Recent reviews by Siruss

I'm 5 minutes into the game and the first thing I hear is Die Antwoord.
Literally nothing can happen that will make me not recommend this game.

The short version of this game is it is part Rimworld, part Mount and Blade.

You pick a scenario to start off in, some easier than others, but possibly even being just a slave. The point is, you start off as nothing and improve your 1 person, or small groups skills. As you grow into your own faction, you will see your original people start to be a bit more badass. Then you recruit more, and train them for badassery. This sort of stuff is the Mount and Blade aspect. Although you will grow your own base, you will send groups out to other cities. This has a big RPG element as some factions may not like your race. You also can practice and train the ability to stealth and at night, break in and steal items from the shops in the cities. Or kidnap some citizens and put them in your own prison with hopes of them joining you and bolstering your forces.

The RimWorld aspect comes from your city and assigning jobs there. You have to grow/cook food, get stone/ore for crafting, then train up armorsmith/weaponsmith to make you gear and they get more skilled the more they do it. Everyone gets better at what they do. I guess we can lump that into "city management" term. The other RW similarity is that Kenshi thrives from countless Mods. There are some that are simply good for QoL purposes, some that really change gameplay, some that are totally cosmetic, and some that just completely change the game. You can mix/match all of them to get it just right.

Currently my scenario is this- I recently allied with one faction, which made me hostile with another. It seems the only way back to my base is directly through a huge stronghold of the enemy faction. Rather than reload and try to avoid it, I allowed my army to fight, and they took out about half of the army there. Now I am letting all my men be captured and heal up because at night, I can break them out and get their gear back and continue on my way. Hopefully convincing a large amount of other slaves to join me as well. I have never been so excited about my army being captured!

I have been involved in this game since 2015.
There is a ton of involvement and you can choose to be as involved as you want with everything. But it is everything to want from as full-loot PVP game. Politics, wars, spying, sabotage, crafting, fighting, PvE. The list goes on.
A lot of my friends get overwhelmed in the beginning because there is ALWAYS something to do. They get "stuck" for a bit because there are so many options and they don't know which way to go. But that is Albion.. It's not a game where you log in for a few hours and complete some task and log out till tomorrow. If you let it suck you in, it will. You'll miss it when you log out and come back to something new. The world is always evolving on who has power and who owns what territories.

It was inspired by Ultima Online (among others) and that really shows. That was my favorite of the group and this certainly scratches that itch as the modern-day version.

I'm giving this a thumbs up but let me expalin.
I've been a backer of this game since Kickstarter in like 2015ish. I'm that guy who reads the forums every few months and really enjoyed what i read, etc... This team is SMALL. I was impressed by their vision and what they were able to put out. And that is what a kickstarter/Early-Alpha is about. SUPPORT for a project. This team deserves it because on their forums they have been very transparent and open about everything they have been working on. I encourage others to invest and play it every few months, but dont expect anything finished for at least a year.
The STATE of the game is not impressive, please don't buy it and complain. It causes a lot of negativity and it just isn't deserved. But they are doing it the right way and have earned my trust.

I never got into the "social game" genre because I think people are idiots and it turned me off to be forced to work with randoms each game. But... alas.. I tried it. The game has a lot of fail safes to prevent trolls and friends working together to really ruin the game.So I was pleased with that for sure.
But the game itself, it took a little while to understand. After the first few games I wasn't sure how much enjoyment I'd get. There are so many classes to learn their skills and the "rules" about identifying what the objective is each game and what classes are going to show up. After about 5 games I started to really understand and get interested and then everything just clicked. Suddenly I knew what was going on and the little quirks (like logkeeping, or fake logs), the lingo people use, the ways people can be deceitful. Then I was playing for 6 hours at a time because it became SO interesting!
I never thought I'd have so much fun dieing in a game and spectating to the end to see all the plot twists and turns that develop, some of my own doing that don't reveal themselves until days after my own death. It scratches some itch I didn't know I had that is a casual entertaining game, but also very competitive in nature itself.

I could write a book about the great things in this game. Most of it has been said so I'll sum it up.. Game of the Year. Hands down. I got frustrated with DOS1 and thought I'd just toss this game around when I was in the mood... nope. Can't put it down.

It's a cool game. I was really sucked in for 2 days and if you have a cool group of friends to play with it lasts longer.. The only real negative is that there isn't a "Bigger Picture". You fight a war which might take a day, two days.. It ends, and you join another and do the same thing with no real sense of accomplshing anything. Yeah you get rank and that lasts. But the next game you just start from scratch again and go grind out resources, craft, build.. For $20 its totally worth it. You'll get plenty of hours to make it worthwhile. After initially buying, it's something you pick up for a day here or there and put down. They are still improving on it so if it's worth it now, it's certainly worth it for what it could become.

Although it's pretty much the same Vanilla playthrough with DLC injected in, it's really good! The new aliens are a challenge but the new soldiers you get are very strong and unique in their own right.. I really enjoyed the Vanilla playthroughs and so far enjoy this one just as much. The new elements of the story with the necessity to alter battle tactics (Overwatch ability is nerfed hard) make it feel like a very worthy DLC. I'd say its at least 50% it's own game.

But don't make the same mistake I did if you've played the Vanilla version. I started the DLC and exited out because I thought I started the wrong version.. it IS basically the same story, so you don't need to (and probably shouldn't) finish the Vanilla verson first. Make sure to check out the Workshop because there are some really cool mods there, as well as some that add QoL aspects.

Actually a really cool and unique game.. but since it the development is closed I can not suggest it.

Game is fun for about a week. Once you have your plot and cave and all that, there's no real reason to leave it. Then you just come online to farm your stuff, eat your vitamins, and might as well log off. There is hardly any PVP because anyone in red karma is visible on the minimap so you know where they are at all times and can avoid them. I just found myself spending hours.. Farm food, cook it, replant. Harvest flax, turn it into cloth, replant. Tan leather, dye leather, make another bag, put in chest. Feed animals.. Eat vitamins every 75 min, do 2-3 quick tasks to use vitamins.. Cool. No real reason to leave my 30x30 plot.