Recent reviews by ValzRon

2013: Might play some day...

2022: S T A N D I N G H E R E

CA > Paradox

Most christian game of all time and one of the best shooters of this generation.

Stop whining people... and accept that this game has dominated your life for the better part of 3-4 years. This is a very solid product that is (with the help of mods) probably the most compelling PvP grand strategy game on the market.
Change my mind!

This game is just awesome still after 20 years of its initial release.
The core gameplay is rock solid. The DE release really brought this game back to life for me and reminded me of the good old times I had back in the day. The graphic overhaul looks fantastic and the UI tools and improvemts are great. Addionally, I got to experience the new civs from the DLCs I missed from the AoE2 HD version. I got so hooked on just playing many, engaging campaigns that I ended up playing all of them.
The campaigns are really REALLY good and fun. I had a blast with this, totally worth 20 bucks, at the least.
However, I should note that there are still a few bugs but the devs put a lot of work into delivering updates and I assume this game will get a steam workshop integration aswell very soon.
Its awesome, 100% recommend from me.

The best game I've played this year.

Story, Characters, Camera shots and Music are 10/10. Out of this world.
The game has a near endless amount of very entertaining side content that can keep you busy for 100+ hours.
The Final Mission and the Ending are one of the best that I've seen in video games so far.
The range of emotions this game evokes is unparalleled. What a way to start a franchise for a complete newcomer like me.
Can't recommend this game enough...

This game is fantastic, honestly. It might be my favorite FromSoftware game.

They've made a brave move to take out armor, weapons, custom characters and online functionality to trade it for a Singleplayer, Story-driven Adventure with a set and voiced Character. They went out of their comfort zone and didn't give me DS3 in Japan, but instead replaced the combat system of old with a rhythm based (almost) brawler. Still all the clues of being a Soulsbourne game are still there in the form of similar mechanics, lore and vistas that range from deeply unsettling to stunningly gorgeous.

It's extremely fulfilling to learn and improve, until you just can't be hit or die by bosses you died to for 2-3 Hours or more. I really don't understand many negative reviews for this game on Steam. Most of those people thought this game was "too hard" or tried too hard to be hard and hence became unfair. I couldn't disagree more.

I've played this game three times, start to finish, and I'm sad its over because I still don't have enough. Really looking forward to see future content. FromSoft knocked it out of the park.

In short this became my favorite Assassins Creed and here is why:

I've played every Assassins Creed game (from the main series) except for Unity and Syndicate and I have to say that this game changed up their formular quite a bit for the good. The changes are even bigger than AC to AC2 or AC3 to AC Black Flag. The game had to change up its formular or be doomed to fall into irrelevance forever. They definetly took the game into a RPG direction rather than stealth and borrowed quite a few things from games like Witcher 3 and Tomb Raider.

The best thing about this game for me is the new Combat system which is now hitbox based and MUCH better than the boring two button system from previous games. You can now have almost a dozen diffrent types of close combat weapons with their own movesets, stats and effects and half a dozen diffrent styles of bows which is HUGE for me. The the introduction of levels, skills and the new armor upgrade systems are all great and work very well to encourage you to hunt for XP and materials.

Also Senu (the eagle) is a cool feature, mulitple difficulties, exploring tombs, the arena and bossfights in general are other highlights for me. The map might actually be too big and there is way too much to do... which can be good depending on how you see it. I for my part put almost 100hrs into this game but you can easily put another 50-100hrs into it.

They removed a lot of annoying crap from previous games like sequences, cut down on future story bs, eavesdrop missions and insta-death stealth missions.

The story varies between average and great. The ending wasn't upsetting for once and the main story didn't drag on forever like Black Flags did. Some well known historic characters and interesting implications for the entire series and a much darker tone for sure. The protagonist was okay, a little bit one dimensional with his motivations but he had his moments. Of course nothing like the iconic Ezio.

