Recent reviews by Kalle

Play the Anbennar mod. I don't bother with base EU4 anymore.

It's a good strategy game but the UI is bad and the art design is all over the place. Never seen a game more in need of a dedicated artist on the team than this.

Short and underwhelming.

Amazing tactical combat wrapped in a super hero life sim.

The best turn-based WW2 strategy game, bar none.

The best game about politics I have ever played. A visual novel/strategy hybrid that made me curse fictional ministers and feel genuine pride in hard-earned success.

It's a 2021 GotY contender for me (yes, I know it came out in 2020, sue me).

Attractive graphics and pretty good writing but a very short and rail-roaded plot.

I like this game, I really do, but for every thing it does right it still has major issues that prevent me from recommending it to, well, anyone. I bought and played this prior to the Steam release.I spent well over 50 hours on it. And I'm still playing it, off and on, because the good bits are quite good. But it's punishing in ways that entertainment shouldn't be punishing.

The UI is really bad. This game is very complex and there are a lot of systems to manage, from unit supply to economy to staff management to warfare. In a game with this much information a good UI is crucial to give you the information you need. But in Shadow Empire you are constantly fighting the UI. Nothing feels intuitive. Information is all over the place. There is no sense of organisation, it's a mess quite frankly. 50 hours in and I still get confused over the UI in places.

The game also suffers heavily from sprawl. If you put in some serious time in a campaign and start having to manage multiple sectors and multiple armies everything bogs down. The more you play the longer turns take to play as you try to remember to move every unit and build everything you want built and this is where a good UI would help the player out but the UI is, as mentioned, very poor.

And that also brings me to turn times. They are very, very long. Long enough that you could read a couple pages of a book between turns. And they get longer as the game moves on.

All that said, the game is an excellent wargame at heart and the sci-fi planet simulation fires up my imagination like few others. If the UI was good, or merely decent, I'd recommend this. But it isn't. Maybe something to wish for in a sequel.

Really not enjoying the performance of Cleaver and Whisk and I do not think they will grow on me.

Bite-sized tactical missions for everyone who loved XCOM and a sizeable campaign to go with it. Best $10 I ever spent on a game.