Recent reviews by PoohPus

A really good game. Having lots of fun in async with friends.

This game is a shining pearl, and unique in several ways.

However I can't tell you more about it right now because I want to play. <3

Pros
I never played the board-game, but the port seems solid. The game is polished, smooth and seems glitch-free (unlike most board-game ports I've played). The UI is mostly quite good. Background music is pleasant.

There is online play (both with friends and random people), play by mail, several 1-player modes against AI (and the AI plays well), and perhaps other modes I haven't seen yet.

Cons
Unfortunately you can't edit the hotkeys, and there should have been better options for viewing the cards the opponent plays. With better support for higher resolutions the game could have utilized screen-space to allow for continuous display of play-logs and other open information that are presently tucked away behind UI elements.

An utterly amazing CRPG. Possibly the best ever made.

I gave this a neg review at release because of vast amount of game-breaking bugs. I believe this has now been fixed to a level where this game begins to shine.

Rogue Trader is a brilliant rendition of the WH40 universe. I love the atmosphere, the narrative, the characters, and a lot of the game mechanics are quite good. Highly recommended.

Note there will be some DLCs going forward, so if you're allergic to those you should probably not get this title. Also the WH40k universe is very grim and evil. It's an oddessy into misery, tragedy, horror, damnation, and unhinged violence. Don't get this if you don't enjoy such fictions, dystopian horror sci-fi.

Best game

TLTR: While I enjoy this game more than I dislike it, I in no way recommend it.

Cons:
- It has 2 flat-out pay-to-win features that is firmly reinforced by the structure of the game in general. Crew-skills ensure that you play with debuffs for a year or more (if you play consistently) unless you pay your way out of it. If you play Arcade Battles you may also need to pay for premium vehicles to not play with additional debuffs, because you need a lineup of 3 vehicles of more or less equal overall strength in this game-mode. While you can avoid the premiums by restricting yourself to only vehicles with a full line-up, you can then end up having very few vehicles you can actually play. If you play Realistic Battles or Simulator Battles only crew-skills are true p2w.

- It further has a predatory funding method in the form of gambling, for addicts and children.

- The dailies and other special tasks are restricted to people who've played a lot, consistently, have played for a while, and who do well in PvP. A veteran of 10 years playing who enter matches against players who've only played for a few months can complete them in 15 minutes. A player who've been at it for a couple of months can struggle to do them in a 10-15 hours session (depending on what task you randomly get).

- Expect having to play consistently for a week or more before even getting access to dailies and periodic special-reward "objectives".

- Events are for the elite only. The special events are restricted to players who do nothing but play every day for the duration of the event. During the current summer-event (dubbed Suffer Event by the community) I have to play 40-60 matches of 10-20 minutes each within a set 2-day period at least 4 times during August to get the minimum worthwhile prize. I haven't done the calculations but I believe I have to play 120-180 matches within a set 2-day period at least 10 times during August to get all prizes. As it happens, after 370 hours of playing I only have access to vehicles allowing 1/3 of those prizes. As it stands I don't bother with the event at all despite playing quite a lot most days. The event goals are simply way out of my reach, as have all events during my time playing this game.

- Getting in-game money is a struggle, and that assumes that you pay for your playtime. You won't notice at first because the first repairs of new vehicles are free, but you'll soon find that repair-costs equal or get greater than the rewards of matches all depending on what vehicles you use. You will rarely see youtubers addressing this as their experience in racking up money (Silver Lions - SL) is such that it's a non-issue for them, making them oblivious to this issue. But many new players come to the forums asking how they can make more SL than they loose to repairs. In my experience they most often get no answer. The vehicles have varying repair-costs however and the only way for a newish player (for example one who's played for 370 hours) is to not use the best tanks with the highest repair-costs. Starting with Russia or China helps, as most of their vehicles cost less to repair than those of other nations on the lower ranks. If you don't make SL you can't get new vehicles, can't improve the ones you have, and in the worst case you have to wait for a week or 3 to play a particular vehicle again because you can't afford to repair it.

- The pay-to-play feature (subscription on other games) is considerably more expensive in this game than in the vast majority of MMOs. Further it's far more important than in most "free-to-play" MMOs as you get far less SL if you don't. On the upside you can purchase their subscription one day at a time, so if you only play during weekends it ends up being cheaper than other MMOs regardless. If you play for an hour every evening instead..

- Long Grinds. It can take a year or more of consistent and long game-play sessions to grind a single nation's techtree. It also takes an even longer time to earn SL enough to purchase the researched vehicles. This assumes you pay to play. Free to play will take more than double. As such you should only consider the first 3 ranks of any nation for grinding and ignore the remaining vehicles. Let them instead come when they do naturally, and enjoy the WW2 tanks in the meantime. You'll be using them for a long time no matter what.

- The Battlepass, a second subscription you can get on top of the normal one, is very poor value. Don't get it unless you've already progressed enough along it that paying will get you a premium vehicle.

