Burned Land
Burned Land is a niche game, and a little gem to me.
At first sight it might seem a little bit empty and obscure. Then it will seem very hard, even unfair. But if you push forward, you will discover a game with a very original approach, very rich and permissive in the ways you want to shape your kingdom and face the gods.
In this game, you not only build units and facilities, you will also “monitor” your population (literacy, devotion, nobility, sedentary, etc.), so they will provide you what you need and when you need it.
– Real player with 31.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Indie Games.
It is a pretty rough game, both in terms of UI and difficulty. The UI will hopefully get some polish from this one-man dev team, and perhaps the difficulty as well, but the difficulty certainly needs the polish a lot less. The dev is still pushing out regular updates, thus my recommendation for this Early Access game.
I made it to Turn 194, after narrowly dodging a very early game defeat. The early game near-defeat came about as my village almost starved due to a famine brought on by the gods. The entire point of this game is that the larger you grow, the more interest the gods have in stopping you from growing.
– Real player with 24.6 hrs in game
Imperiums: Greek Wars
So, I have been playing this game for about near 40 hours at the time of this review.
Imperiums, focus' on the Greek Wars time era. And the developers do a very good job in portraying accurate history, in my opinion. The game keeps trying to ‘curb’ you back toward history. However; you can fight against that, and go your own way. However it requires more effort or ‘elbow grease’ to get there. Basically, to ‘go against’ history; the game feels harder! Usually. Usually when trying to go against history. I really like this aspect of the game.
– Real player with 323.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
As a strategy game Imperiums is one of a kind. Designed from scratched with pen and paper by a passionate developer and now released as the second entry in a hopefully long lasting series of strategy games.
Over the years the game is shaped and finetuned by the help of a small, but very dedicated playerbase who can discuss with the developer in forums on Steam and Discord.
Hundreds of players already mentioned their complains and wishes for the game and the developer keeps a list with urgent must have features and nice to have features for the future.
– Real player with 158.9 hrs in game
Aggressors: Ancient Rome
This review is actually a Thank you letter to the developer for making this game.
For unbiased reviews skip this one.
I think it was 25 years ago that most of my school holiday time was used to do what I really like. Gaming. But I did not had my first PC yet, so gaming was spending one day in the city to collect all kind of painting materials and paperboards to create the ultimate game myself.
The Civilization boardgame, HeroQuest boardgame and some rare tabletop games I owned served as an example. But mine had a bigger boards, more options, more counters and features, more of everything actually.
– Real player with 562.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Aggressors - Ancient Rome
This obscure historical game is turn based strategy / tactics to dominate the world starting in 280 BC by default, but adustable from 1000 BC to 500 AD. It is single player and is my personal choice for game of the year. I have played it for over 480 hours in the past 60 days. It is published by Slitherine and available through them, on Steam and GOG.
Where I am coming from
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I am the curator of Strategic Win https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9074928/ and have reviewed 142 games there in the past 2 years. I bought this game from Matrix games.
– Real player with 521.5 hrs in game
Hero Generations
Hero Generations Review
A nice little Indie Adventure lies in wait…
Some key points that this game offers:
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Beautifully hand drawn art style.
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Permadeath for that extra challenge.
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City Building and upgrading.
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Six unique worlds to find, explore and conquer each crafted in their own brilliant theme.
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Family legacies.
Gameplay & Controls:
The controls are pretty much mouse only, using the left mouse to click where your character moves, and by moving it can be in one of four directions, up, down, left or right unless one of those paths are obstructed by the edge of a map or an immovable object.
– Real player with 103.6 hrs in game
This game is still in beta even though it is out on full release. I actually really like this game a lot. My advice is to wait 6 or more months down the line when it is really finished. Please take caution in purchasing this as the save file corrupts which will force you to delete your save and start over again.
Update:
To the developer: I respect what you as a 1 man team has done. I being someone who knows a lot about computer software/engineering know the amount of work that is required.
– Real player with 31.5 hrs in game
Pandora: First Contact
This is a solid game in its niche marked of 4x games, and more specifically, 4x games with space age human colonization. With its only direct competitor being the blatant AAA cash-in Civ: Beyond Earth, it is clear that this dev does not have much to compete against.
Let’s start with the bad, because everyone else starts with the good, and I’m a unique and interesting individual, as well as a special snowflake, so I go out of my way to be different in ways that try to be clever but miss the mark entirely.
– Real player with 245.6 hrs in game
A great 4X game, what I used to cure down my hype in waiting for the release of Beyond Earth.
Although the game has quite a steep learning, REALLY took me alot of playthroughs and restarts (“rage quits” you might call them) to get things going right in the game (e.g. Prioritizing the wrong things).
TL:DR;
Like it or not, Military is VERY IMPORTANT in the game; you arrive on this new planet, Pandora; peaceful at first (depending on your alien agression difficulty), but eventually the planet will become very hostile towards you (and other factions). Aliens (Native Wildlife) in the game behaves similarly to Barbarians in Civ, their main purpose is to cause trouble and possibly wreck havoc in your new cities (with the exception that Aliens can actually raze entire cities in a turn). However, Barbarians will always attack you, but their not that strong, usually a good combination of 2-3 units can deal with most of those issues. But for Aliens, they won’t attack you right from the start (that’s why exploration is safe and actually a necessity); but when they do, they can be really troublesome; barbarians quite often invade in individuals, but aliens invade in large groups. Have a bad military and your city is prone to destruction. Other more powerful aliens (e.g. Galeths, Aspidochs) attack you much later in the game, prioritize the right things (e.g. research on weps) and you can deal with them (with the lost of a few units in some cases); otherwise be prepared to lose a few cities. Keep playing longer, then there’s a third type of alien invasion that can even be more of an issue for unprepared factions (having little military), but I’ll leave it for you to discover.
