DAISENRYAKU PERFECT 4.0
I’m going to offer a counterpoint to all the bad press here about DSP 4.0. While individually, valid criticisms are made by reviewers, collectively the overall picture being painted is of a very poor game. While the Daisenryaku franchise may not be to everyone’s taste, and clearly from the comments here it is not, this game is a representative sample. Not the best, but by no means the worst.
I’ll admit my bias. I’ve been a fan of this series since Daisenryaku VII for the original XBOX some 15 years ago. Since then I have played many of the games for all varieties of platforms, mostly on emulators, almost invariably the Japanese version. That’s why getting this title, and in English, is a milestone of sorts. The tricky bit to playing in Japanese is not fighting the battles, it’s just getting there. So to those who complain this is a poor localization, I say 95% of the work has been done for you. Yes, some of the translations are a little wonky and not all the unit names are properly translated. But understanding the menus is what you need to play effectively and most here would have a lot of difficulty navigating the game interface and editors in Japanese text. And the manual, so far as it goes, is clear and comprehensible.
– Real player with 267.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Wargame Games.
Daisenryaku Perfect 4 is not perfect , but it is much better game than you would be led to believe from these reviews. There are a few things that you need to understand at the outset though. First, this is not Daisenryaku VII. The Daisenryaku series originated in 1985 and since that time has splintered into a number of similar but quite different products. The Perfect series is 2D, and in many ways is a direct descendent of the original game. (which only ran on NEC PC-98 computers - well before Windows took over the world). If you are expecting Daisenryaku VII, this is not it. I personally prefer the Perfect series myself, but some might not. Chocolate and vanilla.
– Real player with 74.6 hrs in game
Hexonomy
Hexonomy is a game of strategy and economics. Choose from hundreds of different businesses to build and use the resources at your disposal to create the largest economic empire before time runs out. Be sure to keep your eyes open for any weaknesses in your opponents business strategy, placing the right business, at the right time, in the right place, could mean the end of it all for your opponent.
GAMEPLAY
Start with a blank slate. You begin by creating Resource nodes on the map. These will set the basis of the game. Where you place your first resources could affect the outcome of the entire game. All businesses derive from a resources in some shape or form.
From there, you advance into Tiers. Each Tier requires a business from the Tier below it. For example, a Tier 12 business requires a Tier 1 supplier. A Tier 6 supplier requires a Tier 5 supplier. And Tier 1 suppliers always require Resources. The higher the Tier, the bigger the risk, and the bigger the reward. Higher tiers will requires a wider variety of supplies from multiple businesses, so you have to be sure that all the suppliers are met. For each supplier on the map that supplies your business, you get a boost to efficiency, which results in more money for you.
If you own the supplier to your business, you get a HUGE discount on supplies. Meaning, chaining the suppliers and business makes great economical sense when possible. But that may not always be the case.
THE CATCH
There can only ever be ONE of any business. Which means if you need birch wood, and your opponent owns the only tree farm, you HAVE to buy from him. You cannot decline to buy from a supplier. If the supplier is available, you have to buy from them, and you have to pay their price. Meaning, if you know your opponent needs Gold in the future for their Jewelry brokerage, it would be wise to put down a Gold mine if they haven’t already. You would profit tremendously selling to your opponent, they wouldn’t get a discount, and that means leverage by trying to hike the price up as much as possible.
However, they can do the same to you, so its wise to be careful about leaving any vulnerabilities in your supply chain. These vulnerabilities sometimes may be unavoidable, since the higher Tier business may already require resources that your opponent bought early in the game. This is where prediction and smart calculations will win you the game.
TACTICS
Businesses location and information varies as well. Certain business only do well in certain time of the year (the time of the game is calculated in a 12 month system, using economic quarters and sprints). Some businesses have higher shipping costs than others. Some require a higher amount of resources to produce their product. Other business may have to be placed next to other tiles. Some business cant be within x amount of tiles of another business.
These placement restrictions and variables make it a little harder to create good economic chains. However, they can also be used to your advantage in order to put your opponent in a tough spot. If you know what their strategy is, you can restrict certain businesses from being built by creating others that counter those businesses. Knowing the supply and demand will help you overcome this as you learn about the Hexonomy.
UPGRADES
Once you have businesses placed, you can start thinking about how to upgrade. There are many types of modifiers in the game. Ones that apply to the whole board, ones that apply to all your businesses only, some that affect an area, and some that affect a single business. You can purchase these modifiers for Capital. By doing this, it will effectively cost you Net Worth, but in the long run, may help generate significantly more income. Spend wisely.
WINNING AND LOSING
As the game goes on, you are constantly trying to increase your company’s Net Worth. The more property you own, and the more successful businesses you have, and the more Capital your businesses earned you, the higher your company’s value. The player with the highest Net Worth at the end of time is the winner.
Create the empire you want! You can choose a hundred different paths to victory, as long as you have a great strategic and economical mind!
Read More: Best Hex Grid Early Access Games.
Strategic Command WWII: World at War
Strategic Command WWII is an awesome game.
