Total War: WARHAMMER II
As you can see I have a TON of hours in this game. Absolutely fantastic, best 4X game I’ve ever played with unparalleled battles in a setting that can’t be beat. Simply the best strategy game out there bar none.
– Real player with 2201.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy RTS Games.
Graphics/animations: 9/10 (zoom in for awesome animations)
Fidelity to the franchise: 9/10
Replayability: 8/10
AI: 3/10
Depth: 10/10
There are only four negatives. One you feel nickel and dimed for all the expansions, but it’s worth it. Two the AI and seige battles are very problematic. The AI…is…well…stupid…compare the AI to games like Starcraft 2 and you’ll quickly find yourself wanting human opponents. Online ladder needs a rework and the loading time for the campaign map is long. But other than that it’s a fantastic game. 7.6/10 Over 1300 hours played.
– Real player with 1414.4 hrs in game
Total War: WARHAMMER
I’ve played total war games since Rome and I have to say that yes, it’s BS that you have to pay another 60 bucks (easy) to get the “full experience” and even MORE SO to pay 4 flippin dollars for BLOOD EFFECTS in a TOTAL WAR game; yet with that being said, this is probably the most epic, amazing, awesome game that I have in my library thus far- can’t tell you how many times I banged my head against inanimate objects before taking a step back and appreciating the algorithmic-type cunning that the AI uses against you; as well as the deep and engaging gameplay aspects- morale has always been a thing but steamrolling an entire Orc Waaaaagh by concentrating fire and having nearby units re-charge the lines, close to routing, themselves- is fantastic.
– Real player with 408.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy RTS Games.
It’s worth the money and a little more
– Real player with 289.8 hrs in game
Warlock 2: The Exiled
Warlock 2 is a truly fantastic game, despite what some of these reviews may say. If you’re a lover of 4X strategy games and fantasy lore, get this game – you won’t be sorry.
One of the reasons this game has so many harsh ratings is because it can be a little buggy. But on the right system (Windows 7, 8 and 10 all work well), it’s a ton of fun and you’ll encounter few bugs. I can safely say this after 2000+ hours of game play.
However, the Linux and Mac versions do not work. The developers were forced to abandon the game before they were fixed, so avoid this game if you’re using one of those systems.
– Real player with 5783.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Magic Games.
I bought Warlock 2 during the Summer Sale, and I’ve quite easily gotten my money’s worth. It is a lot of fun, though not without serious flaws. My review is based on three (partial) plays of “The Exiled” story mode, and one full playthrough in “Battle for the Outplanes” mode.
A big complaint a lot of people have is that it seems like a content update, rather than a sequel to Warlock. This is true to an extent. However, the handling of the planes was the biggest flaw of Warlock 1 but seems to be the central appeal of Warlock 2. In Warlock 1, there were other planes, and they were full of big bad monsters, but they weren’t very interesting and the rewards for going there weren’t significant enough to bother with them. A game of Warlock 2, on the other hand, has a hierarchy of planes, where you (and your A.I. opponent mages) start on less threatening planes, and you work your way down through to planes with significantly more dangerous fauna (and sometimes flora), or back up the hierarchy to fight the other great mages. Each plane has its own unique flavor, and most special resources only occur in one or two types of plane. The special resource thing is key… most races don’t have strong research-producing buildings, so you need to chase after the research-producing resources, which tend to be a couple planes down from where you start. The first time I reached a Shadow Plane, and established a fortress there to defend myself against the horrible shadowy horrors that awaited me, it felt … well… I would say “epic”, but that word is way overused these days. But it was awesome.
– Real player with 223.5 hrs in game
Impire
Impire, while trying to be a new interpretation of Dungeon Keeper and coming close in some regards better than the Dungeons series, ultimately fails to catch the spirit of its spiritual predecessor. Many parts of the game feel either too generic or too convoluted, but the main problem lies in the weird pseudo-free-to-play mechanic of levelling your dungeon lord between campaigns and maps and being able to cut the grind short by putting money into microtransactions. To be fair, the microtransactions are massive and they only do give a small little edge and are limited in number, so there’s no ridiculous loot boxes or crap like that, but they are still there and lock out some cool units behind a minor yet still very factual pay-wall.
– Real player with 546.6 hrs in game
At first glance, the game looks as if it’s a successor to Dungeon Keeper ..If you go in thinking that, you’d be wrong.
Sure, it seems to have the look that could be perceived as a spirtual sucessor to Dungeon Keeper however only the atmosphere and humour could be loosely based on Dungeon Keeper.
