Recent reviews by ShadowCrystallux

I wouldn't buy this at full price, however, it is fun enough for a brief playthrough on sale. It is quite repetitive, most of the content feels like it is relatively done within 5 hours, beyond that you're looking to get achievements (very easy to 100% though). I appreciate that it is still receiving updates, and the game is initially engaging.

Captured a human, sold them to a trader, bought a new Pal and somehow felt worse about buying a Pal than selling a human. 10/10

Rome Total War is one of the best games ever made. The Remaster remains faithful to the original, but looks even better.

I love AoE3, and think the devs did a fantastic job in making the definitive edition - especially in regards to updating the campaigns. I would've liked to have seen a fully fledged campaign from one of the DLCs however, not just historical battles.

The main reason this gets a thumbs up is because of the "We the People" mod for Colonization. Without it, the game is enjoyable enough for a few hours, but WtP turns the game from just okay to fantastic.

Full disclaimer: I received this product for free, but would've bought it anyway.

In my opinion, Return of Rome delivers exactly what was promised, and has made a game I loved significantly more enjoyable. The additional features added to AoE1 from the AoE2 engine makes the game highly enjoyable to me, and I haven't had this much fun with the franchise since the initial release of AoE2 DE. The campaigns released with RoR are great, especially Trajan and Pyrrhus. I like the Roman civ added to AoE2, and especially like that the devs are going to balance the civ prior to releasing them in ranked.

I would like to see some ported campaigns from AoE1 as time goes on, as I think a number of these campaigns would benefit significantly from Return of Rome's improvements. I would've liked to have seen a campaign centred around the AoE2 Roman civ.

My only major critique of the DLC is that all in all it is essentially a separate game within the same engine as AoE2, and I think it should've been available to purchase outside of AoE2, so that players coming from AoE1/AoEDE can experience what is in my opinion the best version of AoE1, without the necessity of also purchasing AoE2 if they're not interested in it. And whilst I do enjoy the Roman civ added to the AoE2 game, I personally think it might have gone down better with the community as having it sold separately to the rest of the content, so that AoE2 players who are not interested in AoE1 could've played as the Romans on a smaller price tag.

TL;DR: Fantastic value for money if you're a fan of AoE1 and already have AoE2, campaigns are great, Roman civ is fun, hope to see more campaigns ported and wish the DLC was split into its respective components, rather than sold as a packaged deal.

The first 20-25 hours of this game are incredible. Exploring the planet, building a base, discovering new resources, learning how to survive in an inhospitable environment - it all just feels amazing.

It does suffer from a major pacing issue in the final portion of the game, which may be due to the game being in early access. To get the final 2 achievements I'm mostly leaving the game open whilst doing something else, as there's very little to do beyond very repetitive tasks. I can imagine in the future this will be more fleshed out.

Definitely worth on or off sale though, I've not had this much fun with a new game in a while.

This game feels like a more fleshed out Banished. I played it for an hour on the Demo, loved it, and it certainly does not disappoint for the full version! I've been looking for a city builder like this for ages, and I can see myself getting tens, if not hundreds of hours of gameplay out of this.

The hours kind of speak for themselves at this point.

It's a fun game. Not the most fantastic ancient city builder but more than enjoyable enough to play through.
6.5/10