Review Roundup

[SupremacyKing2]

Angry Joe tends to be spot on, costumes or not. We are all playing video games at the end of the day. If he wants to wear a costume while doing it... more power to him.

How can he be spot on when he knows nothing about the game? You need at least some understanding of the game mechanics in order to give a proper critic of whether the game is good or not. His entire review was "menu options suck...move ships randomly and get destroyed...restart game...ooh art is kinda nice...move ships around and get destroyed...restart game again...well game is cute for the iPad but it sucks"

 

[Maniacal]

That being said, I'm not adding videos because I have a life. Linkposting is easy work. Sitting through videos, most of which are subpar, is not something I have an interest in.

Gotta be honest, that came off a bit weird sounding. Anyway, Angry Joe is a pretty legit reviewer, and most of the time his reviews are pretty good and entertaining (his style might not be everyone's cup of tea though). This is, however, a first impressions video and not a review so it doesn't need to be added anyway.

Joe isn't always the best player, but he does really like strategy games. Particularly Civ and Total War, but he isn't afraid to criticise them for their flaws as well.

Angry Joe's video was dreadfully bad. He did not know what he was doing and played atrociously. I would not trust it to give you a fair review of the game.

It's a first impressions video not a review, that's what they're generally like as the host of the video has either not played it at all or only played it a little bit (like an hour or two) to get set up for a first impressions video. Most people don't have a clue what they are doing when they first play a game.

When or if he does put out a review video, it will probably be quite good. He isn't perfect, but he generally does a better job than most reviewers out there (except his Skyrim review, that one wasn't very good) even with his entertainer Angry Joe shtick.

He often dresses up for videos, it's pretty funny and just for fun. Nothing wrong with that. It is weird that he mispronounced Sid Meier's name but that's hardly a big deal.

===

Anyway as for the reviews I checked and AJ's first impressions vid, can't say I am surprised as it is pretty much what I expected although it still manages to disappoint me in a few ways.

 

[rkade8583]

Here are my first impressions:

+The gameplay and everything concerning it that I've played thusfar (ship building, combat, quests, etc.) is spot-on and very enjoyable. Hard is hard as it should be so I've got some work ahead of me which pleases me (I was worried it'd be too easy.)
=I can read most of the font if I downsize my resolution or squint.
-The user interface and options as a whole are downright terrible. If I hadn't been told in countless videos that this was developed for PC first, I would have thought it was an IPad game first. No fullscreen, no WASD panning, no edge-scrolling, no remappable keys, and I could go on and on. The "turn ship" system is wonky too.

As it sits RIGHT NOW, I rate the game a "good" out of "ADOM-levels of awesome!"

If the UI issues get fixed, this looks to be upgraded to a solid "great." If there are new features added (more quests, longer gameplay options, etc.) alongside the UI fixes, this game could go all the way to "Played Once A Day."

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I played the game a little bit.

Here are my first impressions: The game is simple but offers lots interesting situations that require different tactics. The missions seem quite diverse and the maps offer interesting tactics. Not super deep but a lot of fun. The combat is great. The gameplay is streamlined in a good way. It knows what it is about and sticks to what it does best: tactical missions that are diverse and fun with a light strategic layer that helps you jump into the next interesting mission. Customizing your ships is fun. The art is very good and gives a great sense of atmosphere.

Probably not the game for you if you want something super deep and complex. But if you want a "pop corn" game that is very fun and engaging, with lots of interesting choices, and a game that you can pick up and play easily, this is a great game. $15 is a good price and worth it.

 

[Thorn]

I played the game a little bit.

Here are my first impressions: The game is simple but offers lots interesting situations that require different tactics. The missions seem quite diverse and the maps offer interesting tactics. Not super deep but a lot of fun. The combat is great. The gameplay is streamlined in a good way. It knows what it is about and sticks to what it does best: tactical missions that are diverse and fun with a light strategic layer that helps you jump into the next interesting mission. Customizing your ships is fun. The art is very good and gives a great sense of atmosphere.