To summarise, you play the role of a demon known as “Baal-Abaddon”, whom of which is summoned by a not so smart sorcerer named Oscar, into the lowly form of an Imp. The gist of the game is helping Baal to gain his lost powers and to terrorise the surrounding land of Ardania in the ol' “Evil is good” sort of way.
– Real player with 80.0 hrs in game
Fantasy Wars
This - on the surface - is a very simple game, but it is complex in its simplicity.
It appears to be a fantasy sim with the diversity of characters you can command, and towns and castles scattered throughout the map; however, there really is no building to be done.
Gold does exist, but it is only to recruit creatures.
If a unit dies - then it is gone, and the longer they stay alive the more experience and skills they acquire.
Thus, there is a short-term incentive to win each map level…but there is a long-term incentive to keep ALL units alive through the campaigns, otherwise the player has to start over with new units with no level skills and experience, and because each level gets progressively more difficult, having an army with mostly new units is almost certain to lose.
– Real player with 170.8 hrs in game
Поражению нет никаких оправданий, а победа в них не нуждается.
- Warhammer 40,000
1C неожиданно анонсировала King’s Bounty II, но лично мне KB2 куда больше напоминает сиквел Кодекса Войны (aka Fantasy Wars на Западе).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JZdZBzLims
- Кодекс войны - это классический варгейм со всеми вытекающими отсюда достоинствами и недостатками. Именно с тактической стороны вопросов к игре почти нет - сражения удались. Придраться можно разве что к тому, что иногда знание/незнание что будет дальше слишком сильно влияет на успешность вашей стратегии. Особенно это актуально в начальных миссиях кампаний, когда у вас еще нет прокачанных разведчиков, которые могут быстро и далеко просветить местность, а низкоуровневые герои дохнут от малейшего фокуса. И проблема даже не в том, что они мрут, а в том что чаще бывает проще начать миссию заново чем продолжать, расставить правильно войска, заранее зная что на этом фланге нужна конница, а на другом лучше поставить пехоту под прикрытием стрелков. Такой сейвскамминг очень влияет на эффективность и вообще на выбор стратегии. Да и реиграбельности никакой из-за того что все условия миссии жестко прописаны разработчиками - всё на что вы можете повлиять, это привести ветеранов или неопытных рекрутов/героев и найти или пропустить артефакты.
– Real player with 95.6 hrs in game
A Game of Thrones - Genesis
Long as War and Peace, dirty as Fifty Shades of Grey and as exciting as school textbook. Welcome to the world of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. You can easily guess that I’m not a big fan of the original book series (to say the least), and I also never liked the HBO’s series, but… that’s not the reason why I disliked this game. The reason is – it was made by my old “friends”, French developer called Cyanide. Creators of Cycling Manager, Loki: Heroes of Mythology, IMPIRE and other “masterpieces”. The guys often have nice ideas, but they have no skill whatsoever. As the result, most of their products are utter garbage. Before Styx: Master of Shadows was released, Cyanide used to mean only one thing to me – awful experience. And A Game of Thrones – Genesis is exactly that. Boring and awful game. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
– Real player with 212.5 hrs in game
First off, I am recommending this game only for diehard fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, or anyone that wants an entertaining way of exploring the history of Westeros. Obviously, this isn’t the HBO branded Game of Thrones you might be used to so the art or characters may look a little bit different.
The way you play this game is a very dumbed down version of any RTS you may think of, build units, take towns and castles, kill your enemy. The way any single player vs AI or multiplayer game works is in two parts: Peace time, where you build alliances and build up your power undertaking various actions either directly or indirectly against the rival houses and the method for taking towns and castles is using non-combat units. Once war breaks out in the seven kingdoms, you must now rely solely on your combat units to take the remaining towns and castles. The first house or houses to reach the required honor score wins. Each house will have their own special ancestral home which cannot be taken. The way you build units is a bit silly, allowing only one to be built at a time but you can queue up to 5, if funds and food allow. Gold and Food are the two forms of commerce, gold to buy mercenary units, non-combat units, and upgrades and food for your professional standing armies. The game uses an upkeep system so you must ensure you have an adequate supply of food to maintain your armies after they are built. Various non-combat units will give you bonuses to gold production and your peasants will level up with experience if you can manage to protect them and keep them alive, thus making them more efficient at harvesting. Each house has a unique unit that provides a special ability or skill but nothing spectacular, like a maester that can heal units for the Tyrells, or a direwolf bodyguard-type unit for the Starks. All houses have the same types of combat units available to them, so don’t expect the Targaryens to throw dragons at you. The time period for the House vs House mode of play is right before the events leading up to Robert’s rebellion.