The DLCs are okay (Hidden Ones) and fantastic (Curse of the Pharaohs). The second DLC was really interesting, creative and had some extremely hard bosses.

Overall really really recommended!

This game is very good.

A city builder/ colony manager that will remind you very much of games like Banished or Tropico or the Anno games except it sets an emphasis on survival and always has a goal that you will be lead to through events and a crescendo at the very end.

Currently there are 3 very unique playable scenarios that will keep you busy for about 12 hours or so. You can choose between 3 difficulties and even change their sliders individually. I recommend trying some of the Achievments because that kept me playing through a second time.
It has a very nice narrative style that none of the games above can even rival, absolutely stunning visuals and frankly the the best music I've heard this year in videogames.

Now in terms of flaws I guess the biggest one is that it doesn't really go deep into the game mechanics, which means you can easily learn and see every aspect of the game in a short period of time. It's not like Banished where infrastructure and pathing matters too much because resources are harvested per hour not actual attendance of the pop. And it's not like an Anno where you have complex production chains, for example there are multiple ways to get food but it boils down to the same resource which is "raw food". Going "Order" or "Faith" doesn't matter too much. So if you are someone who has experience in builders or strategy games you will get the hang of it VERY fast.

The game has a lot more potential. Frostpunk needs a story driven campaign (more story driven than it is right now with chained missions), a sandbox mode, more scenarios and maybe go deeper into the building and micromanaging aspect (example more types of machines to make out of steam cores). As I said Achievments are fun to challange yourself.

Other than that for the pricetag this game is totally worth it and the Devs already confirmed that new content is on the way.

First of all, I was really hyped for this game and my expectations were high but got surpassed in some cases by how good some things in this game are. BUT. I cannot for the love of Christ recommend you to buy this game in the current state!.

This game has brought me much pleasure (hence I've played it for almost 100 hours at the time i'm writing this) but it is severly broken.

I'm not a person who is easily irritated by bugs or glitches, I've played many bug ridden Bethesda games on launch and such but this game has driven me to the brink of insanity. I really wanted to finish it because it honestly deserves it but even the Epilog of this game was bugged so that I was unable to finish it at the moment.

In many cases you can tell that the devs had a hard time creating an AI for a world that lives and interacts and in which you can take part and change pieces around. I'd say a good half of my Main Quests and a good third of my Side Quests were bugged or glitched. In some instances I had to wait for an update (bear in mind I've played the majority of the game on version 1.4 which already had solved many issues) or kill certain NPC to bypass the Quest. Many scriped events were broken and NPC behavior often times ruined my stealth missions, intervened in consenting fistfights, gliched my town reputation etc. This paired with the strange saving system created an absolute nightmare of backtracking and reloading Quests for me.

I really think this game needed at least 3-4 months time back in the oven before release but sometimes I think that the AI is beyond repair and would always run into problems with the changing enviroment.


I hate to not recommend this game because it has done so many things right, I mean its truly and actual RPG. The combat is fun (mostly), they had many skills and traits to learn, your character was a lazy good-for-nothing that you had to prep up to be a half decent fighter , reader and orator, they had tons of Quests and an ABSOLUTE BEAUTIFUL MAP. The progression between early and mid-game are HUUGE but between mid and late game minor in terms of skills, which means they could have done away with some of the realism to include master tier perks to help you further in combat instead of letting your 15k groschen armor set tank the hits and then button mash stamina drain your opponents (pulling off combos was freaking hard). The story was 'meh', much potential left by the wayside and (minor spoiler) the main plot that is proposed in the Prologue is not solved in any way, instead it hints STROONGLY that there will be a second game or expansion. The Epilogue was really bad, and I couldn't even finish it.

This game had done some great experiments in terms of pace, realism, historical accuracy, progression and combat feedback that i've enjoyed the hell out of that could potentially change the way RPGs will be made in the future! I really love the developers and their efforts to bring this game to life and I hope that I can revisit this game in a much better shape!