Recent reviews by Hoenir;

AoM is my favorite RTS since i was a kid. It holds a especial place in my heart. So when i've heard someone was "remastering" it, I was very sceptical but still wishlisted it, I had to have more information first.

Then Beta Released, some big changes were made and they were not exactly Improvements. At the time, there were different VO (voice over/different voices) from the Original and they were bad, Changes to UI, Changes to Art Style and so on. These were my biggest issues. I was very critical since named changes, totally altered the feeling from the Original game.

I had no hope, removed from Wishlist and I moved on.

Then somehow I read a comment, saying there were new voices and that they even brought back Arkantos OG voice actor! I had to dig deeper. And my lord, I am glad i did.
We live in a world today were games released in Beta hardly get improved till releases, from 3x A's to indies. And most of "remastered" games are terrible.

With this one, I am chocked. Although sadly not all voices are from the Original, some have different actors, the majority of voices have improved since beta. Few voices are better in the Original still.
We now have modding support or mods. So if the you dont like the new voices, we can download the original ones.
The graphics are amazing. I for one do not care about graphics, I prefer Gameplay but here both are improved.
The majority of gods portraits, UI and art style have been deeply improved. The old AI/Mobile game art style from beta is vastly gone.

Keep in mind, it's not a perfect game. There are still some issues, bugs and adjustments that have to be made. But I cannot recommend this "remasted" enough. IT IS one of the good remasters. It lived to the expectations and respects the Original game we all fell in love as kids (or Possibly as adults)

The devs have done an amazing job listening to the feedback (which is very rare these days), Improving the game and giving us a "modern" version of the Original AoM.

Just be mindfull, at the time of this review, I have played around 6 hours. I did not finish the campaign yet nor did I try every aspect of the game. So the review might change once I have around a dozen hours clocked (as it does for many games once the honeymoon phase is over) but so far, a very good experience !

No Pause option in 2024

One of the most beloved games ever made. This is a work of love and passion. Made by one person and made even better with the years of updates.
No microtransactions, no season passes, no in game store. Just a good old video game.

I rather buy this game 10x over at full price than give money to EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Blizzard and all other terrible live service, Macro transactions games.

Older games are the best. No Real world politics, no Macro transactions, No season passes, No Denuvo, No ADS.

The state of 2024 Gaming Devs + AAA Devs : Re-releases, Re-masters, Re-makes. Charging money for the same Game you bought 20 years ago without putting any effort into the new Version. They can't create anything new or good.

It makes me happy to see bad Gaming studios (90% of them are bad) closing down, going under and laying off Devs that can't create a good new game nor improve upon the older ones. If you can even call those Activists, Developers anymore.

Boring, simple, no progression, no crafting, too repetitive.

Story is stupid, despite having a good setting behind it. Chapters missions are forced unto you, where you get teleported to whatever main quest is. There's no progression. You just kill some enemies, destroy some stuff and you are forced and teleported to the story quest.

Just save yourself some hours of your life and money. Go watch the story/cinematics on youtube.

If you like Subnautica, you will love this. This is exactly like subnautica but in a garden/yard.

A reasonable survival game with very good combat/enemies variety, Good building system and extense crafting.
Huge map to explore with a nice progression feeling.

I only have 2 wishes:
Add more stuff (possibly updates) with DLC or expansions. (Crafting, bosses, cratures, map extension etc)
and please for the love of all mighty, remove the necessity to create a Microsoft account to play online or coop.

So after 150+ hours. How is Starfield compared to Skyrim and Fallout4 ? Not good.
Downgraded Systems from Skyrim and Fallout 4. Instead of using years of feedback and improving them, they delivered them bareboned and basic.

let me list some aspects from the older games that were downgraded with Starfield:

-Exploration - You have a 1000 planets and across them you will find the same 3 human enemies, the same 10 aliens and the same 10 buildings/interest points. There is nothing new. Everything is reused over and over again a hundred times.

-Open world - There is no open world exploration, there is no ship travel. Only zones to travel too. It is loading screen after loading screen.

-Loot system- No variety of armor, almost no melee weapons, Balistic weapons are fine although you will find the same 5 base weapons with dozens of mods combination, lack of anything else besides balistic like lazer or beam guns (all weapons have 4 "levels" of quality, armors have 3, none for melee)

-Companions - You have 4.They are interesting but there's no variety like in fallout 4 or even new vegas. They are all good align. There is no evil companion.

