Recent reviews by Murderhobo

Got massive fast hammer at the start, breezed through most of the game, got Sword with supposedly better stats, ruined my save because I can't kill anything.

Best game ever.

So, what should I say about this? It's great, there is a lot of variety in the factions, plays relatively smoothly...blah blah blah...

Look, outside of the normal generic reviews I'd like to share a story. I stopped being a CA fanboy. I used to love SHOGUN and MEDIEVAL 1 (still do love the latter), they were incredibly innovative for their time, and demonstrated a lot of love for old tabletop games and creativity that the genre direly needed back then.

ROME and MEDIEVAL 2 were masterpieces, only improved by an infinite variety of mods, making the Community great, they became like Bethesda but with talent and a lot less anti-customer. Then Empire came. I liked it, but the impact was gone, the DLC policy started and while I defended them, I knew something dark was stirring...then they released Napoleon, which is what Empire should have been, as a separate game.

I was done, Napoleon was great, but the practices they had was way too much for me to handle, they started to get into fights with modders and, while not as annoying as Bioware, the Community started to become toxic, and I left. I passed on SHOGUN II, ROME II and so on.

Then the First Warhammer came, at a time when GW decided to kill the tabletop game, I bit the bullet and purchased it and...it blew my mind, the only words to describe it were "labour of love", every faction played like it should, the mini campaigns were amazingly good, and even Norsca played great, every faction was distinct and there were a ton of them.

I returned to the fold, bought everything I hadn't and saw that they were again the CA I fell in love with back then, they still did some stuff like Thrones of Britannia, but overall, they worked hard in other ways like faction variety and the DLC's started to be worth their prices instead of just giving you some recolored units.

This came out...and they outdid themselves. Not only the factions played differently, but the DLC lords played in many cases different to each other, Eye of the Vortex is great when played with one of the Lords that came out of the Box, but once you've done it you can pass doing it again because the campaign is mostly the same, but then they added races with their own different objectives and LL with their own stuff as well and it is a blast. This game, and to some extent CK2, saved me from a very difficult break up that made me lose all my real life friends, helped me cope with my alcohol problems and allowed to me to get back to my feet. So yes I am partial to it.

AI is still "meh", at best serviceable, but at least you won't face stacks filles with catapults anymore (or at least not as much), they use the Heroes relatively well, although you still get charging mages from time to time, and the pathfinding is still an issue in some maps, albeit not as bad as Empire.

Other problem I had is that it has the economy of the Total Wars, that means, you'll control entire continents and only get to pay for about 4 or 5 stacks, so forget the big battles of tabletop...unless you use the upkeep mods in which case the AI and you will be able to field what you are supposed to (gets overpowered after a while though)

Factions differ a lot from each other, and some LL leaders do as well, Mortal Empires is a great sandbox where you have some objectives, but I feel that the point is play it like you would CK2 or games of the ilk, you set your own objectives and just go around to do them. Wanna destroy the Empire as Archaon? Kislev as Sigvald? go on. Conquer Ulthuan for Malekith? Do it as well. Piss off Morathi as Hellebron? Kill Lord Kroak as the Skaven? Get your murdertrain going.

Only thing I miss is more Empire LL, but they seem to be slowly improving on that front. Another thing I'd love to see are official Amazon, Araby, Kislev and Southern Kingdom armies, only modders have been working on that thus far. All in all the game is amazing.

So good it resurrected Fantasy in the Tabletop.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/11/games-workshop-warhammer-the-old-world-is-returning.html

OK, I've changed my laptop and have to change the review, game is great, crashy (although it could be because of the mods) but really good. It does have less depth than Artificial Academy, but all in all it is a great waifu simulator, if you install the HF patch I recommend you unlock all the positions straight away because the grind is kinda annoying.

While I do recommend it, I have to warn people that the game plays of diferent to the other two before it. Enemies are a little weaker but you also seem to die quicker than usual, making stealth for the most part pretty much necessary instead of an option. Gameplay is still good enough for me to recommend, but it becomes very repetitive with the enigma card side quest. Boss fights are inexistent here, they are all "Pres E to kill" "button-awesome connected" kind of deal wich is boring in my opinion, but hey...

The DLC are meh, they add a little more gameplay and some interesting challenges in encounters, but all three can be finished in less than an hour and a half, so in my opinion, they aren't worth 10 bucks each.

Also far too many cutscenes...

Shorter than the other one by a bit, but great by its own right, New Order was a good game, but lacked the "Ghostapo" part that characterized the Wolfenstein titles of old, and added with the dieselpunk mad science of the series, well, here you have it. Overall the bosses are a little more derivative than in New Order, but the gunfights are amazing.

I am writting this after playing a month long marathon of the three games up to Colossus, and honestly, it is by far the best of the bunch so far. They added some history, which is kind of tiresome from time to time, very melodramatic, but the gunplay is great, the action frenetic and the stealth a very viable option.

Price is steep and it takes 5 hours or so to finish a Normal (200 years) game (which you'll end in about 60 after you understand the mechanics and get some relics that add worshippers). Game is pretty barebones, but this may be because it is an early access. I really don't understand how can you lose since the other faiths don't push or try to retake land, all the frustrations come from trying to convert some parts of the islands that have characters with a lot of skills that they do before battle, so even if you win the initiative roll, they'll have 3 or 4 turns worth of movements before you start...but it is pointless because you don't need to conquer stuff to get worshippers., so meh.

All in all the game is OK, I can't wait for the finished product.

Game plays like an improved Sengoku Rance, without taking away much of the complexity of it. The censorship is laughable, with most scenes covering the bare minimun, but it is better to play with the patch available at JAST's website. It suffers, in my opinion, of the typical stuff these games suffer from, there is way too much dialogue and you start wooing the lolis. Also this is not the Golden Edition of the game, so no Ashoka love or Admiral Perry at all.

All in all the game is OK, I'd recommend it to fans of Rance who, for some reason, want a game a little less rapey for a change.

Not too bad though it kinda feels odd to hear Russian and see text in English, but I guess it is so it feels closer to the game, so I am not complaining.

So, I have a hard time thinking if I should recommend this game or not, mostly due to the prize to gameplay values. Let me explain, on one side I consider a game good if it took me to complete it about 1 hour for every € I spent, and I finished this game and got all skills in about 4 hours (and I am a mediocre shooter player at best), while the prize is about 7€...that being said, like all Destructive Creations games, it was a Cathartic experience that I will gladly come back to blow some Steam from time to time.

Comparissons to HATRED don't stop there, like in HATRED the controversy and "edgy" theme is actually more challenging than the gameplay, which is pretty safe, from gameplay standpoint the game is solid, if unoriginal. It is pretty difficult and the guys at Destructive Creations are very talented, which kinda doubles the frustration because I really want to see them experimenting and innovating gameplay. Oh and a Coop mode would have made wonders for this.

To close the review I have to say that I would have loved a couple more maps, maybe on Lesbos or other points in the Balkans other than Croatia, fortunately the game is very moddeable so we may see a lot more content from the users if it picks up enough Steam.

Now it may have been just me, but while I liked the textures and models for the Daesh soldiers, the ones for the NATO troops seem kinda low res...it bugs me a little in between all the explosions and allahu akbars...