Rogue State Revolution
Let me start by saying that this has the potential of being a great game, but this game is far from being ready for release. Consider this game an early access.
Here’re some warnings if you wanna purchase:
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Update 1.2 introduces a lot of CTDs, every few turns.
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Game mechanics is only partly there. For example, there’s still no building to help boost a province’s security score. Dev is also still working on mid-to-late game progression issues such as running out of imported resources.
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Many QoL changes needed. Ffs let me look at my current exports every time my neighbor asks me to increase export!
– Real player with 29.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Grand Strategy Games.
Rogue State Revolution is a resource management game with a novel theme and deary indie production values, but falls into to the typical issue of initial hump of difficulty after which you are free to explore and express regardless of difficulty. (Mind I’m a bit sadistic with difficulty on these games.)
After setting up your economy and surviving the initial diplomatic/societal/environmental challenges the game throws at you, one slowly but surely is on top of the wave. This is where the game suffers from bad pacing and/or balancing. I found myself having way too many actions while not having enough favors and/or money. There are several stretches like this in the game and it seems the team tried to introduce mechanics into the game that one can sink extra resources into (civilians & space missions & casino), but all of these will be exhausted relatively quickly leaving you, again, just passing the turn waiting for something to happen.
– Real player with 29.4 hrs in game
Exiled to the Void
Not much to the game. Not very engaging.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Not much to get excited about - hopefully, subsequent upgrades/updates will result in improvements. So far, just stuck on one of Jupiter’s moons with not much to do…..hope I don’t run out of resources by the next update!! As it currently stands, I can not recommend this game to anyone until it becomes more playable.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Terraformers: First Steps on Mars
Interesting theme, the graphics are simple but cool, the music is nice, it does run on GNU/Linux, but after eight hours of repetitive play, I wouldn’t call this a civ strategy kind of game, but more like a deck building card game, with lots of randomness, which gets you nowhere. You just need to be lucky to get the right cards at the right time for the right random spots to get a better score. No matter how good your planning is, there is too much luck involved. Maybe the 30 days span of a gameplay is too short for seeing the bigger picture, this is just a demo after all, but that’s my take on the current game. I do wish the devs good luck and I hope the final game offers a better experience.
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
A pretty solid board game
Game is very reminiscent of the popular board game Terraforming Mars, with some slight changes.
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Your starting hand is always the same 2 cards
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Beyond Oxygen, H2O and Temperature, there’s a nebulous “atmosphere” terraform setting
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Ever 10 years you select a leader, who has special abilities and traits that can be used on your turn
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Pop happiness is measured and scored.
Overall its fun for a few play throughs, but with the same 6 leaders, same starting hand, and hard 30 turn limit, you’ll only have fun for a bit.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Master of Orion
One can fix the bugs, glitches and even contents with enough patches. However, one cannot fix bad gameplay design decisions no matter how much one can pour its money and time. The new Moo is the prime example of the latter.
I had been maintaining weapon mod list thread in the official Moo forum until I gave up on the game.
This game massively suffers in three areas: combat, content, and game design which is terrible.
I am not even going to talk about the tactical battle being real-time instead of turn-based, or staranes instead of free movements, because those issues are actually trivial issues compared to what I am going to discuss here.
– Real player with 277.8 hrs in game
Pretty but Dull.
Because of the fixed and predictable tech tree each game tends to unfolds the same way.
Your opponets don’t have any unique and destinctive tech, they have what you have, or will have or use to have. Hardly makes it woth spying on them.
Combat is dull:
You start over here, they start over there and you charge one another. As there is very little input from the player you end up being a spectator in your own game. yay
You don’t decide what to shoot or who to shoot at, the AI does that for you.
– Real player with 259.3 hrs in game
Ragnorium
This game is a gem in the making. Standard EA gripes apply. Unfinished content, which gets added regularly, lack of colonist micromanagement, bugs (although not gamebreaking and most of them get addressed pretty quickly). The developer is very hands on and takes care of your problems quite fast if you take the time to send your save files or crash logs. For me, it scratches a few itches. It’s a colony builder/manager, with leveling up your colonists which you get every few days with new launches from the mother ship, where you choose which colonist clone to create and send to the planet. You can equip them, take care of their needs to make them happy, which in turn earns you points in the CUDS panel - basically a place to order resources for “likes” and “happy pills” for “dislikes” your colonists accrue. The game advancement comes in cycles called research, which is currently waiting for your colonists to accrue research xp passively and getting “influence” by doing quests which reward those points. There are 2 game modes, one with 3 daily randomized events in intervals of 12h, 17h, 20h - they can add good or bad stuff to the game, depending on whether you want to spend the influence you obtain to choose a better event. Getting influence also speeds up the separate research you do when launching a new flight to get colonists/resources, which can include unlocking the radar, getting more advanced clones, getting access to special ship parts like water tanks to bring water or gear modules to bring clothes and so on. Currently the game ends it’s research driven play after 5 or so research cycles and you’re left in freeplay mode, but it’s a nice amount of play to get there and it’s well worth the price. If you want to influence how the game develops by adding suggestions which the dev always takes into consideration and often implements quickly, get it early.
– Real player with 114.8 hrs in game
This Rare Gem, has so much too offer.
With many survival elements, building your primitive colony base, hunting creatures of the wild, Fighting other enemy tribes, setting up work stations for each type of main resources, like clothing, weapons, medical and cooking. Setting out your colonist on quest / objectives to gain research point to unlock new items/objects/technologies. The list goes on and on.