-Settlement/Outpost - Terrible, basic and barebone. Besides food/meds/mods and some parts for reseach, there is no weapon, armor, clothing or even ammo to craft. There is no point in farming materials from the planets since you can buy all the materials cheap from the vendors. There is not crew management, no food, sleep like in fallout 4. You outpost crew does nothing else than increase production.
Terrible controls, too few buildings, customizations, stuff to build. And half stuff that you build dont even work properly. Storage is a mess, linking cargo from multiple settlements are a nightmare and does not work properly.

-Combat - Gun gameplay is just like fallout 4 but the melee is non existent. You have the same 3 melee animations for the 5 weapons. They all act the same. Skill tree is almost just like fallout 4. Now, you just need to complete certain tasks to be able to put points into perks.
Weapon and armor customization are so basic. You can't even customized all 5 melee weapons in game.

-Ship/space combat - So much potential wasted. Although building your ship with the limited parts is still very entertaining, you will be facing the same 3-4 factions. With the same ships. Cool for the first few hours but gets boring with time.

-Factions and consequences - You have 3 or 4 factions, each has their own side quest (they are all good, but some are amazing) there is no "consequence". Besides 2 (you have to choose between them), they dont change the world around you, your actions change nothing. Yes, yes you have a few new dialogs but that's it.

-Main quest - Boring and grindy. Even worse than fallout 4. SPOILERS AHEAD.
You go after some space artifacts in the same temples, over and over again. They are all the same. The powers that you get from them are just like shouts from skyrim. And you repeat them over and over again, for 10 new games +. There is no big catch at the end, there i no sci fi ending. Just that.

-Performance - could definetely be better and better optimized. For how the game looks and acts, there is no excuse to have a poor optimization. This is not a nex gen game.

Now, what is new in starfield or what is good:

-You can see some planets from orbit or ground....

- Ship Building - New concept. I loved the idea of building you ship. It could use more parts/variety and customizations (Hopefully mods can improve that) but like i said, you will be fighting the same ships over and over again. And you cannot customize the interiors, the different sections offer no gameplay value, you crew just boots your starts nothing more.

-Side quests - I have not done all of them of course but this is where Starfield shines in my opinion. Not all of them are amazing but there's many. From being an executive operation in a major company, to exploring alien bioweapons or even playing the pirate. Some of them are amazing.

So, comparing systems that we had in Skyrim and Fallout 4 at release, Starfield is a major downgrade. They picked the best systems from each game and instead of IMPROVING them, they downgraded them and made them basic, shallow and even pointless.

Skyrim had better : Exploration/open world, Enemy variety, Buildings/Dungeons variety, Melee weapons, combat
Fallout 4 had better : Exploration/open world, looting system (from materials to gear drops), More variety of Armor/ weapon/ clothing, a much better Settlement system, wider range of companions, variety of enemies (Humans, animals, creatures etc), Better weapons, armor crafting (crafting in general)

Somehow Starfield regressed instead of improving. What have they done in 8 years of development if they just copy pasted assets from older games ?

Will this game get better in the future ? Who knows. Fallout 4 certainly got much better with time (DLCs and mods of course) but they all had a much better base game at release than Starfield.

I do not recommend buying right now. Just wait. Wait for the mod support next year, for the DLC and see how much Bethesda is willing to improve the game. If they are even willing to fix or improve the game and not let the modders do their work for them..

Never played any Balrur's gate or ay other Larian studios game since this is not my genre but 2 reasons changed my mind and led me to purchase Baldur's gate 3.
1 - Seeing the Passion, work and amount detail put into this game. Any other AAA dev studio should be ashamed and be hold to this standard of quality. (enough with unfinished produts from EA, Activion, Ubisoft etc)

2 - Devs said : “No, there are no in-game purchases in our game,” “Enjoy the game to its fullest without any additional costs or microtransactions.”.

Like i said, never cared about this genre of game, not baldur's lore. But the quality that they put into the game which is beyong any AAA studio can deliver even with 100's of millions.
And the now forgotten, enjoy the game you paid for with no stupid cash shop, season pass, live service nonsense.

For the price it is amazing.

Lots of free content. A battle pass that you dont have to pay. 4 Classes, Perks, Character customization, Armor customization, Equipment customization (Weapons, picaxe, and more), Perk tree, Lots of maps, enemies, zones, Objectives.
So much content.

Incredible that a game selling for 30$ (outside sale) and 10$ on sale, have more content than 70$ from EA, Activision, Ubisoft. Instead of buying those yearly same garbage from EA, Activision etc buy this game twice.

Much better than all garbage EA, Activision, Ubisoft releases for 70 bucks.