Recent reviews by Honzaczech

We got the body, it just lacks a soul

On the outside it looks fantastic and yes, I got caught by the hype train of the videos/streams the Paradox made. Each time showing the body moving, but never letting it show its alive.

Yes, the beloved Japan is special as it has closed market... Guess what! You can close the market as any other nation, you just don´t see any reason to...

Playing the game just becomes a chore, maybe even a grind, where you just build things, trying to get numbers higher, Ottoman and Egypt had 1 war at the start of the game and Egypt always lost in cca 5 games I played, taking Bosphorus, Constantinopolis. USA fights 1 war with Mexico and then stops being aggressive, just leaves the borders (whatever the gains were) and starts colonizing Africa with the other superpowers. Prussia is the only nation with a resemblence of life, where it tries to unite Germany, mostly in 1900 still trying to get half of the states. China-British Opium war? lets just fight once for the port and then let China get rid of the opium crisis.

It almost looks like the game is the first level of an RPG game, everything happens at the beginning, all flashy and fun, and then the other sectors are just wastelands. Unless the player is the one who starts conflict in the world, no conflict will happen. (Yes, I did set the AI to be more aggressive in their "power plays") (No I did not let the AI know I am the player, just let it on normal)

Ah yes, this little thing: I can´t finish the game... Each time I get close to 1901 the game crashes. If I reload the save, it continues for few more months and then crashes again. I will not try to get to 1930s like that. (Especially when nothing happend and all I can do is building as I am a colony of the UK that is doing nothing but the same as me.)

Don´t buy / Wait for patches to give this husk little bit more life and buy under discount.

review done at 14.2 hours, with only 1 mission missing from full completion (all on normal difficulty)

I have finished the campaign on one sitting in 11 hours and to be honest, the game is not hard through difficulcity, but through pathfinding and limitations. I would almost rather say it is not hard, just frustrating. But first to the story and missions...

The campaign is fun, I devoured it and really liked it. They went little overboard with the last mission (copying the ending of the movie a "little"), but the missions overall are of OK length, but I have never felt like liking the characters that guide you through the missions, the news are more propaganda like, distancing even more from the book ideology, going the way the movie went.

But now to the unpleasant:
- missions: once you finish the campaign´s 19 mission (not counting 1. mission of tutorial) you have only 2 independent missions left. No editor to make your own maps, no match-maker to have your daily dose of missions outside the campaign.

-just 1 planet! Now this I call lazy. Not only there is just 1 planet (not counting tutorial), but even if I were to count it in, it is just DESERT! I know the movies went with deserts, but why be so lazy? A jungle, or frozen wasteland would be great too!

- Scorpions bug spawns... (the bug you can kill) I found this during I think 17th mission, where you get the really good power armor soldiers: how the game works is, that it has spots where it spawns bugs. if it is full, it spits out one "charge" to be able to spawn more. And these bugs just stand there, waiting. so when I came to the hive, to finally kill it, there were 10+ scorpion bugs, 5+ mortars etc.. forcing me to waste at least 30 minutes in killing a few and then running back to base to replenish the troops, repeat, repeat... of course, as you run back, the hive will respawn some more...

- pathfinding, run/shoot mechanics: The units can not shoot while moving, can not shoot over other squads (some units can but not the point). when you move, you can not defend yourself and the soldiers will ignore everything, they are being devoured by a bug? "We have our orders! move that ass of yours!" just runs and lets the bug kill him/her. Yes, there is an "Attack-move" order but if you use it, you meet with the combination of bad pathfinding, where they just run into each other, making one blob and at that point, the "not shoot over others" comes to play, as only frontal squad shoots, other 5 squads just watch the bugs closing in.

There are other problems with the game, but overall, it is a good 1 times play with little to no replayability. If buy, buy discounted or when they add some new features (like more planets, or DoW: Soulstorm type of campaign)

It is a buggy mess. They work on it, but if your save got corrupted after 24h gameplay and a patch repairs it, it do not repair the save, so you have to re-play from the point where it broke (or like me, finding the save is not there, having to play a new game)

It will be a solid title once it is repaired, but if you don´t mind such a minor problem like a broken quest or being unable to continue to another act, it is a great game and finally a good RPG.

This game is a rage generator, historicaly authentic game with Arcade, Realistic and Simulator. Yes, it is a suffering, both playing and earning Silver Lions to move on when you are free to play, premium is a big advantage, but it is a free to play game that wants to earn money.

You will rage a lot, rage-quit is normal, but as I like to say: The game is bad, but the best one of its kind around.

Though the game got downgraded throughout the lifetime of it, some events are scripted even if you do all missions in there (I am looking at you Bribyslavic and combat) The demo they released had more freedom in certain aspects of the game than nowadays version...

Now to the good part.

At the start of this game you are little above avarage peasant and as you play the game, you grow both in status (in the eyes of NPC´s) and in skills. At first you will be glad if you beat 1v1 and then spend a day in bed to heal back to health and in the end, even 1v 8 won´t be a big of a problem. Each skill (but for riding) has usage somewhere in the game either by dialog option or helping you go around a quest mechanic, that you would otherwise had to fight through.

This game next to giving you a role to play gives you great freedom, most of the quests are written in different ways, counting with each stage of the game progress, even DLC´s work with it, if you finished the game, you gonna get different briefing than at the beginning of the game, it is something that I really enjoyed and these things and dialog choices are similar to Mass Effect (improting saves) quest that you would think is just a small quest you do at the start of the game can become a good anecdote. And your knowledge from previous playthrough can be used for the future playthroughs and yes, the game counts with that as well even in cutscenes.

So far I finished the game only once + having 2 saves in mid-game. Finished the game as a knight with longsword and I must say some missions were hell, but I got through them anyway, wishing I invested my time in certain skills that would make these missions easier. I am now playing as shortsword+ shield+bow lowborn and archery, once above skill 5-6 is great as you can easily clear out a bandit camp with well placed shots. Bows lack "crosshair" though, so you have to train a lot.

For the story, I won´t spoil it for you, but it is great, you became Henry and got through all good and bad phases of his life and very soon you start caring for him and hate his big mouth.

As for bugs... yes, there are some, the worst of all for me was when a vital NPC for a mission wanted to meet with me, but he just decided he will sleep for a year or two, so he stayed in his bed for the rest of the game, refusing to communicate with me. Only returning back to previous saves solved this problem. Game is not perfectly polished, but polished enough to be a good+ game where you can spend hundreds of hours, exploring real world of medieval Bohemia.

Forgot to talk about surroundings. These are masterpieces. I myself am from the Czech Republic, Bohemia. And once you enter the forest both in game and real world, it has the same feelings, villages and cities are beautiful.

For DLC´s... I still lack Lord Capon´s DLC, but for the rest, I think the Band of Bastards is the best one, second would be Pribyslavic one with village building and then Women´s lot, though the last one unlocks a dog, that makes the combat much easier once you unlocks the perk for the dog to attack people.

All togather I would give this game 8/10 as there are still some bugs and glitches that can both make you laugh, tear your hair out or earn a good pile of groshen...

that update destroyed all i was working on for 2 years...