Shadows of the Sengoku
The year is 1467. The Sengoku period has just begun. Every Daimyo will be out for blood, trying to bring glory to their clan and be unifier of Japan. More than might and riches, cunning is required.
Enter the Shadows.
Shadows of Sengoku is a Grand Strategy game that mixes Turn-Based Tactical Combat into the formula, and puts the player in control of the Shadows; a group of elite units that serve one of the Daimyos of Japan, executing missions and expanding the clan’s influence in order to achieve its ultimate destiny: The Unification of Japan.
Conquer Your Way!
Shadows of Sengoku features over 30 possible clans that the player can choose to play as. Help the Ashikaga retain the Shogunate; Aid the Hosokawa in keeping their regional superiority; spearhead the warlike Uesugi’s offensive in the Tokaido; grow the Ainu into a formidable opponent; or fight for supremacy in the Kyushu as the Shimazu.
Each clan will be ruled by a Daimyo with their own goals and aspirations for the clan. Some may seek greatness through war, others may desire for peaceful relations and diplomacy, yet others may want to isolate themselves from the rest in a road to self-reliance. But Daimyos don’t live forever; a change in the leadership of a clan may severely alter the course of a game!
Train Your Squad!
Units can be recruited and will have their starting abilities based off of the province they hail from, with each of the game’s 80 provinces bringing different bonuses. But they all start at low level, and will need to gain experience be it in the form of open combat or using the Shadows' training grounds. Being efficient in battle will not only allow your units to improve quicker; they’ll also gain combat ranks which will unlock a whole new host of gameplay options.
There are no classes in Shadows of the Sengoku; instead a system of proficiencies will categorize your unit based on its weaknesses and strengths. An innovative skill system allows you to train your units in whatever way you desire, specializing them into one or more combat roles as you see fit. But use caution; losing a very important unit in combat can have drastic consequences to morale!
High-Stakes Tactical Combat!
Going back to the roots of tactical turn-based combat, Shadows of the Sengoku gives the players complete control over their units action. Based on a time unit system, players can more accurately coordinate and develop their strategy during combat. Each time unit will count, with units being granted a better chance of defending themselves if they have time units to spare after taking their turns.
Combat is also extremely deadly; badly positioning your soldiers can lead to a quick and untimely death at the hands of the enemy! A blend of melee, ranged, and explosive attacks will be useful in turning the tide of a battle. 8 different enemy archetypes with multiple variations within will expand the possibilities in battle and make each encounter formidable. Expect the unexpected!
Build And Research!
Improve your weapons, armor and items via a dynamic research system that does away with traditional tech trees in favor of a more procedural approach; each piece will have their own tech progression, which can first be unlocked by researching an existing item. This way players can focus research on items that more favor their playstyle; become an assassin with ranged weapons, focus on impenetrable armor and so on. But beware; the enemy is smart and paying attention to what you do, and they may just focus on tactics to counter you!
Players will also be able to build up the infrastructure for their headquarters, constructing new buildings and improving old ones as they see fit in order to gain bonuses and gain combat advantages. But these expansions must be planned carefully; there is always the possibility of an enemy attack on your hq, which could be very difficult to defend if you were haphazard with your planning!
And More!
Shadows of the Sengoku also features:
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Comprehensive mission tree system to direct the actions of your clan
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Wide variety of procedurally generated missions to keep the gameplay always fresh
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Intricate diplomatic system that allows you to form alliances, start wars, and betray your friends
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Unique Daimyo personality that will shape the way each individual clan acts
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An AI learning system that learns and adjusts to your tactics on the battlefield
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Annex provinces via diplomacy or conquest
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Non-combat missions that may drastically affect the world and provide you with benefits
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The ever-present threat of retaliation by the Emperor should your clan grow too powerful, be it politically or militarily
Raiders! Forsaken Earth
IN A WORD: MAYBE
IN A NUTSHELL:
WHAT TO EXPECT: Be the villain. Sandbox generated world. Mixes strategy with management. Turn-based, side-on combat with many tactical options. Post-apocalyptic setting. Lots of raider and some base customisation. Large array of inventory. Item crafting. Artillery, siege engine and landsail craft. Slaves and cannibal options. Seed generated world maps. Alot of micro-management. Optional endgame scenarios or endless mode. Singleplayer only. Currently supported by dev.
– Real player with 63.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grand Strategy CRPG Games.
Can I recommend this game? Boy, that’s a doozey. If the game was $60, hell no. At its current price? Totally.
