Space Empires III
Despite the glitches and bugs, this game has that beautiful blend of design your own units and turn based strategy that I do love so much, but be ready for the eternity each match takes (on large with multiple players).
– Real player with 547.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Absolute nostalgia. Wonderful to see this again, haven’t seen it since the mid 90s. A few gripes about UI and UX and the tutorial but those are minor. 7/10
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Slime Fantasy: the search for the lost sword
More Reviews @ TheVideogameBacklog.com (It’s not updated a lot currently because I’m working on my 2nd game.)
Full disclosure: I went out of my comfort zone for this game because I saw a post about it on twitter about Slime Fantasy and it looked cool. It’s a Pico-8 game about a slime that needs his sword back to defend his kingdom and so I followed the link to Steam. What I saw there was a cool-looking pixel game with zero reviews. Honestly, I hated to see it. Especially when I thought the game looked interesting enough. Then it was confirmed to me that it was a “kill you a lot” platformer. I hesitated for a day or so then picked it up. It did and does kill me a lot; that much is true. Is it worth picking up though? Let me break it down for you.
– Real player with 3.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Pixel Graphics Games.
Empire Deluxe Combined Edition
Having played the Empire series since the late 80’s, I put off buying this game because I was afraid that I was going to be disappointed. I was afraid that it was going to be not much more than the same game with a new UI and I my fears were not far from the mark. It feels like to me that the game has been dumbed down as happens with so many games these days. Things like the Command Queue and the Processing Queue were two things that I found very useful in the earlier iterations of the game and I do not enjoy playing without them. While the developer feels he has streamlined the game I feel as if it has been made more cumbersome. Multiple commands to a battle unit were instrumental to me in keeping the game moving at a quick pace. Having to enter a second command to make a unit attack a city is not a streamlined effect at all. It might not sound like much that adds up to THOUSANDS of extra commands on a sizeable map per game. While there are some aspects of the new interface that I find useful I do not find them to be a fair trade off for the things that I liked being lost. Hopefully there will be some future patches to make this game as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. EDIT: Oh, and good luck trying to have the game build you an all land map. You will almost 100% of the time get an island start which is the exact opposite of what you were going for and if you should decide to play the map (don’t) when you finally encounter the AI you’ll find the island cities of the AI haven’t even expanded at all. So you wasted all those turns.
– Real player with 271.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Indie Games.
I’ve played this turn-based game since DOS and enjoy it. Nice that Steam has it available. I tried the Enhanced Edition and didn’t care for it so I found a way to run my original Windows 3 version and have been playing that. This Combined version is nice as it will most likely be easier to grow into the new EE version capabilities.
Update: I have played Empire Deluxe Combined for several weeks now. I LOVE playing this game. It is a turned-based game and so you can step away from the game at anytime without negative impact. Not too many games that fit that category anymore…..spouse/kid/pet friendly to the max.
– Real player with 234.2 hrs in game
Sakura Stars
The game is very hard but have boobs.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
It is a good game, however this game should come with a manual but for future reference, z to play x to shoot. you can’t use mouse to move but rather the up down left and right keys. It is not a must buy but if you are a pro mover then it’s a must buy game. It is hard to defeat but not impossible. This game doesn’t have any sexual content or nudity. A game just for fun.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Master of Orion 2
This is probably the game I’ve played most of. The game’s difficulty relies on how you choose your race, or your race traits. It takes foresight and decision making calculation (skill) to become an effective leader. Noted, it is still possible for the most skilled players to loose on the ‘impossible’ difficulty.
Best 4X game i’ve played thus far.
Big (+)’s
-Music is good (excluding variety in it though)
-AI play their set difficulty level
-Custom race traits are resolute and have sensible outcomes
– Real player with 155.6 hrs in game
I’ve received this game from a friend.
How one can rate masterpiece? Masterpiece is a game that is complex, with many possibilities, allowing experimentation on one hand, but on the other it has easy GUI, navigation and is not overloaded with too many statistics, options, etc. (this is where MOO3 failed). Such game also should have good music and good graphic with nice effects (this game also had this when it was published). Many games tried to copy from this game, but most failed.
At the beginning I strongly recommend to tweak dosbox settings, the default Steam window setting is barely playable. Edit the dosboxMOO2.conf file, change the lines to:
– Real player with 96.7 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Colonization (Classic)
This game is a gem, and still great fun to play more than two decades after its release. It starts in 1492; your sovereign grants you a few colonists, some tools and muskets and a ship to head into the vast unknown. It is up to you to turn that humble beginning into a vast colonial empire - and then rebel against the ever more oppressive rule from across the seas.
It is a game that is fairly simple to get into, but the more finnicky bits of growth and economy can take a while to get the hang of. Do you start a vast agricultural colony, raising new colonials through food, or do you start with cash crops and their refined versions to scrape together enough gold for new recruits from the old world? Perhaps you instead focus on spreading the good word of your faith to lure lost souls across the Atlantic, or use your military might and missionaries to subdue the local natives as converts? Perhaps all of the above, all the while bickering with your fellow European colonies and treading carefully around the sovereign’s steady requests for higher taxes, your day only brightened as founding fathers flock to your banner to aid you.
– Real player with 121.8 hrs in game
An oldie, but a goodie and, IMHO, superior to the 2008 remake.