– Real player with 92.3 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Civilization® III Complete
Here’s what I think of this game, I’ll compare it to Civ 5 since most people consider that to be the best Civ game.
Music: Both Civ 5 and Civ III have fantastic soundtracks as with pretty much all Civ games. CIV 5’s soundtrack is better, but that doesn’t mean this soundtrack isn’t worth listening to.
Diplomacy: The diplomacy here in Civ III, in my opinion is better. You can trade maps technologies, change how agressive the AI is. The AI does get quite a bit agressive once you get to medium agressiveness although.
– Real player with 328.3 hrs in game
I will start this review in two seperate forms, one for interested newcomers and then the Old Guard.
I will list off the pros first before the cons of this game, Civilization 3 is a different twist of the game than you may be familar with 4 and 5. Go in understanding this switch:
-Its an old game, if you can run the actual game, there should be no real issues.
-Graphically, it’s a sound experience and not many real issues, the modding community can find you bug fixes or new skins. Its pleasing regardless and you won’t really be let down by this game.
– Real player with 325.2 hrs in game
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
This is my favorite game since it came out, and my favorite version of Civ (I know Civ 1 through 5)
I won’t go into what Civ is specifically about. You should know.
Nor will I compare to other Civ games. It has been done.
This versions' depth is impressive, and the playability is… at least a few lifetimes.
Graphics are normal, but totally irrelevant!
The 4X strategy design and many (but not too many) balanced options make it something that will always be enjoyable.
Spock will still read your Scientific discoveries out loud! :P
– Real player with 1974.8 hrs in game
I’ll start by saying that this is not a game for casuals, if you want to have a game that is incredibly compelling and complex and rewarding to learn, this is your game. While Civ 3 remains a complete mystery to me, I can say I have played all the others, and this one is by far the best I’ve played. You might say “what about Civ 5?”, but I highly prefer it to Civ 5 for several reasons (unit stacking Figure out how to use collateral damage people, tech/espionage/culture slider, much more micromanagable empire, better system for unit and city maintenance, far superior espionage system, more interesting promotion dynamics with military units, unrestricted leaders, non gimmicky leader traits, non gimmicky religions, far superior map options, way less annoying barbarians, way less buggy multiplayer, etc etc etc…)
– Real player with 1765.2 hrs in game
Polaris Sector
Nice and deep space 4X game, definately the best of the recent releases. It also avoided a common fact with 4X which is that many features are copy/pasted beetween games, so it will feel fresh even if you’re used to the genre.
In a nutshell, it’s a bit rough but a must for every space 4X fan. It shines in empire management, elegant mechanics, diplomacy. It would deserve a bit more streamlining.
Why is it better than most other 4X?
+ Rewarding diplomacy:
Interactions pretty rational. There are many possibilities, from trading ressources (shortages are common so that’s handy), to technologies, to being able to use friendly planets as bases for your fleet or asking for a 3rd party to negociate a peace with your ennemy, or bribe them into getting into war against your ennemy (or request a bribe to help them!)
– Real player with 229.8 hrs in game
Lets get to it.
Pro:
[olist]
- A.I. (Articial Intelligence) - I cannot emphasis or stress enough of how extremely good the A.I. is. It’s probably one of the most advanced one I’ve seen in a 4x game genre. I absolutely love how it handles playing against me and handling my orders for planets, colonization, and etc (without the need to micromanage everything). Again, the A.I. in this game is just so good that it cannot be expressed sufficiently of how good it is. Even the developer of this game admits that hard is very tough for him.
– Real player with 159.5 hrs in game
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
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
Sid Meier’s Civilization® IV
Diary Entry 1- Heliopolis is under siege by Rome. I’ve been unable to send reinforcements because Caeser is moving his troops around my territory, destroying farms, mines and villages. I can’t spread too thin in fear of my other cities being attacked.
So 5 handfuls of Heavy machine Gunners have been defending the city from catapult bombardments and grenadier attacks.
And now, he seems to have set his sights upon the neighbouring city of Memphis.
Diary Entry 2 - I’ve reached out to the Malinese and Isabella of Spain, and both have declared war on Ceaser. They are on the opposite side of him to me. So while they cannot directly help my cities, they will put pressure on the Western side. So hopefully I can repel the siege and push to his cities. I have a troop of tanks coming in from the Northeast, and a regiment of Marines coming in from the southeast.
– Real player with 661.1 hrs in game
Once upon a time, I tried Civilization V. I discovered it was buggy. What I did play was really fun though. So my in-laws bought me Civilization III, which was really fun. I then saw that Civilization IV was on sale, along with the expansions, so I bought the main game and a couple of the expansions. I am currently enjoying the happily ever after.
This is one of the most addictive games I have ever played. My husband and I are enjoying a hotseat match in which I am sure will end in a bloodbath. In Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword I am preparing to conquer the world with my mighty Celtic army. Civilization IV is an awesome strategy game in which almost anything is possible. There are so many different leaders to choose, and many different ways to beat the game. Sure, you could do a military victory, but you can also win diplomatically, artistically, and financially. There is also the Space Race…
– Real player with 86.8 hrs in game