Probably not the game for you if you want something super deep and complex. But if you want a "pop corn" game that is very fun and engaging, with lots of interesting choices, and a game that you can pick up and play easily, this is a great game. $15 is a good price and worth it.

I'll second that. It's a fun, lite game so far.

 

[rkade8583]

I'll third that. For when my brain just doesn't feel like dealing with Long War (say I have a migraine or something.)

 

[Lord Tirian]

Probably not the game for you if you want something super deep and complex. But if you want a "pop corn" game that is very fun and engaging, with lots of interesting choices, and a game that you can pick up and play easily, this is a great game. $15 is a good price and worth it.

Yeah, played it for an hour or so... and I can see myself playing it every now and then. It's shallow but it's lots of simple fun. It's the gaming equivalent of fast food, but every now and then, I like to just grab some KFC because I can. This is the same.

This said, the atmosphere and UI is surprisingly decent (especially compared to Civ:BE's shortcomings) for the price, however, the game felt a bit "buggy" and "console port" to me. Nothing major (weird full-screen mode, seems to have a capped frame rate) but enough to notice. I doubt it will be patched but it's not a game breaking problem either.

For the £8.50 (about $12.5), this is perfectly serviceable. If it had a higher price, I would have been annoyed but as little budget title I can even play on my work laptop? Ace.

 

[civvver]

The user reviews are pretty bad so far on steam and metacritic.

 

[rkade8583]

That would be because they can't get past the UI problems or they've encountered bugs that mean they can't play.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Fun, about what I expected given all the preview videos.

Beat a game on moderate, medium map, 4 opponents in about 1.5 hours. Will need to bump up the difficulty. 51% population victory seems a little too easy to get.

It's exactly what I expected - a light strategy game with little focus on the galactic layer and some intriguing play in the mission layer.

Many of the user reviews seem to be because of the graphics options (or lack thereof) and because they had the wrong expectations as to what kind of game it would be.

 

[NASAROG]

How can he be spot on when he knows nothing about the game? You need at least some understanding of the game mechanics in order to give a proper critic of whether the game is good or not. His entire review was "menu options suck...move ships randomly and get destroyed...restart game...ooh art is kinda nice...move ships around and get destroyed...restart game again...well game is cute for the iPad but it sucks"

How did you fail to read what I wrote. I said he tends to be spot on. I didn't write that he is right or wrong about this review. He made a first impression video. My two takeaways from him where that you can't rename ships or planets. I own a copy, and I will make my own opinion.

 

[Maniacal]

Yeah day 1 reviews are only useful in letting you know if the game works or not for a majority of people, that's it. Very few of them are detailed and even fewer are by people who have played enough to really give a proper review.

I am not surprised that a lot of people had the wrong impression, far too few people do any kind of research. Still, games designed for tablets are pretty disappointing even if they are great casual on the go ones. Except some of the board game ones

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I just finished my first game. I won every tactical battle but lost when Barre took Hutama's capital and apparently nearly doubled his population in one fell swoop and won a population victory.

I shouldn't have let Barre sweet talk me into a peace deal.

I felt very into the game with very strong just-one-more-turn hold on my attention.

It's not particularly deep, but what it does, it does well.

Stealth torpedo is probably overpowered. When the AI can't see the torpedo coming they tend to stay bunched up and you can win many missions in two turns with it.

I got it on my gen 1 ipad and I found one annoying bug. It sometimes freezes up when you take control of your torpedo. Then I have to relaunch the app.

 

[Agent327]

Let's get serious, shall we? There's already 180 user reviews on Steam, and they're overwhelmingly negative. Oh dear... No tutorial, only 2 pre-game setups (How many? TWO), game is winnable with 3 ships in 3 hours (because... you can only have 3 ships), not worth $ 15, and of course...bugs. I think we may have stumbled on the BE connectivity here: these are both mobile games that, for quizzical reasons, have been released as PC games. Unfortunately, that's an irreversible executive decision.

