Recent reviews by JMann

Number go up

Wanted to write a positive review to help offset the unhinged and hysterical reviews about Red Shell. People need to get a grip. Advertisers collecting data is nothing new and will only get worse. If you find that this bothers you, maybe get off the computer for a bit and go camping or something. Remember to leave your iPhone at home, and don't drive there in a vehicle with on-board navigation.

Regarding the content of the game, Civ 6 is a darn good entry in the series. Building a larger empire (wide) is fun and you don't have to make yourself communist or fascist to be viable, as you did in Civ 5. This still doesn't top Civ 2 in my opinion, but maybe that is for nostalgia reasons.

I want to provide a lot of negative feedback in a review in which I will ultimately recommend the game. I think the biggest compliment I can pay Stellaris is that I haven't even played 20 hours yet, but I have spent almost as much time reading about the game on the Wiki. It is refreshingly complex in a world where most games can be learned and "mastered" in no time at all. I have greatly enjoyed the sci-fi stories present in the game so far; for instance, I was wildly entertained when I activated an ancient teraforming experiment and soon my planet was overrun with zombies of unknown origin. Or another time, when I saved a young species from an aggressive empire and enlightened them. These humanoids would later become the second most populous species in my nation. These storylines are sometimes born from scripted events, but Stellaris tells unscripted stories just as often. This aspect has been the most positive part of my game experience so far.

That said, in some places, the storytelling efforts get a bit out of hand. I am a newb to the game and my opinion on balance matters is nearly worthless, but so far two of my three campaigns have been ended by Fallen Empires awakening and deciding that they do not like me. I understand that these FEs are optional, but I am the type of person that would stop playing the game before I turned the difficulty slider down. FEs contribute positively to immersion and make me feel more like I'm operating in a living galaxy. My feelings are mixed here, because FEs seem to be storytelling taking precedence over gameplay. A freaking cool sci-fi television series is unfolding in front of me, but I won't be a part of it since this Awakened Empire is now bombarding my homeworld with a doomstack fleet two or three times as big as the whole galaxy's combined military power. I've read about strategies to defeat this mechanic, and unfortunately, many of them feel "gamey" to me; i.e., confusing and abusing the AI. I could also surrender and give up 1/3 of my resource/science production until another arbitrary game mechanic kicks in and weakens the AE enough for me to rebel. Huh?

The primary catalyst for me to spend a few minutes writing this review was the message I got when I opened the game today. Apparently the 2.0 update has been released, significantly overhauling portions of the game and making my old saves incompatible. I'm a noob and not active in the community; I did not realise this was coming.

So Stellaris, overall, has given me a very mixed bag of awesomeness and frustration. Net net, I like this game. However, I have an "I'm too old for this crap" feeling when I play it. I don't have time to learn a complicated video game like I once did, much less one that keeps significantly changing itself. It's cool that the developers are adding new content and updating the base game, but the DLC seems kind of expensive. I'll probably buy it anyway, because it looks like I need it to understand some of the strategies and events better players talk about on the forums. Plus, I see a button on my construction ships that tells me I can build a megastructure, although I don't think I own that particular DLC and this pisses me off.

Edit: I've learned more about the game now. I understand now that this game wasn't designed to let you win every playthrough. Sometimes the Scourge spawns in the middle of your empire. Oh well.

OOTPB15 is spectacular. I never thought I could be this entertained by what is essentially a spreadsheet simulator; I mean that phrase with no negative connotation. I grew up playing franchise mode in Madden Football and dynasty mode in MVP Baseball, and I always thought the actual controlling of the players during the game was secondary to the real fun-- the management. If you were similar, then you'll love OOTPB.

I played the heck out of OOTPB14 and transferred my 50 year league into OOTPB15 without issue. One minor problem happened later on with the save file, but it resolved itself. Additionally, the developers were quick to offer support, which I appreciated but ultimately didn't need.

My experience thus far is limited to single player. The multiplayer sounds awesome, but single player has been more than enough to keep me occupied for 250+ hours (OOTPB14 playing time included).

Pros:

• Extremely decent user interface
  
• Deep baseball business detail
  
• Deep game management detail
  
• Smart player progression and aging
  
• Pretty good rookie player generation
  
• Fairly good GM and manager AI
  
• Players are mostly aware of their monetary value
  
• Huge database of historical players/ seasons
  
• Detailed game simulation engine

Cons:

• Injuries are ludicrous
  
• Not sure the simulation engine is optimized
  
• No financial inflation or growth
  
• Team ballparks are not true to real life
  
• Lopsided game scores

To elaborate on some of the things I've listed as cons...

The injury system is a bit insane. Sure, you can turn injury frequency to off, low, normal, high (realistic), and very high, but I'd feel like a noob if I didn't have it on at least normal. But on the normal level, I have had, on MULTIPLE occasions, six or more batters from the starting lineup injured, two or three starting pitchers out with Tommy John surgery (or a broken finger or some crap), and a couple relievers out as well. So then, a word of warning: make sure you hire a great team trainer, and when signing players, be sure to place a lot of weight on their injury history. I had been careless about it, but one time I actually had all 9 starting batters out of the lineup on long term injuries. Be careful. I list it as a con because the AI managers have no regard for these things, as far as I can tell. The guy with the wrecked injury history? Play him 162 games until he literally suffers a career ending injury in pre-game warm-ups (I had that happen once).

The simulation engine doesn't seem lightning fast. I know there's a lot going on in the game world, but I've got some decent hardware and I feel like it should be faster. The game seems to put most of its load on one core of my i7, but doesn't even max it out. I wonder if it needs to fetch and write a lot of data on the hard drive during the sim, and maybe that slows it down; I'd be interested to hear from someone who plays this with an SSD. Maybe the sim is intentionally slow for suspense reasons. I really don't know.

As far as finances go, the top contracts are always around $22mil, give or take. And my budget has been in the same ballpark (heheh) for all 50 or so years of my fictional league. Anyways, that's really nitpicky. However I don't structure contracts to weigh the money on the back end since I'm not expecting any growth. Even salary throughout.

I understand that OOTP can't use logos or stadium names, but for all the effort they put into detail for this game, you'd think they would have accurate sim modifiers for each stadium. The coefficient for HRs at Orioles' ballpark is like .96 or something, whereas in reality, Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a great place to hit homeruns. You can change these stats manually, but eh. I only care enough about it to complain, not to fix it.

And the last thing I can think of is the scoring in the sim engine. There are 15 run blowouts on a regular basis. The sim engine doesn't seem to have a concept that a team would let up once they have a 5 or 6 run lead.

But overall, absolutely brilliant game. If you like baseball and know a fair amount about stats, this is a great game for you.

Loads of fun.