fantastic game at the end of the tunnel, but nothing is done to completion.

Half baked mechanics:
- Diplomacy is very limited
- The dialogue system has alot of "fluff" for what should probably just be a menu...
- Voice acting is in there, but very barebones.
- When running a kingdom the game wants you to rely on vassals and other parties, but the AI is so awful at controlling these that it just leads to frustration trying to rely on them. You can't give them specific orders or goals to alleviate it either.
- There's a criminal gang system, but it's very barebones.
- Because the AI is awful, the difficulty is spiked to compensate by it getting extra troops and money and probably by teleporting, but it becomes more frustrating than interesting as "defeated" factions will continuously respawn hordes of lords with tiny 10 men armies which distract friendly AI's and raid villages. There's a jail, but this only puts lords in a temporary time-out before they "escape". Which leads to it essentially being necessary to execute hordes of lords which the game mechanics discourage you from doing. It alternately makes it mandatory to grind a companion governor with unlocked "prison escape chance" reduction simply to stop the endless respawning of troops. Very "gamey" and more importantly, is a distraction from everything that's actually fun in the game...
- The AI does very illogical things, like chasing parties it cannot possibly catch due to speed difference and getting distracted from big goals like taking castles or towns by small irrelevant groups or because it felt it was more important to raid an inconsequential village.
- There's a bunch of governor traits, but your main character cannot be a governor... which is a bit weird.
- Pathfinding is quite buggy with units often getting stuck when complex geometry is present. A unit trying to reload a catapult may get stuck on the catapult for instance or take extremely long paths.
- There is an order system for ordering troops in battle, but is also barebones. You cannot tell your units to target specific units for example.
- Lots of pointless clicking... For example, units gain XP and prisoners can become recruitable, but upgrading and recruiting requires alot of periodic clicking. This could and probably just should be an "on/off" toggle to auto-recruit or auto-toggle...
- You can't automate alot of boring kingdom management tasks... for example by telling a partymemeber to continually go fetch recruits.
- Placing units during a town defense can be quite messy.

Basically I just wish the game was actually finished.

Even when you want to give it a chance there's just constantly bugs or crashes which will ruin the experience.

Air battles are fun.
Don't fall for the purple dragon grind, the game doesn't get "more fun" at higher tiers, just play what you enjoy. Don't feel pressured by events. There will always be more events. Grinding them will turn the game into work.
Air arcade is funnest at lower tiers. While jets are funner in air realistic. Prop realistic is just very slow.
Ground battles are very anti-fun. They're slow and campy with lots and lots of downtime ending in potentially just dying to a plane and lots of wasted time. Usually just boils down to "who sees who first". This mode would be more fun if you controlled multiple vehicles at the same time but alas.
Ship battles aren't fun either because naval warfare inherently isn't very deep (see what I did there?).

Balance can be hit or miss. Sometimes your favorite vehicle will be placed badly in the meta or won't work well with the game mechanics and it'll just suck and you won't have fun playing it. No that plane you like that doesn't have countermeasures probably shouldn't be facing all aspect missiles, but you can't change that. It is what it is. Don't get emotionally attached to polygonal representations of vehicles. Just move on instead of playing something unfun.

Be very careful about spending money or GE, most things aren't priced logically. There will always come a sale for what you want.
Don't take it too seriously, or you won't have fun.

VR support is great. But joystick isn't great in 3rd person as the camera is made to be cinematic instead of practical. Mouse-aim is essentially fly-by-wire also and so it is the superior way to fly.