Recent reviews by PerfectDeath

There are sand box games that get criticised for being too shallow... then there is dwarf fortress. People look down into the deep depths and get quite intimidated, what to do, is there a goal, how to speed run?

Having played this game for over a decade my muscle memory has made the transition difficult, there are some things that we also cannot do currently with the new UI but overall the changes have brought the game's accessibility to a more comparative level. The missing things will most likely return in time, the developer does pay attention to the community.

As for the game and to new players, well the game is best played from my opinion in a way that you focus on one thing at a time. Like food and drink, get that under control, everyone dies horribly for some reason, and you set up a new embark with the knowledge and experience you gained that food and drink are second nature.

Then you focus on whatever catches your fancy next.
Maybe you see bands of entertainers visiting your new tavern that is stocked with that food and drink, well you can make musical instruments, poets will compose things based on something you can look into, singers sing, dancers dance, and someone steals the fancy artifact sock one of your dwarfs made...
Well now you might spend time building up your fort's security and intelligence gathering, the thief was one of your dwarves but someone coerced them to steal. You discover that people out in the world hear of your fort and its treasures, they send agents to your fort, and those agents try to directly or indirectly accomplish their goals. You now have a skilled interrogator checking every guest to make sure no one is here to steal your stuff.
But hey, those people sending agents are out there somewhere in the world, you can train an army yourself to go raid them... assuming you've survived the other raids, monsters, etc. Eventually you might decide to actually retire a fort and make a new one (or play adventure mode when it comes out) to continue marking the history of the world or generate a new one.

This whole process took a lot of playing and a lot of lost forts, as the DF saying goes, "losing is fun"

To sum the game in one sentance. It feels like Anime Risk.

There is more to it than that with unit leveling and real-time strategy combat like the total war games taking away the RNG of Risk.

With such a cheap price it is certainly worth the purchase, just expect to be frustrated with some of the UI and Dialog. It takes a bit to get used to the controls, interacting with the units, the map and the AI behaviour. If you want to experience the game's Lore, set everything to automated and spectate everything you can. Other wise you will miss out on a lot of character conversation during the battles.
Of course, the game is only partially translated and the voice overs are all in japanese and some of the lore is missing until localized. But hey, it is $3.00 which is pretty good even with missing content.

As a strategy game... it is not the smoothest. Walls block your view and units can have a hard time pathing with obstacles around them. Unit commands are going to take some adjustments, there are some hotkeys that help manage units and you can create new groups adding to the default two Vanguard and Rearguard. Adding new groups is something you need to do if you do not want your calvary acting like front line units. Middle mouse button pauses the game btw. Take that opportunity to sort everything out.
The groups you make are saved but apply to every following battle including those of other armies other armies, you have to change them every time you use a different army since they are not compatible.

The command grouping is pretty 'bleh' but things play out well enough without a polished alternative.

Understanding what is happening to your units is a little difficult as well, you can track all unit HP and can see damage numbers. Some character abilities are pretty obvious and very dangerous; however, I'm still scratching my head about why 1/4 of my army died instantly when attacking the elves in their territory. I am pretty sure they dumped their special abilites, which I missed seeing because we are fighting in a dense forrest with numbers and status effects popping up all over our units.

I have done a lot of early games to get a feel of the initial game; however, I do not know how the game plays out in the later turns. It feels like snowballing can happen. But of course with some pretty big abilities, terrain modifiers, defensive positions, squad limits on different maps, etc it can be very easy for a prepared defense to beat a snow ball force.

This is a game made by Paradox, Paradox grand strategy games lately (Crusader Kings II and Europa IV for example) have been getting better with age as DLC expands a lot of the game mechanics to improve the whole experience.
If this trend continues for Hearts of Iron IV then I would recomend this game. The game is also very moddable, which is going to improve the game's longevity.

Though, there is no hurry to pick it up if you are on the fence. Hearts of Iron has always been a series that is very different from the other grand strategy series Paradox develops so it is worth experiencing and Hearts of Iron IV is going to be an easier first for many who have not played the previous three.

But knowing the game will be improved much more over the years it may be wise to wait for DLC to come and the base game to go on sale. Also, Paradox DLC will almost always provide some free expansion content for the base game, usually fixes and improvements to the game and UI so, it is always worth revisiting their games after a few months.

