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 Alternate History Historical 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
Europa Universalis IV
I’m a divorced woman of color. Recently, my ex got our son Larry a video game called Europa Universalis for his 14th birthday. It seemed good for him, because it takes place in the distant past and he’s always been interested in history, so it seemed like a nice enough game, no graphic violence or anything, at least until I sat down and watched him play at it. I don’t know what sorts of racists made this game, but it’s basically a colonialism and genocide justification simulator. If you want to survive, you need to have access to money and soldiers, and the most (only) reliable way to ensure you have enough is to attack and conquer your weaker neighbors. If you don’t, you can be sure someone else will eventually come attack and conquer you.
– Real player with 4558.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Alternate History Historical Games.
So EU4 was a good game. Then they released the 450+ ‘bug fixes’. The entire game outside Europe has now been put back behind a new paywall unless you have the paradise DLC as it is now impossible to develop your provinces to spawn institutions as army tradition gives you impossibly high dev costs. I played one game and when I needed to dev an institution from a 1/1/1 grasslands province and starting cost is 120. That is only with 33 army tradition giving a 150% penalty. This was a custom nation and I had -20% dev cost. Good job paradox forcing everyone to buy your shittiest dlc in order to use any of the other DLC’s you have paid for. The game is now broken outside of Europe without the paradise dlc. You make me sick Paradox!
– Real player with 1819.5 hrs in game
Rise of Hegemony
Rise of Hegemony is a strategy game inspired by great games such as Civilization and Victoria. Triumph over your neighbours by successfully managing your country economically, diplomatically and militarily. The path to global hegemony is up to you.
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Subdue your enemies by pure military force.
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Forge alliances and diplomatic pacts to be part of an unstoppable coalition.
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Educate your people to eclipse your rivals technologically.
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Become an economic powerhouse and make other nations dependant on your resources.
In-depth economy
Rise of Hegemony features an in-depth economical system where every province contains a discrete number of people that all need resources to survive and thrive. Lacking access to sufficient amounts of critical goods such as food will cause your population to starve. Without access to weaponry your soldiers will be woefully unprepared to face enemies in battle. Trading with other countries is important, being dependant on them is perilous.
Build up your country
Starting as a fledgling country the way you want to conduct yourself on the world stage is up to you. Acting peacefully and benevolent has its benefits, but sometimes a more warlike approach is a quicker way to achieve your goals…
Randomly generated worlds
Even with the same strategy every game can take a vastly different course when the world looks different and countries will develop distinctively depending on their starting conditions.
Moddability
Rise of Hegemony leaves a lot of room for mods to expand on the game. Do you prefer to focus on a certain time period? Perhaps a fantasy setting is more to your liking? The possibilities for alternative scenarios are plenty!
Read More: Best Alternate History Simulation Games.
Steel Nations
Wait
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Early access doesn’t mean an unfinished game that has 0 features. Bugs and overall control of this game is beyond early access. Small developers releasing their game as early access should consider finishing the game to some extend at least. I understand the game has been done without a budget or anything but this is literally unplayable. Instead of trying to make 243 playable countries make 4 and make them really “playable”.
EDIT: Oh and the “5 playable modes” do not exist there is just one mod to play and the thought that they might try to sell them as dlcs is haunting me. Please if you respect the players for at least one bit pull the game out and fix the issues.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Waves of Steel
TLDR main selling points:
1. A faithful Warship Gunner/ Warship Commander successor
2. Simple-to-use part-based building system, for building your own warship
3. Very easy to mod
4. Fight zany enemies
Now, the rest of the review:
I have been waiting for a VERY long time for any successor of Koei/Microcabin’s Naval Ops: Warship Gunner/ Warship Commander series. Waves of Steel is by far the closest to the original with considerable improvements to the ship design process. Of course, since this is 2021, it also supports modding.
– Real player with 112.9 hrs in game
This is a very good game in the vein of the PS2 Naval Ops series, specifically Warship Gunner 2. You design a ship, face off against overwhelming numbers of enemies, and then pick up new techs to build a newer, better ship the next time around. This allows for some experimentation, possibly adding dozens of guns to a ship or removing them all in favor of torpedoes. Additional systems can be added to improve radar range, rate of fire and the like. There’s no single “best” build even if the game gives progressively better options. Between flags, decals and paint jobs, every ship really ends up feeling like it’s yours.