- Most big youtubers who make WT vids are sponsored by Gaijin and are cop-outs. Don't trust them. They are also veterans who haven't had a new-player experience in this version of WT. The game was entirely different when they started, and they have long since forgotten even that. This means a lot of what they say is irrelevant to your experience as how you play greatly affects any advice or analysis given in WT. You should still watch their content if you want to become good at WT, just be aware that not all of their glitter is gold. Also, almost all of their showcased vids are cherry-picked best-wins against noobs. If you see them live-stream battles you'll soon learn that they die as much as anyone else most matches and have days when they suck despite their 15 years of experience. With certain exceptions, self-grandiosing cop-outs.


Pros:
- It can be quite fun sometimes if you're willing to ignore all the above and just play for the random matches for their own sake. Forget events, objectives, tasks, and just play some matches when you fancy.

- It's very skill-based. While it has clear pay-to-win elements, you can expect a veteran using the worst tank in the game to totally trash you while using the best one. I'm not kidding. The pay-to-win elements are dramatic when you play someone your own skill-level, but differences in player-skill from best to worst are far wider than the difference between a fully functional vehicle and a fully debuffed one.

- Damage model. It's not based on hit-points and you can one-shot anyone, if you're good or lucky enough. Or do no damage at all if you suck or get unlucky enough.


Conclusion
I play it and enjoy it. I absolutely do not recommend it. It wouldn't take much to make War Thunder shine, but the devs have no intention of taking those steps.

TLTR: CoE5 is not a good game and I regret my purchase.

The Good
The character classes, monsters and mythology are very appealing and varied.

There are several layers of existence, such as an underworld, a world in the clouds, hell, outer space ect. There doesn't seem to be a lot to do there except most likely dying in short order, so it seems more a gimmick than anything. But it's kind of cool it's there.

The races gather resources and spends them differently, which would be good if it had any depth to it.

It's very accessible and require just about no brain-power at all. Perfect if you just want to push some buttons while watching a move or something.

Since there is very little to do turns go by very fast. Move your armies 1-3 squares and you're done. You can choose to skip seeing the battles play out if you want to.


The Bad

It plays somewhat like Heroes of Might and Magic. You move your heroes around a map attacking random wandering monsters and occupy various resource-nodes. Except unlike HoMM there isn't really a whole lot more to do. You don't control your battles, no city-building, no treasure to speak of, no character leveling, no puzzle treasure-map, Just purchase units once in a while, explore and grab nodes.

You can't control the battles, and your only impact on them is what units you put in it and which 3 of 4 spells your hero can cast you want him to prepare. You can't even set up formations, nothing. Further the AI that controls your units like to consistently place and move them to the worst possible location, including having fast vulnerable flyers tank and prevent your stronger units to get into the fight, having weak units feebly claw at the castle-gates while your giants stand idle getting shot. Like having half your army spending 10-15 turns trying to navigate around the catapults you brought to take down those castle gates and was placed in the middle of the battlefield (not that it matters, since the rest is just standing around anyway). Also, catapults doesn't shoot at the gate or walls, just at random squares ahead.

Beyond the AI not being able to handle proper movement or determining which piece should go where there is also the issue of friendly fire, where you can't really prevent your spellcasters from murdering their own troops instead of the enemy. I've had instances where my main character killed off most of his own really big army against a relatively weak opponent through friendly fire.

On the upside the battles are good entertainment if you're looking for a laugh.

There is no city building, comparing it to the MoMM series again.

Some classes have actions they can take on the strategic map. Like summoning some monsters, or creating fortifications at certain locations, or some limited shenanigan that will slightly further the development of your faction's quirks. We're talking mouse-steps here however, where you get to do it once in a long while (for most of them). When compared to HoMM there are more of them and they are more varied in CoE5, but still very expensive and something you will have to do instead of for instance develop your character or getting units. These are the "fun" part of the game, but it's such a small and slow-paced part of the gameplay-loop that it's just not good at all. All these options across all classes and factions amounts to quite a few in total across the entire game, but since each one just have a small few what seems like could be pond-deep gameplay turns out to be shallow as a puddle.

There is some minuscule character development, depending on your class. After 50 to 400 turns your main guy may be able to get a single new high-level battle-spell, and will get some more actions he can do on the strategic map (like better summons). We're talking gathering nodes and waiting until a resource has accumulated into around 1000 to unlock an ability that costs maybe 500 to use, while resource-nodes each gives you between 0 and 4 of the one you need (most gives 1). And some are rare. In my experience we're easily talking 50-100 turns until you're able to do any meaningful character development at all.

There are magical items. They say you're supposed to get randomly offered to purchase one (randomly chosen) each turn, but after several hundred turns I never had one offered. I've been able to win some in battle with someone else who had an item, but those battles are very rare. I think I've found such a battle roughly once per hundred turns played.