It has just the right scale, detailed enough to allow the right mix of subtlety and replayability, while not being one of these mammoth games with a lot of tedium (and a cramp on the pause finger) that will never be finished in the end (HOI 4 I’m looking at you!).
If you want to play a World War II game which is actually finished (I would even say polished, given it is the (major) evolution of a past release), with a competent enough AI, lot of historicity and attention to details, lot of decisions (real choices, often difficult to decide in the right meaning of the word), proper scale and pace… Then that’s the game you’ll want to play (and enjoy then finish) on World War II. Then you can play against a friend for even great enjoyment (and devious strategies).
– Real player with 520.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hex Grid Turn-Based Games.
One of the better, if not the best, Second World War strategy titles.
The game starts in September ‘39 at the earliest date. Unlike certain series such as Hearts of Iron, the major part of the strategy here is not to build up your armies, but to fight. As such, for roughly the first year of gameplay (which is 24 turns), most of your production will be things already ordered. This is less important for states such as Germany, who begin with a rather large and well equipped army, but it is rather important for Japan and France, to name a few. This creates for quite a few alternate history pathways, contrary to what you might think.
– Real player with 238.2 hrs in game
Commander: The Great War
Ok. I have played this game for a while and got the hang of it.
It is a great game of WW1 with a couple of frustrating imperfections that you only really appreciate when you have played quite a bit. So while i might say negative things at the end of this review this is a recommendation.
For starters it feels like WW1.
The graphics look the part. The map covers everything and there is plenty of open ocean for the naval campaigns to unfold. The opening turns also develop in a very similiar manner to the actual war as long as you play even modestly sensibly as either side.
– Real player with 1715.3 hrs in game
The designers did many things right. I really have only two complaints. One of those complaints is pretty serious, but the good points outweigh that big negative.
My background: History is my passion. I’ve had a particular interest in WW1 for thirty years. I’ve been to the best museums, and one of the battlefields. I’ve been playing hex-based wargames for even longer. When I was in college I was frustrated by the lack of WW1 games (apart from air combat). I wrote my own game, loosely based on squad leader and researched it thoroughly.
– Real player with 477.7 hrs in game
Deity Empires
Short description:
DE is the most faithful (playable) successor to Master of Magic. It has some
*4x Fantasy Strategy with seperate magic and civic research
*points to spend on perks at game start
*sophisticated economy
*incremential elements like resource upgrades and unit leveling ( (which you can turn off))
*Tactical battles and Rogue like dungeon diving (simplistic Rogue Like at the moment but there is more to come)
A negative point is, that this game is complex and/but has very limited manual (and no tutorial). As I understand it, the devs wait for the big and essential updates, before they spend time on manuals. The DE community is very welcoming. The forum search function is your extended manual.
– Real player with 783.5 hrs in game
This review is from the perspective of someone who has played a significant amount of the Age of Wonders series and the Fall from Heaven 2 mod for Civ4. I’ve also dabbled in Endless Legend, Fallen Enchantress, Dominions, and Master of Magic.
Right now this game feels like a cross of Age of Wonders and FFH2, and I love it. Below are some of my thoughts:
City Development (Tall vs Wide):
Cities start weak but can become incredible powerhouses given time and investment. For example, a starting city will produce approximately 100 gold per turn, which is enough to fund a low tier army or a level 1 improvement every 5 turns. My capitol in my latest game, however, produces 4000 (!) gold a turn, and is still not yet fully developed. I basically don’t have to care about income because this city is basically El Dorado.
– Real player with 357.3 hrs in game
Decisive Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg from Warsaw to Paris
As mentioned before, this is a game that sits between Panzer General and War in the East. The card system gives you plenty of variation for replays. Poland and France put up a bit more of a fight than you would expect but there would be no challenge if the campaign allowed Germany to steamroll the opposition.
The campaign allows you to play as Germany in the Polish and French campaigns as well as Sealion if you perform well. It is possible to play as the opposing armies in scenarios. The game has play by e-mail multiplayer. The game is not difficult to grasp and there are Youtube lets play videos that will clear up any confusion.
– Real player with 303.4 hrs in game
Very good operational strategic game with an excellent A.I. In fact one of the best I have seen for a long long time. Very addicting. You can try out several different routes and variants in the same scenario. The map is large and allow for huge encirclements if you are fast and clever enough but beware that the A.I is not silly and will eventually understand what you are doing.
Updated 2021-01-27
Since my first review I have played the full campaign and also the netherlands scenario. In Case Yellow the A.I was not able to play in a good way. It never used its local superiority. Never tried to break out of my encirclements and except for a few bombards never attacked me at all as I advanced with my army. I could expose myself a lot and take huge risks with my encirclements but the A.I never tried to stop me or do the same to me. In the Netherlands scenario the A.I played the germans and didnt take a single victory hex because the advance was very slow the first 5 turns moving units back and forth from the frontline without attacking. When it finally started attacking it was too late.