– Real player with 35.8 hrs in game
Age of Wonders III
EDIT:
I have well over 1000 hours into this game (drat!) and every time I think of putting it down, I keep coming back. It’s been a long time since a game grabbed me like this one. Great game! replayabiliy is insane.
WOW!
Short review: If you have any doubts from the trailers and are thinking “Yeah, I want to get this game.” You are probably right and do so immediately.
For a bit more detail:
I’m not even more than 170 turns on a big map,I can already tell you that this is an awesome game.
– Real player with 3507.7 hrs in game
This game is absolutely incredible. It stays true to the style and feel of the previous games in the series, while also embracing some of the more modern elements in the 4X genre. Some may find the game a bit “simplistic” compared to other 4x games, but this is misleading. While this game is very easy to learn, and keeps most of the numbers and math pretty simple, there is an incredible amount of strategic depth to this game, and even after over 500 hours played, with 90% of that focusing on just one class, I am still learning new things.
– Real player with 938.0 hrs in game
Age of Wonders II: The Wizard’s Throne
Had trouble getting this to work on Windows 10 at first, but that was fixed by running it in Compatibility mode and going to my Nvidia graphics card settings and using “Add program” to add the Age of wonders II exe from the Steam folder.
This is an old game and the graphics and interface and general game design are clunky and difficult to use till you learn how. Once you do though the campaign is pretty fun, if hard at first.
Unlike in Age of Wonders III , where heroes can become strong but never wildly overpowered, Age of Wonders II heroes can get to level 30 even in the first mission, and along with items from quests, become killing machines.
– Real player with 193.3 hrs in game
There are lots of improvement to its predecessor, but there are some things which were actually done better in the first game.
The graphics, city building and combat are improved. However, the campaign is a far cry from the one in the first game. The original AoW had 2 branching campaigns, each with 3 different endings. Player’s character was fully customizable, leveled-up and learned new skills as you progressed through the campaign. You could transfer research, artifacts, heroes and units between campaign maps. Not only is the AoW2’s campaign completely linear, but you lose all your research, heroes and artifacts after 2 or 3 maps (depending on wether you play the optional maps or not). And player’s character is always Merlin, who can’t be customized, can’t level-up/improve and (usually) can’t fight at all. Leaders are little more than mobile defense objectives that are supposed to sit in a heavily fortified city (preferably one with a Wizard Tower, so they can actually support your heroes in the field).
– Real player with 98.2 hrs in game
Age of Wonders
=== Age of Wonders - Game Review, Turn-based Strategy - 10/10 ===
If you like turn-based strategy, whether it’s in a table top game or a video game, Age of Wonders is at the top of the list.
Age of Wonders was released back in 1999, so we’re getting pretty close to the grand 20-year mark in age. For such an old game, you might think it would look pretty aged and unable to hold up to present-day gaming. In my opinion, this game is a classic that is still plenty of fun to play and has a great art-style that still looks great even to this day. If you go back to the original pictures of this game before it was released, the art is so simple and would easily have gotten old pretty quick. Thankfully they decided to go in a bit of a different direction which I think looks like someone painted it by hand; this sort of painted-looking art-style is definitely my favourite. Of course the visuals are important when deciding whether or not to play a game, but there’s so much more to talk about.
– Real player with 385.4 hrs in game
Age of Wonders is a fairly old game, but I still very much enjoy its simple yet complex gameplay. While its sequels improved vastly on some aspects of the game, I still feel that combat was the most entertaining in the original.
The story is fairly straightforward, and unlike the later titles, allows you to play as the “Good” faction or the “Evil” faction for the story. At several segments, you’ll be presented with a decision to make, but only the second and third decisions will influence the Campaign any. These two decisions will also alter the ending sequence.
– Real player with 336.0 hrs in game
Conquest of Elysium 5
Conquest of Elysium 5 is the next iteration of the past CoE games with more content, and with nearly the same (pixel art) graphics that were used in Civilization 2. They have gotten a little better over the years, but not much. If you played CoE4, there are three new factions, new modding tools, and new “Planes” within each map to conquer. The biggest difference for me from the previous version was not just that there was more to conquer though, it is that the “more” that exists is also now much more accessible. More on this below:
– Real player with 193.4 hrs in game
I love this game, I never get tired of it. It strike the perfect balance between complexity and accessibility.
– Real player with 167.9 hrs in game