Recent reviews by Strategossable

ye is good spess :D

"I never was one for regrets..." Malin Keshar, Descent into Darkness

For a completely free, 2GB, 20 year old game, this is far better than it has any right to be.
Every strategy gamer worth the name should have this installed

This game has made me question my ability to trust my friends :)
Any one of them could be thralls :)

> play 10 hours of this game, think I'm getting the hang of it, so I decide to invade the Netherlands as Germany in 1936
> get navally invaded and lose :| this game is harder than I thought it would be
> spend the next 400 hours learning to play this game by watching youtubers, studying wiki guides, and trial and error
> get a few nice achievements like unifying China as tiny Manchukuo and puppeting Japan while I was at it

> at 500 hours I finally feel competent enough to livestream a hoi4 game to friends to show off
> I'm playing as France trying to do the vive la France achievement of making it to 1948 without capitulating and it's 1946; I have already won WW2 against Germany/Italy, and I have defeated the soviet union, so all the world bar China is in the allies or an irrelevant neutral country, I just have to wait and then I automatically get the achievement
> friends are watching and I don't want them to be bored so I move all of my troops bar 3 reserves to the borders with china in Vietnam and French-occupied-siberia
> I declare war on China and the allies rush in to the chinese borders to help me
> I get a diplomatic notification
> Spain has joined the "Chinese United Front" faction
> oh♥♥♥♥.jpg
> immediately tell all of my troops in Siberia and Vietnam to march all the way across the world to get back to France while I dump out untrained troops to slow down the Spanish horde, even changing conscription laws so that now the likes of old grandpa Louis are enlisted and sent to the front lines in their wheelchairs
> the Spanish almost make it to Paris by the time my actual troops get to France
> I then realise that the Spanish army is made purely of rifle infantry with no anti tank capabilities
> I send my tank army in a straight line through the Spanish lines straight for Madrid then Barcelona and so on until eventually our borders look like the Spanish ate 3/4 of France in one giant bite excluding the coastline and the major cities, while France just sent a long snakey line through all the major Spanish cities
> The Spanish capitulate as I own ~80% of their cities but ~5% of their country's actual territory
> I make it to 1948 and get the achievement of never capitulating

Tl;Dr: I spent 500 hours making myself good enough at this game to show off to my friends, promptly almost lost in the most embarrassing way possible, then turned it around and made my friends wonder at my insane genius

And that is why I recommend this game.

If this game had come out at any other time than quarantine it would have destroyed my social and work life

As it is it has saved my sanity and I look forward to it destroying my social and work life when quarantine ends,

I got this game for free and I still paid too much

Seriously, tho: The tutorial is still happening 3 hours in and all that you do is fetch quests of talking to character A then running and talking to character B before getting something for character B then talking to character B and then being told to talk to character A...

Don't do, trust me. It's not worth it

What you think the game will be:

"DEUS VULT - Onwards to Jerusalem!"

What the game actually is:

"We've been locked inside our castle for 2 years now because of the plague and I've just eaten the last of my heirs.

send help."

There aren't many free games that allow you to live out childhood fantasies

>Play Mordhau
>learn intricate advanced medieval combat system
>get into first multiplayer game
>get trashed as a fully equipped knight multiple times
>f*** it
>pick the unarmed-homeless-guy-in-rags-class
>walk up to enemy knight with a teammate
>punch him to death
>it works 0_0
>proceed to punch one more fully armed soldier to death before eventually being killed by his friend
>imagine how it must feel to train for years as a knight, only to be knocked out by a half-naked unarmed noob

10/10

I bought this game when it was on sale for £3.

I still feel ripped off.