Now, my first impulse was: Buy. But then I thought: Let's just have a look at actual user reviews. (To be true, there actually are a few positive ones. Like 1 in 10...maybe.) So why are all the reviewers' reviews positive? Well, one can think of 2 reasons: 1) they get the game for free and 2) they realize it's a mobile game and judge it as that. (Or a combination thereof.) By contrast, all the reviewers who actually have to buy the game ($ 15 for a mobile game being sold as "PC game"), look at the game as it is. In short, they give you honest reviews based on actual user experience.

 

[rkade8583]

I bought it for $12 and I wrote an honest first impressions... but I did my homework. I'm not frivolous with my money... anymore.

 

[calad]

Let's get serious, shall we? There's already 180 user reviews on Steam, and they're overwhelmingly negative. Oh dear... No tutorial, only 2 pre-game setups (How many? TWO), game is winnable with 3 ships in 3 hours (because... you can only have 3 ships), not worth $ 15, and of course...bugs. I think we may have stumbled on the BE connectivity here: these are both mobile games that, for quizzical reasons, have been released as PC games. Unfortunately, that's an irreversible executive decision.

Now, my first impulse was: Buy. But then I thought: Let's just have a look at actual user reviews. (To be true, there actually are a few positive ones. Like 1 in 10...maybe.) So why are all the reviewers' reviews positive? Well, one can think of 2 reasons: 1) they get the game for free and 2) they realize it's a mobile game and judge it as that. (Or a combination thereof.) By contrast, all the reviewers who actually have to buy the game ($ 15 for a mobile game being sold as "PC game"), look at the game as it is. In short, they give you honest reviews based on actual user experience.

3) they get paid by good reviews.

Seriously person why buys this game has to be an ultimate fanboy or living in a barrel. Civ5 was bad, BE was even worse so how on earth this could be a good game?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The reviewers do list the negativs and positives pretty well.
I dispace score systems so I always try to read and watch videos about the game.

You can very well know what you get if you purcase starships.

 

[Gorbles]

Let's get serious, shall we? There's already 180 user reviews on Steam, and they're overwhelmingly negative. Oh dear... No tutorial, only 2 pre-game setups (How many? TWO), game is winnable with 3 ships in 3 hours (because... you can only have 3 ships), not worth $ 15, and of course...bugs. I think we may have stumbled on the BE connectivity here: these are both mobile games that, for quizzical reasons, have been released as PC games. Unfortunately, that's an irreversible executive decision.

Now, my first impulse was: Buy. But then I thought: Let's just have a look at actual user reviews. (To be true, there actually are a few positive ones. Like 1 in 10...maybe.) So why are all the reviewers' reviews positive? Well, one can think of 2 reasons: 1) they get the game for free and 2) they realize it's a mobile game and judge it as that. (Or a combination thereof.) By contrast, all the reviewers who actually have to buy the game ($ 15 for a mobile game being sold as "PC game"), look at the game as it is. In short, they give you honest reviews based on actual user experience.

Just a clarification, but there are currently 303 Steam Reviews, 148 positive, 155 negative.

$15 is cheap. Stop trying to twist it as something that's expensive, just because "it's a mobile game". My mobile phone has as much computing power as my parent's desktop machine. People need to get out of this mental ditch with mobile games, because the available power is no longer a tiny pathetic thing.

Especially when compared against the average user's hardware from the Steam Hardware Survey. Lotta gamers out there on terrible, terrible machines.

3) they get paid by good reviews.

No, they don't. There have even been high-profile cases where reviewers have publicly rejected offers from publishers to be paid for good reviews.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

because... you can only have 3 ships.

Not true. I had a fleet of five. My enemy had 8.

Fleet size is this games' wide vs. tall.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think you can have like 10 ships max which is not hard to reach as you only have to pay max 1000 energy per ship.

But without uppgrades they will be very weak.