Theirs a big learning curve, which might require you to restart the game a few times, and with each restart you learn from your previous mistakes/failures. But its totally worth it, knowing your sequences of steps/actions/quest taken, insured your colonist stayed alive another day.
– Real player with 108.2 hrs in game
Void Eclipse
It’s a combination of 4X, deck builder, and grid-based, turn-based tactics with unique factions. Terrific unit design, artwork, and battle animations. Battles were quite challenging so you’ll have to use the full combination of unit upgrades and abilities to succeed.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Played the beta, bought the game.
Unique exploratory travel/resource acquisition with turn-based encounters, As you advance, you’ll be able to form multi-unit multi-skill squads (check out the dev’s demo vid).
Cool artwork and immersive audio ambiance
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Age of Space
Age of Space offers a unique experience combining real time resource management and tactical combat in 3D. Step into the shoes of an interplanetary mercenary balancing on a knife-edge between the established might of the United Earth Alliance and the rag-tag band of Martian rebels. Grow your power as you fight for either side in the battle for control of the solar system.
Mining outpost
Build and expand upon your mining outpost as you gather resources in real time. Unlock new and unknown technologies salvaged from the wreckage of your enemies. Customize and build massive warships from your shipyard. Nudge the balance of war by accepting missions from your star map, fight pirates for fame and riches or become an outlaw yourself…
Ship Customization
All spaceships come in different sizes and fill different roles and purposes. All spaceships have unique bonuses that you should exploit in order to get the most out of your ship. A spaceship has a set of properties and three different sets of hardpoints where you can install modules and weapons:
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Passive modules boost primary attributes of the ships.
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Active modules are your backline of weapons and modules that are available all of the time
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Tactical modules are impactful tactical weapons that can change the tide in any battle, but require high amounts of energy to use
Character Development
Evolve your four captains into becoming commanders of massive capital ships. As they gain experience they will be able to pilot increasingly advanced spaceships ranging from tactical cruisers to motherships.
Combat
Put yourself and your crew to the test in instance-based combat scenarios. Design your fleet, execute your strategy and profit. Manoeuver your spaceship in 3 dimensions from a 3rd person perspective. The rest of your fleet will either be controlled by AI, your friends or a combination of both. There will be different types of contracts to choose from:
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Storyline missions
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Side missions
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Mining operations
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Piracy operations
Co-op
Play any contract (except a few solo missions) together with up to three friends.
ENDLESS™ Space 2
Edit2: Running in a max sized galaxy that is now fully colonized down to the last planet and has eight well-developed factions at war on around turn 675. Still playing, only complaint is that the ‘end turn’ gets a bit bumpy due to so many ship battles being resolved in the background - but it’s still far faster than in early access. The AI is serviceable, good on 3 factions, meh to idiotic on the rest - Riftborn are by far the hardest, Vodyani are the dumbest always puttering around one system, definitely needs some work. No game killing bugs thus far thanks to that last patch. Enjoying the competitive/cooperative multi-faction quests, I’d like to see a lot more of that in future content.
– Real player with 1806.8 hrs in game
TL;DR: This title is -by far- the best 4X on the market. Each aspect, exploring-expanding-exploiting-exterminating is a constant challenge on higher difficulty levels in single player and multiplayer can be quite the expierence if you like very quick thinking and immidiate punish of mistakes. Each race is very different, demanding rather unique playstyles but offer a different strategy option. Best UI i have -EVER- seen. Right click to go back. Brilliant. I look dumb now trying this in other games. Collour coded sheets and unified symbols. A pleasure. A lore-universe to be hooked on and the occaisional humor to keep it fresh. Go Sophons! For Science! One Sentence: Its worth every penny. Guaranteed.
– Real player with 484.8 hrs in game
Age of Wonders III
EDIT:
I have well over 1000 hours into this game (drat!) and every time I think of putting it down, I keep coming back. It’s been a long time since a game grabbed me like this one. Great game! replayabiliy is insane.
WOW!
Short review: If you have any doubts from the trailers and are thinking “Yeah, I want to get this game.” You are probably right and do so immediately.
For a bit more detail:
I’m not even more than 170 turns on a big map,I can already tell you that this is an awesome game.
– Real player with 3507.7 hrs in game
This game is absolutely incredible. It stays true to the style and feel of the previous games in the series, while also embracing some of the more modern elements in the 4X genre. Some may find the game a bit “simplistic” compared to other 4x games, but this is misleading. While this game is very easy to learn, and keeps most of the numbers and math pretty simple, there is an incredible amount of strategic depth to this game, and even after over 500 hours played, with 90% of that focusing on just one class, I am still learning new things.
– Real player with 938.0 hrs in game
ENDLESS™ Legend
Good game, but I will give more preference to endless space 2 with more mechanics and more elaborate gameplay.
– Real player with 364.9 hrs in game
Pros:
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Great strategy experience
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Interesting fantasy theme
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Enjoyable equipment mechanics
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Heroes add an interesting strategy layer
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Tweaking a faction to your play style is awesome
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Complicated subsystems that make the game always interesting to optimize
Cons:
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No in game encyclopedia to learn game terms and mechanics (tooltips aren’t enough)
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Game speeds other than standard are imbalanced
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Subsystems need better explanation
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Too much and too costly DLC
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DLC should not radically change the way the game is played (here it feels like what should be an update is DLC)
– Real player with 228.6 hrs in game