Basics of the game is, you start off with pretty much nothing. You got some raiders with you and they are bottom of the barrel. Its ok though because the way you level up is by fighting. There are, I believe, respawning caravans with really low level mobs that at first is a little bit of a challenge but after some levels and better armor, maybe weapons too, you can pretty much take on the whole wasteland. Your raiders quickly receive a message saying that Wasteland’s Rangers are coming in 120 days. I’m not kidding, they are pretty much the Wasteland game franchises Rangers. For some reason, after playing w2 and just devastating all the raiders, my head-canon really enjoyed being that ONE GROUP that won lol.
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Empires in Ruins
Edit: The developer is super chill, and is looking to patch out the bugs soon. This is still a hard game with hit-or-miss writing and an imperfect UI, but serious props to anyone who can indie dev something this complex. Check it out if there isn’t something in the review that’s a dealbreaker for you.
This is a very “yes, but…” recommendation.
Empires In Ruins is a thing I should like. It’s a tower defense with a 4x strategy layer, and where you can econ yourself into an easier TD situation, or TD yourself out of a bad economy.
– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Grand Strategy Tower Defense Games.
**This is a short excerpt of my longer analysis and review (available in English and German). I would recommend reading the full text or watching the YouTube Video (German Voiceover, many subtitles)
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Empires in Ruins Test / Review
Empires in Ruins Review – Conclusion and opinion**
For an indie game of a small team just entering early access, the game is already surprisingly polished. The campaign includes a very entertaining story and for strategy fans an appealing game depth.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
Gemini Wars
“So i had around 40 hours in this game, it is not good it is not bad either. Missions lack in challenge, they are mostly the same, protect this, defeat that. The later part where the aliens apears was slightly better but i wish game is longer, more ship classes and details. However for people who like this kind of game its okay. Graphics, could be better, much better.
Would i recommend this game?
Game recieved many negative reviews,and mostly because it didnt deserve positive ones, for the current price of 14,99EUR i wouldnt recommend this game. If you find it on sale, for cheap, try it, you wont lost anything except few hours of your life. I would give positive on this one since i did had fun in skirmish with this game, and because i love some of the ship designs. Otherwise if there is neutral button i would hit instead.
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
This game feels like it is still in beta with all the glitches.
Pros:
Good concept. I enjoy how quickly bases can be built if you have the resources which makes comebacks not entirely out of the picture. Easy to pick up.
Cons:
Ships will shake violently when trying to move and sometimes won’t even move when part of a large selected group. AI is horrible for skirmishes. I played a skirmish where the AI player sent its starting construction ship to where I was building my fleet about 5 minutes into the game and it was destroyed easily ending the game.
– Real player with 28.0 hrs in game
Frozenheim
First, the TL;DR: While the game still feels rough around the edges, it is a fun game if you like games/matches that can last as little as 30 minutes and as long as 3 hours (exploring to get Ragnarök).
GREAT:
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Aesthetically pleasing with good music
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Building options
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Enough maps (4) to play skirmishes, games and 2 campaigns
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Minor customization (color selection) of your colony
NEUTRAL:
- You colony can expand 3 times, each with prerequisites and materials required, but the expansion is small. Depending on your starting location, it can matter a lot or none at all.
– Real player with 247.5 hrs in game
Game, building and personal information:
(Detailed)
- Frozenheim a “serene Norse city builder” that absolutely feels serene when focused on creating a settlement. I begin with just a Jarl’s longhouse and a handful of citizens standing around, and I build a lumber camp, fishing and hunting huts, a gathering station (for stone), and then a training camp so I can begin to create some soldiers. I put down some houses to grow my population, and there are windmills for wheat fields and farmhouses but they won’t generate resources in the harsh winters that cover the world in snow and ice so be aware of that.
– Real player with 65.0 hrs in game
Space Empires II
i like the space battles
– Real player with 642.9 hrs in game
Well, I didn’t expect to see this on Steam! Classic “beer and pretzels” 4X game, rather simplistic compared to later Space Empires games but still fun to play. The UI is a bit clunky, particularly when it comes to issuing ship commands and building things, and pathfinding through warp points is nonexistent. I wish you could play online against other humans, rather than just locally or vs. the AI; the AI doesn’t seem to be too good at the game. But it’s a fun game to play if you just want to relax and conquer the universe.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Xenonauts 2
XENONAUTS-2 is a vast single player strategy game in which you control a multi-national military organisation defending our planet from alien invasion.
Battle the extraterrestrials in tense, complex turn-based combat across a variety of maps and missions, recovering and researching their technology to unlock new weapons and equipment!
Take a global view with the real-time strategic management layer: you must establish and develop your bases, conduct research, battle for air supremacy and try to keep the panic level in your funding regions under control.
The strategic and tactical layers of the game are directly related, with ground missions affecting the overall balance of the Geoscape and your research efforts on the recovered items unlocking new equipment for your squads and aircraft. Every management decision you make filters down to the troops you control in battle; every shot you fire could change the balance of strategic power.
