Recent reviews by Angelus

Ark is a bit like a sliced blowfish plate.
If you only want to buy and play ( aka official servers ) you implicitly accept the fact that there is almost no costumerservice to back your gaming experience ( Its not a MMO rpg like ff14 or such for a game that is clearly oriented multiplayer).
If you want you can also join one the multiple communities ( aka non official servers ) with rules and moderator service that are dependent on a specific community's realiability. I mostly played like this and my experience was pretty good.
If you want you can play solo or rent yourself a server with the many providers available and costumize your own experience with mods,friends ect ect

A minecraft-like on Unreal engine 4, Explore, Farm, build with Less building options and more Catch them all animal zoo.
A very computer eating game dont hope HD high or Ultra setting smooth fps with anything less than a Geforce 980 or 1070 , 16gb ram and an i5 Haswell.
And when you have this config the game is a pretty nice and sweet cake graphical wise AND stable ( Except the occasional memory leak that was promptly corected i didnt experience a lot of crash and sort when i was playing in Alpha release ).
One MAJOR DOWNSIDE in my opinion the absolute lack of OST i have to run some world of warcraft ost on a separate music player when i'm in game.

Titanic, addictive, enchanting.
Like a lot of paradox games the board is huge.
There is a lot of micro and macro management providing you dont stay in pause half the game ^^.
Served by a beautiful OST.
I play on huge maps 1200 stars with a i5 6600k 1060 6gb and 16gb ram, never crashed and runs smoothly.
The only downside is no tactical feel from the battles the only real control you have is jump timing and to all that whine because you cant really wage war on this go use wormhole drives and go flank a enemy fleet with a few long range battleship while they are bogued down by a corvet task force. But granted simple commands like formation, target priority or stance ect ect are lacking.

Having your militaristic/xenophobic galactic wide empire descent into civil war with a multi ethnic indepedant mouvement while being in a state of cold war with your surviving neighbours all the while an extra galactic invasion is brewing... Wait! Isnt this The new jedi order storyline?
Or being in the middle of a crossfire betwen 2 type 3 civilization and trying to rally most of the unaligned empires into a working federation...Wait that's babylon 5.
Or leading a federation and ex local rivals in a galactic wide brawl againts a humongus militaristic empire while somewhere far away a synthetic crisis is getting out of control. Isn't that star strek DS9? ( before Voyager castrated the Borgs) God i love this game.
All in all a excellent Real time 4X with more focus on management than warfare.

A story rich rpg with a solid staging ( which is rare for a non-jrpg )
A vast world with a lot of content ( count 70+ hours for completionists )
An enchanting OST
Got gwint
Extremely stable ( only 1 crash in 300+ hours which is refreshing )

now were it hurts....
while the gameplay is relatively balanced in medium difficulty in deathmarch or broken bones minor annoyances become flaws .
Fists fights that strech for minutes and were you get oneshot for example , potions and decoctions that vanishes due to cutscenes with no chance of replenishing them for the duration of long events fights, twitchy geralt in a world where gravity is 10 times deadlier than a sword...
A very console friendly menu for a pc game full of magnificient icons were you spend sometimes 2+ minutes searching for one specific object.
Poor character skill balancing , why botter with a alchemy gameplay when you get your precious and vital potions/decoctions removed every event and you have to pass 5min in menu to replenish them ( if the game lets you) or botter using magic gameplay that deals squat and hurts your mobility ( = fast death for poor geralt ) when you can just vertical slash ( rend ) your opponents into oblivion with a physical skill tree ( and with minimal menu scrolling ).
Like i said the game is balanced in standard difficulty but not in higher.
Not very mod friendly ( its not a skyrim for good and bad )
No endgame content, once you're finished you're finished despit a very MMO style content.

Despite thoose ( minor or very specific ) flaws CDp delivers a monster of a game with an epic storyline and vast world.
Definitively recommend it.