– Real player with 184.3 hrs in game
Demise of Nations
This game is very interesting it’s really fun and it reminds me of Age of Empires 2 and Rome Total War. I love how you expand your borders by moving across the map that is so cool. One thing I really don’t like about the game is unit health; I will use RTW as an example. In that game it is pure strategy like using the higher ground or using a pincher type move and so to win a battle instead of how much health your unit has. I have a few suggestions for the developers. 1) There are far to many farms and not enough other resources. In order to get a decent amount of other resources available in the game the whole map is nearly all farms. So my suggestions is to have a capability of making areas into resources like example prospecting a mountain or how dense a forrest is. 2) Put in Trading land and cities. 3) Have a capability of building roads for trade routes to other factions similar to RTW (Basically I will suggest them to play RTW to get some ideas). For trading to other factions have some things on the map like wine, textiles, and other stuff to trade to other factions for gold or for other important resources you need that you can’t obtain in the areas you control. 4) Have factions return if a place revolts if a faction has been defeated and add more factions that would be cool to. 5) Have each faction have a couple of unique buildings and units that other factions can’t get. For example the Celts can have druids and since Gaul is similar barbaric people they can have armored swordsman or something like that.
– Real player with 465.3 hrs in game
When I first got this game, I liked it, but thought it was just an ok game. I was wrong, the game is absolutely amazing (unless you hate strategy games).
It is a little difficult to see, but the graphics are pretty good, especially in-game. There are lots of different factors and numbers, such as groundwater, which either you like, or you can ignore and still play the game fine.
I like strategy games however, and I think this is one of the best ones on steam. It is very straight forward if you want it too be, yet there is a lot of content that you could pay attention to if you wanted. I also love one of the developer’s other games.
– Real player with 296.6 hrs in game
Panzer Corps 2
It’s an OK title that doesn’t live up to the previous installment in game depth and it’s poorly optimized, so it crashes my pretty decent computer with a dedicated graphics card.
Despite the criticisms below, the main game is decent (if short), so it may still be worth it, but don’t expect the DLC to somehow expand or better the game. It was more frustrating than entertaining.
I got the field marshal edition with all the dlc and what they don’t tell you in the AD is that the DLC is not at all connected to the main game. it’s a stand alone game where you advance in chapters. TOTAL bummer.
– Real player with 481.5 hrs in game
Huge disapointment. I’m a huge Panzer Corps fan and I could’nt wait for this game to come out. I have played this game and have run into some errors that need to be adressed
Let me start with what this game gets right.
1. AT guns act like artilery when defending against hard targets, ei tanks, which is a good feature that makes both Tank destroyers and AT guns usefull and instrumental both attacking and defending.
2. The option for troops to use a transport and then dismount is also a very welcome feature.
– Real player with 278.1 hrs in game
Galactic Civilizations III
NOTE: This is a review of the Final Release Candidate for the game, so it should apply to the released version.
Having been a long-time GC2 player, I eagerly signed up for the Founder’s Edition early-access over a year ago, and have followed the development of GC3 since then closely.
Let me tell you, getting a 4X game that incorporates all the features that hard-core strategy gamers want, while remaining both relevant and competitive, is really hard. As in, EXTREMELY hard. StarDock has done an excellent job with GC3. That’s not to say there still aren’t quibbles over the direction certain features have taken, but the reality is, that if you actually want to release a game, certain decisions are going to have to be taken, and you’re sure to piss off someone who wanted that feature and didn’t get it. But GC3 is a solid and entertaining game, if not a radically innovative one.
– Real player with 2842.9 hrs in game
First of all it is critical to understand that the game is still in beta testing and therefore has some glitches. That said it has been pretty stable for me. (Four year old dell xps 8100 with 16gb and a 750 Ti video card). At present the plan seems to be to a go for a final release in May. There will be frequent patches before then and perhaps a beta 6 release (beta 5, with enormous additions, was released yesterday (Mar26). If you don’t like encountering bugs and reporting them to help the game, then wait for the release. Of critical importance remaining is tuning the AI to be smarter and more aggressive, imo.
– Real player with 2285.4 hrs in game
Gary Grigsby’s War in the East
Revised when WIE 2 is about to come (26 march 2021) :
I played it far more before it arrived on Steam (totalizing may be 3000 hours). I’ve been waiting for its finalization for a long time and at the moment we are talking about version 2 I think I can make my judgment.
It could have been a very good game, but it has some major flaws while taking into account the price.
++++++ POSITIVE ASPECTS ++++++
It has no animations and explosions… this is a real wargame in turn by turn with Hexs and Zones of Control.
– Real player with 1312.8 hrs in game
If you are a wargamer and don’t already have this game, you’re doing it wrong.
I got into the hobby way back in the paper maps and cardboard counters era, and one of the things that always was a pain and made it extremely difficult to get to play these “monster games” as we called them was the sheer amount of free space and time needed to even get the game going, much less actually play it to the end. Not to mention the unending amount of bookkeeping involved. If you want to simulate manpower, replacement rates, supply etc., and you DO if you want any sort of realism in a wargame, you’re going to have bookkeeping. Computers do all of that PLUS you don’t have to have a spare garage to keep those giant maps and thousands of counters lying around for months while you play it. IF you can find somebody to play it WITH.
– Real player with 484.0 hrs in game