Can you hold off the invasion long enough to discover a way to defeat the alien forces?
No knowledge of the previous game is required to play - XENONAUTS-2 is a standalone title with its own setting and narrative.
Key Features
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Ground Combat: The highly-detailed turn-based combat system gives you fine control over your soldiers as they battle the aliens across multiple different mission types and numerous varied environments. The day / night cycle and destructible battlefields open up endless tactical possibilities to defeat your enemies, and your soldiers will grow stronger as they gain combat experience - provided you can keep them alive!
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Strategic Management: A complex strategic layer allows you to coordinate the defence of our planet. Establish bases to extend your reach and use customisable interceptors to shoot down attacking UFOs, then deploy your soldiers to secure resources. Capturing crash sites can secure alien technology and live specimens for research, whereas protecting regions from alien activity and terror attacks will protect your funding and prevent them surrendering to the aliens.
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In-depth Simulation: The structure of Xenonauts-2 is not linear; no two campaigns unfold in exactly the same way. Every element of this complex interlocking simulation has been designed to create maximum coherence between the strategic and tactical layers: small decisions can have an impact across the entire game.
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Extensive Tech Tree: XENONAUTS-2 contains a vast variety of aircraft, vehicles, weapons, armour, and battlefield equipment for you to experiment with. and a deep research tree with over a hundred projects to unlock. Play the game the way you want to play, devising your own tactics and strategies to defeat the extraterrestrial threat!
Key Improvements from XENONAUTS-1
In addition to the new modular upgrade systems mentioned previously, here is a very small selection of key changes and enhancements:
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Improved visuals across all parts of the game, including full 3D tactical environments with a rotatable camera!
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A more detailed and immersive Geoscape simulation incorporating greater player choice and stronger elements of territory control!
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More environments and maps to fight in - including our new Jungle and Boreal biomes!
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New aliens have been added and many existing ones have been redesigned, all of which will benefit from our new and improved AI system!
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A larger research tree with more lore and an expanded variety of equipment for your soldiers to use in battle!
Xenonauts
More faithful than the modern XCOM games. You can build multiple bases to your own style and needs! Multiple drop ships, not a single one and an anthill for you to save the world with. Troops are expendable like they should be! Yay!
Eagerly awaiting the sequel, and hopefully eventual Terror From the Deep spiritual successor.
Only thing letting it down is lack of final polish - quicksave works, quickload doesn’t for some reason, and there’s a few minor glitches like the camera being stuck panning in a direction after an alien turn which requires a quick reload to fix, etc. Sometimes the AI acts a little omnipotent, such as sitting in a corner in a building never moving until the moment you get close enough for it to take a fair shot at your soldiers and then dip back into cover again, even though it shouldn’t have known you were there.
– Real player with 347.6 hrs in game
Good: Mostly faithful recreation of XCOM UFO Defense but with significantly better controls and a cool Cold War setting. No class restrictions like Firaxis XCOM and fewer restrictions in general. You make your own classes. Four gun and explosive tiers.
Nice, detailed lore with the Xenopaedia. Great music overall. Overall good weapon design, with humans getting their own distinctly designed plasma weapons. Sound effects are fantastic, especially for high level weapons and explosions. They even have different sounds for the weapon reloads.
– Real player with 140.7 hrs in game
Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition
In a word: Addictive. Yes, addictive in that terrifying, inescapable, “just-one-more-turn” way. Galactic Civilizations II is what you get if you take Master of Orion II, expand it so that the galaxy, tech tree and ship customisation are roughly a hundred times as huge without ever becoming boring, bump the graphics up to a standard still respectable today for a TBS, give each civilization some serious make-or-break differences (hint: the Drengin and the Yor almost always end up dominating most of the galaxy that ISN’T YOU), and shove it out there to give almost every other space-based TBS a serious poke in the eye.
– Real player with 216.8 hrs in game
I decided to pick up a new 4x space game after pouring many hours into Endless Space. Endless Space lacked complexity and I searched for a more in depth game. Galactic Civilizations 2 fulfill that criteria. I started playing this in 2015 so I have no nostalgic feelings for it. The game is quite good and fun despite its age and limitations, in fact it is the best 4x space game I have played so far (other space 4x I’ve played are MOO2, Endless Space and Sword of the Stars). Take a good look at the pros and cons because some points might put you off.
– Real player with 196.7 hrs in game
Structura
This is a niche game intended for a small group of people that enjoy the concept of turning DOS into a game, and manually handling every aspect of base building and logistics through text commands - in lieu of having situational action buttons that figure what you are trying to do when you aim at x thing.
I am not one of those people. I don’t know any of those people.
But I do hope the devs find their audience.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game