Comparing to Dominions there is no research, spells that changes the game for everyone, or development of battle-titans.


I don't mind a casual game now and again, but Conquest of Elysium is just too shallow. And the parts that in theory could give it some depth are just not any good when it comes down to it. I don't recommend this title.

TLTR: Inane micro-management ruins this otherwise fine game.

This game has many fine qualities and initially I had the just-one-more-turn experience I hoped for.

However, once I have a few domes the game deteriorates into micro-management hell. The colonists quickly number in the hundreds. They need to be placed in a building to live and one where they work. They will do that themselves, and they sometimes get it right. But most of the time they will muck it up and I'll have to fix it. Again and again and again. This is quickly what I spend 95% of the time on in-game.

Newborn children needs to be placed in the nursery-building manually or they occupy the wrong living space. Colonists will randomly swap jobs into something they aren't educated for, so you have to swap them back to avoid massive penalties. Specialty buildings like the sanatorium require me to go through the list of colonists and pick each one by hand. I have to hand-pick students for the universities or they will get occupied by colonists who are a year away from being seniors (they no longer go to work). The further the game progresses the more colonists I get and the more specialty-buildings needs to be continuously microed. It means that as soon as the colony starts getting interesting the game becomes an endless chore. It's not a chore I'd recommend.

TLTR: An awesome ambient score frames 2,5 hours of mediocre visual novel.


The Good
-The ambient score is really good.

-The art is nice.

-Some of the dialogue is both good and realistic at the same time.

-Only some of the dialogue-choices I made resulted in very non-intuitive and unwanted text-lines, which is better than average for this kind of game.

-The main character and NPCs aren't flat out annoying.

-The variety of dialogue-options can make the main character feel very different, depending on the choices made.

-I didn't encounter any obvious bugs.


The Bad
-The game is very expensive for what will be 2 to 2,5 hours of game-play for most people.

-The lack of a save/load feature makes it very likely that some dialogue-branches near-ruins a given play-through. Please dev, kill you darlings.

-Both the main character and NPCs are entirely non-charismatic, on the non-colorful side of mundane. They aren't flat-out bad, just not any exciting either. Like the friend of a friend you seemingly make friends with out of politeness, and would never bother spending time with unless when meeting your common mate. The one that makes you sigh in resignation whenever you encounter.

-I never felt enough about the story or the characters that I cared about how it ended in any way what-so-ever. My play-through ended with the main character dying, and I couldn't care less. In many ways the sweetest surprise in this title was the fact that I could actually loose my life.

-The new iteration of Werewolf the Apocalypse carry on the original concept of hyper-woke counter-culture of the 90's on speed werewolves. Back then it was appealing for a dumb-as-bricks youth like myself. But in the meanwhile one grew up, and the insane hate-culture became main-stream in the real world. You have the tribe of the male-hating anti-patriarchy women. You have the tribe championing the poor and “downtrodden”. You have the tribe of the non-(evil)humans. All the cliche conspiracy-theories and myths about the evil human race are baked into one condensed fiction, and it just doesn't work anymore. The Paradox guys are smack in the middle of the hate-culture, as can be easily glimpsed throughout their titles. But I'd hoped the White Wolf crew had grown up and developed the WtA-fiction somewhat. Ah well.. I blame myself for expecting anything else, but my recommendation has to play off of my own experience even if I guess I'm not really the target audience anymore.

-The game fails entirely in capturing the World of Darkness fiction in general. It entirely lacks the darkness part of this world. Where is the sexy and charismatic young woman who runs the orphanage where children disappear and becomes forgotten, eaten by the lady you as a reader initially wished was your real-life wife? Where is the prosthesis-maker who dismembers his models and makes prosthetic limbs from their body-parts? Where are the Children of the Corn? Where are the scenes so horrible you become nauseated? This game portrays what could just as well be the mundane world, just with antifa-werewolves and some light spiritual elements.

-The game-elements feels severely lackluster. The stats are just an account of the dialogue choices I made, and their sum decides which dialogue lines are afforded the player going further. I guess the dev wanted to make it all feel organic in some way, but it doesn't work. Heart of the Forest is to roleplaying games what a light tickling is to sex, a slight buildup but without the ensuing pleasure and eventual climax. If you remove the game from a role-playing computer-game all you're left with is some limited role-playing and a short story. Another darling the dev should kill. At some point in the game the stats you've built gets deleted and replaced by some other stats that seemingly serve the exact same function, and I was left wondering why they bothered. Throughout the game I hoped the stats would open up some pronounced new game-play, but having 10 in a stat felt just the same as having 3.


In all
I really wanted to like this title but it proved a clear not recommended from me. Playing the demo it seemed promising. In the end however, I regretted buying Heart of the Forest. It would perhaps have been worth it at a 75% discount if I had an evening with nothing to do. I found it flat and mostly boring. Heart of the Forest feels like a prologue for an actual game to me, both in terms of length and gameplay.