– Real player with 46.9 hrs in game
Combined Arms Operations Series
IMHO, I can recommend this game with two caveats. The first is that this product is not for players new to wargames. For those gamers, Panzer Corp 2 might be a better, albeit more expensive, choice.
For experienced players, the game comes closest to Matrix Games' The Operational Art of War III-IV, although CAOS is much simpler to pick up and play.
Here’s the short-list of positives for this product:
1. The OOBs are exhaustive, and the historical units will be familiar to wargamers. The NATO symbols are a delight.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Very fun game, 10 times better with friends. Worth every euro.
Also the developers are active and extremely nice. They’re a role model for other developers.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Making History: The Great War
The big problem with this game is the AI.
It´s much, much to aggressive and unhistorical.
The first world war and the time proceeding it was marked by decidedly conservative regimes and military high commands doing everything decidedly conservatively and cautiously.
But so far I’ve seen Germany completely loose the war on Russian within a few turns while I as France was awaiting to get my face bashed in by them in the autumn of 1914. The Germans that did attack on the western front stuck to the Schleiffen-plan religiously and kept on punching their way thru Belgium to the channel coast even as they where cut of behind them by my counter attack.
– Real player with 488.3 hrs in game
Muzzylane’s Making History:The Great War is a very good game for two rather different reasons.I was having trouble with the production code (0 and o,B and 8 you know the sort of thing and most likely my mistake )but Chris Parson at support was right there and assistance to a rather grumpy gamer was just an email away . Not hours or days later but help right now.That was a pretty good intro to M.H:T.G.W.Thanks Chris.
The game itself after a modest 14 hours is proving to be excellent.The map ,oddly is much better than it appears in Steams add, the choices of countries you can play as is amazing,the detail quite stunning.Ok if you just want to roll the armour ,the good old Command and Conquer tank rush this isn’t your kind of game. I’m still trying to get my rail system up and running correctly, learning how one problem effects so widely and how to solve it is the brilliant part of this game.Micro management,sure, but great fun. You want to do something ,but can not ,if you delight in finding why not and how to rectify it you are going to just love this game. Its a clever, functional game.No crashes,no long load up times,all good.
– Real player with 243.1 hrs in game
Silicon Valley Investor
Huh, I surprised when it finished suddenly at the end of the 25th investment year. Even if it was stated at the beginning I missed that point. I am disappointed for it, 25 is a short period I think. Isn’t it possible a 30 years old people, starting investment with 300-400k and S/he can live 60 more years.
Why did I restricted to buy a limited amount of company share? If I had enough money, I should buy whatever I want.
I did not interested with social skills at the beginning (because I don’t know it will end after 25 years.), so I have no idea about this part.
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Airships: Conquer the Skies
-All statements are relevant as of 1/31/21. No guarantees are made for future versions of Airships!-
Let me start off by saying that I am utterly and hopelessly addicted to this game.
Ever since I bought Airships (Or ACTS, as I’ll be using) back in late 2018, I fell in love with it. The game’s kept giving, the developer has remained true to his word and an amazing gentleman, and the community (Especially on the Discord) continues to grow and develop in wondrous ways. As I don’t expect you to go through my various paragraphs of gushing, I’ll put the TL;DR statement here:
– Real player with 424.1 hrs in game
Pretty cool game for those who like relatively free-form building, designing units to deal damage and mitigate it for themselves. Especially if you’re into diesel- and/or steampunk.
The things you have to account for and balance out in a unit’s design are quite numerous and varied; Everything costs something and everything weighs something. A ship’s maximum altitude - which is very important -is determined by its weight vs. lift, for example. This is probably the strongest part of the game.
So in combat, you’ll be witnessing how those designs fare against the NPC (or enemy player) units; Did you actually give your ship enough coal to stay aloft through the average battle? Oh, it turns out this one has a massive structural weakness and will be cut in half by one or two rockets. Great job!
– Real player with 82.3 hrs in game
Death Game+
Death Game+ has a simplistic artstyle that’s incredibly easy to pickup and play around in.
However, the game provides very little challenge, dying is incredibly easy and the campaign is relatively short and beat very quickly. The character acceleration is also insane and makes yourself hard to control so exploring a level is actually more difficult than dying in one.
if you’ve got money to burn and want do play something silly this is definetly the game for you.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Really bad
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game