Pros
1. Works fine on Windows 10 though my PC is a toaster from 2009ish so your mileage may vary.
2. Excellent soundtrack.
3. The same addictive formula as the other Sid Meier games.
4. Colonial setting. It’s not super historical or anything, but it’s still an interesting time period.
5. The ability to commence your own 1776.
Cons
1. Combat. I once had a unit with 15 attack lose to a unit with 5 attack… 15 reloads in a row. There was another case where a unit with 1.5 attack managed to defeat my artillery which had 20 attack. I’ve seen fishermen defeat dragoons more then once. These kind of upsets don’t happen constantly, but are frequent enough that I wasn’t surprised and would save before every attack just in case. TL:DR A higher attack doesn’t guarantee victory so your frigate could end up being sunk by a guy in a rowboat with a knife.
– Real player with 93.3 hrs in game
Star Traders: 4X Empires
This game plays like many of the older TBS games, like Alpha Centauri, and its ilk. It has a vast tree of technology that progresses pretty intuitively, but the controls and gameplay itself is rather hard to master.
Once you figure out the basics and get an understanding of how the game progresses and works, It becomes easier to work through the game.
It essentially centers around colonizing planets that then become their own centers of production. Each planet has a “quality rating” that determines its potential for use. Lower quality planets will end up being burdens on your empire, while high quality planets will be the center for constructing your fleets and providing income.
– Real player with 75.0 hrs in game
4X Empires is exactly what I expected from developers like the Trese Brothers. Following the success from their previous titles Star Traders and Templar Assault, 4X Empires builds upon the lore of the Star Traders Universe by giving the player a completely new perspective on the deeply enriched story previously told.
This game is played in the perspective of the venerable Templars, protectorate of the bickering factions and guardians of the quadrant. As such, you are unable to directly control the factions and their politics, only what they build, what they research, and when. The politics system is a formidible beast, and truly gives the player the feeling that the Templars are not completely in control. It is this politics system that makes the game unique, and at times, infuriating. I have lost several games solely because the warring factions would rather fight amongst themselves than band together to fight the Xeno scourge.
– Real player with 65.0 hrs in game
Eador: Genesis
This old school 2D turn-based strategy is great, I have been playing this game since 2009 and I still haven’t found anything as good as Eador. Genesis.
The game was developed by single man, after some time 1C Snowbird got rights and made a 3D remake Eador. Masters of the Broken World. Though game looks pretty nice it had some critical problems with visual and UI experience coupled with constant crashes and plethora of annoying bugs (though most of crashes and bugs are fixed now, it took a really long time for developers). Because of that Eador. Genesis is still the better option than its 3D remake.
– Real player with 1210.0 hrs in game
Alright, what’s the deal with this game? It’s got crappy graphics and looks like it’s from 1998!
Let’s ignore those facts for a moment. Suspend your disbelief, if you will. What’s going on beneath the surface with the game mechanics?
As of this review writing, I’ve got 305 hours spent on this game (I’m a bit ashamed of that). So, there’s something being done right here. It certainly scratches a lot of my itches and gives me what I’m looking for.
In terms of strategy, there are multiple layers of complexity. You’re first introduced to the game in a small starting scenario which introduces the game mechanics to you. Most of the time, you are moving your hero armies around on the campaign map. On occassion, your hero will get into a tactical battle against monsters or other heros. This takes place on a hexagonal grid system and each side takes turns moving all of their creatures.
– Real player with 666.6 hrs in game
Space Empires I
I remember playing Space Empires way back ages ago, so I was pretty excited to pick the series on steam again and replay them.
Sadly, Space Empires I is NOT FUNCTIONAL on windows 10 at this time. It cannot process a single turn, crashing to desktop when ‘end turn’ is pressed. game load and save functions also do not work either.
This should have been tested more before release.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
I had no idea Steam was carrying the Space Empires Series, and was incredibly shocked to see SE I and not SE II on the store list. So a little bit of history here. Aaron Hall back in 1993 was working on his personal project Space Empires and formed this game as a prototype for something bigger and in 1995. We got Space Empires II.
Space Empires II was technically the first product released to the public and I remember sending in a money order to purchase this game after playing the shareware forever back in the mid 90s. I also got the CD when buying the complete bundle with Space Empire 4 Gold back in the early 2000s. Which was the only way I knew at the time, on how you actually got the original Space Empires prototype.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
军团战棋Legion War
Just on the last weekend I played a big FFA the demo for 10.2 hours.
Then got the full game and played 2 1v1s for a combined other 5.5 hours!
It is rare that a game captivates me that much from the get go.
The AI is also quite competent already, which is part of what makes the game so fun to play. But I also see room for improvement there.
There’s some minor annoyances that could easily be improved like:
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no hotkey for ending the turn
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a lot of places where I first have to select something and then click a button instead of having double-click work there like with the hero-skill-tree, would be really nice if equiping items worked the same way
– Real player with 85.9 hrs in game
Legion War is a classic style turn-based conquer the world game with tons of options and depth to it. I’ve played nearly 75 hours and haven’t even touched the two campaigns currently included.
As of this review there are 5 playable factions with unique units, heroes, spells/abilities and mechanics as well as several minor factions that can be encountered in game and whose units can be recruited.
The game receives regular updates adding new and completely unexpected content, and development on the campaigns for other factions seems to be ongoing at a steady pace.
– Real player with 74.5 hrs in game