Level design Excellent, Ambiance reussi, gameplay varié. Manque de fonction que pousse a a rejouabilité (new game+ ect ). Mieux optimisé que la version non DC mais toujours quelques bugs.
Reussir un niveau en s'infiltrant, negociant ou butant tout sur son passage est tres gratifiant.
Une idée a retenir meme pour les fps la memoire dynamique qu'on les ennemis sur votre position. C'est agreable de voir des Bots sans wallhack.
Le seul manque sur l'infiltration reste les patrouilles dynamique ou de check up de l'IA; dans MGS 2 sons of liberty les soldats manquant leur rapport declenchaient une patrouille de combat, ici on peu nettoyer une base sans que personne se demande " l'embarcadere ne repond plus envoyez une escouade verifier les lieux".
En bref ce jeux est une perle du cyberpunk.

After waiting 3 years buying every single dlc more than 120€ of an investment those are the words that define this game.
Limited and Insulting.
Limited? why? oversimplification on the altar of accessibility, sacrificing gameplay deepness. You actually have less gameplay elements than Civ 4. The Only High point are the battles that are less random/luck type ( yeah watching a swordman dispatch my tanks because they had a 0.0001% chance of wining was raging )
- Still a linear research branch + 1 research slot ( points or % distribution would have been excellent ).
- Culture and religion are simple stats that increase stats ( god was the cultural expansion system from the 4 was entertaining and some unrest would be nice when there are multiple religion in your empire with opposing enemy holy city ect ect )
- Overpowered civilization perks, you want to play cultural? frenchs or india are overpowered , play military? germans or ♥♥♥♥ are overpowered. deviate the slightest from those style and its like shooting yourself in the foot because the game will make you pay for this extra city you needed, this granary you built over your warrior.
- Having a big empire and actually something to do each turns besides type enter on your keyboard is imposible on this game because of the empirewide gestion of happiness and increase cost for great people and research each time you expand.
- Random events and little bonuses have vanished, no f""" my city was hit plague because i risked no building this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sewer and clean my citizens, I got a navigation bonus because i was the 1rst to go around the globe ect ect...
- trading, commerce is totally absent due to a donkey level IA ( no thanks for my 1 poor iron i want your city, dude we are friends since 1500years i crushed your chinese invaders and still you treat me like s""" because i have 2 more points than you? ... )
- no protectorat system you simply conquer or have and bot controled city ( no cleopatra i want your grain or me and my legions put your brother on the trone )
- Extremely poor IA on every front its funny to watch 20 infantry getting smashed by 1 city and 1 artilery ( funny to watch, not funny to play ), diplomacy is a myth on this game and even worse since Brave new world even an higly warmonger agressive IA will still prefer a museum over army or defense. The result is since this extension i wasnt able to fight against somebody that had more than 5 city even after the modern era.
- Very Very VERY poorly optimised particulary in multiplayer, i have a friend that is running on a i7 4770k, 32GO ddr3 2000+ ram , and GF 780, He still gets crashs and 45second turn loading.

Here Comes the Insulting part
Dude there is a steam worshop support why are you crying? You can mod most of those issues....
Yeah but i'd like to share them with my friends and play on multiplayer without knowing how to read edit and rebuild DLLs
After 3 years still no multiplayer support for mods, still EXTREMELY buggy and unstable multiplayer, Still limited gameplay in multiplayer ( still 12 civs max even on huge maps combine it with the ♥♥♥♥♥ BNW IA its pathetic )
I'm not some whiner those many problems where exposed by numerous players on the official 2K games forum.
Devs just dont seem to care as long as we pay our dlcs.
There are numerous other issues with this game but those are the worst in my opinion.
This was my final investment in this franchise. And remember those issues if you intend to purchase Beyond Earth.

Dernier né de la Franchise total war Shogun 2 est d'une beauté a couper le souffle, melant des batailles au caractere epique avec une ambiance nippone extremement soignée. Seul bemol les capacités offensives des samourai sont un peu desequilibrés ce qui rend les accrochages trop "decisif" ( legere simplification )