Those who have played the previous three HOI games will find much changed in this fourth instalment (not going to get into whether they were good or bad).
Some changes are likely done to improve the game's performance (simplified air combat, logistics, infrastructure, and unrest to name a few) which does result in the game running REALLY well for the first half of the game.

I do have my own complains about things like game balance and the AI being a huge derp most of the time. Yet I have confidence that paradox will tackle many of these issues over time as they have demonstrated... which will still take a couple of years. =P

I have patience and there is enough in the vanilla game with mods to keep me content.

WarThunder is currently in a position where some of its features are completed (The Developers have claimed these features are complete) and other features are not completed.

I won't cover the ground forces much because it is in such an early stage of development.

Air forces; however, are quite complete outside of new aircraft.

In WarThunder there is Arcade Battle (AB), Realistic Battle (RB), and Simulator Battle (SB). I'll cover those below:

Arcade Battle:
Flight models are very generous as aircraft cannot stall nor break from maneuvering at high speeds. In terms of combat tactics, the small maps turn the match into a close range dog fight. This makes some aircraft perform less effectivly as fighters like the P47 had the edge of going very fast and very high. Arcade does not have the map size or map design to support the kind of space needed for this "Boom and Zoom" tactic. Especially when any aircraft can match the P47 in high speed dives.

But in general, Arcade is more accessible and easier to start with and I can recommend the game on the arcade mode alone.

However, Realistic and SImulator battles are a different game. Aircraft perform closer to how they did historically, so no 15G turns (outside of unfinished aircraft implementation) and fast aircraft can actually use that speed. Ammo is also limited stressing the importance of good marksmenship.


The biggest flaw I have in this game is the Battle Rating (BR) system. Matches are organized through Battle Ratings. You face aircraft within 1 BR of your aircraft's. BRs are a measurement of the aircraft's performance in game.

The problem we are seeing in game is the BR system is automated, it gathers data from players at the end of each match, how many kills, deaths, exp and currency income, etc. If the ammount of kills to deaths for an aircraft is either too low or too high for the average BR then they adjust it up or down.

This has not worked at all.

The reason is that the Developers are measuring player performance for aircraft performance. I will use the F6F-3 Hell cat as an example here. It is a 1943 aircraft that used to have a bug in how its engine performed, thus it did worse than the F4F from 1938. The F6F's BR reflected this, it had the same 2.3 BR as the F4F. But then, the problem was fixed, albet a little too well, the F6F-3 performs more like the later 1944 F6F-4. Either way, the BR did not change. The assumption is the auto system will read improved performance and raise its BR over time.

Well, it didn't really do much. The F6F only rose its BR to 2.7 then 3.0. It continues to face aircraft from 1939. The legendary Zero Killer of the pacific fights biplanes and early war fighters.

So, what happened? Well, the average player who flew the F6F flew it because they heard it was going to seal club. But that is only if you fly it fast and avoid getting into turn fights at low speed. Which is what most F6F pilots do. The good players, on the other hand, fly the balanced aircraft.

Quick example, the A6M5 (Zero) that historically fought the F6F is over 2 whole BRs above the Zero and this Zero fights post war aircraft. Simply because the F6F pilot does everything the americans learned they shouldn't do in the Pacific war against Zeros, slow turn fighting.


Long story short measuring player performance is a bad idea, if good players fly one aircraft and bad players fly another, the BR will change to match this even if the two aircraft are competitivly comparable. So WarThunder is not competitivly balanced right now.

Now, the Developers have begun to respond to the outcry from the player base... sort of. I do hope get around to tackling this issue because it has persisted for almost a whole year and only now are the Devs talking to us about it. THe BR system came without any news and they ignored the community about it for months.

Conclusion:

So, I do recommend the game, but I urge you to be cautious. This is a free to play game and the Devs will want to make money, but by making it easier for some players, they alienate others who choose otherwise.
I stopped buying things in the game since last winter when they implemented this and I will not put money into the game until it is resolved.

I don't want to see a system that rewards poor player tactics and skill. Players should have to take the time to learn how Aerial Combat works, not expecting the devs to bend the game over to their bad habits.