8
Products
reviewed
285
Products
in account

Recent reviews by TrollofReason

Showing 1-8 of 8 entries
1 person found this review helpful
28.8 hrs on record (13.2 hrs at review time)
Random freezes, bad controls, grindy and repetitive levels, (there are only 8, and you will do them over and over and over) and sloppy UI, and a penchant for nagging you for money every 5 seconds you're not playing the same 8 levels - this is just a terrible mobile port.
Posted March 1, 2018.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
12 people found this review helpful
537.9 hrs on record (209.8 hrs at review time)
Okay. So, I got 200 hours under my belt, and enough EXP tucked away to reach Infamy Level 5, but I'm still at 4 because, honestly, I had to stop playing for the sake of my own happiness.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good game on its own. Solid shooting and enough "did you see that?!" moments delivered relatively regularly make for an enjoyable experience. One that, upon writing this reveiw and thinking about it, makes me wish I could keep playing, but that bridge has apparently been burned.

You see, I can't play this game anymore, let alone reccomend it because it's so far the only pay-to-play title in my library with microtransactions. I actively avoid games with post-purchase monetization models like that. I can put up with DLC, DLC is a sure, transparent purchase that is oftentimes guaranteed to either expand or enhance the gameplay experience in some way. MTs most often do not do that, plus that way that MTs have been implemented in this game is basically gambling. I don't gamble because I'm not stupid. There are better ways to p*ss your money into oblivion, plus MTs encourage predatory business models, and supress the creation of expensive and risky expansion packs with actual content in them in favor of safe garbage. I don't like garbage in my life, why would I want it in my escapist fantasies? I don't, so I'm not playing anymore.

You shouldn't even start. This is a game that I've come to regret. Something is wrong with a game that inspires regret.
Posted November 30, 2015.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
6 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
598.2 hrs on record (233.1 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
I'm bit ambivalent about this game, to be honest. It's hard not to reccomend with a fully realized resource system, single-player campaign, regular updates, and a truly bewildering array of components that puts Space Engineers to shame. That said, it's also hard to reccomend this game, at least solidly, due to the many technical limitations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that it's incomplete and that work hasn't been finished and that, given the track record so far coupled with my own personal (if limited) interactions with the developer, it's very likely that this WILL see a final release. That said, you can'y play it right on anything beyond a dedicated gaming rig. The preveiws would have you believe that it's a game that's filled with epic clashed on the sea, in the sky, and among the heavens beyond... AND IT IS! But... they can only be realized by machines that can handle that sort of thing, and since (as of yet) the game still runs on 32-bit, so no one on a moderately powerful lappy willl likely ever see them.

However! For those with machines that can run this game without slow-down or imcomplete fleet pop-in? It's a fantastic experience. Skies choked with missiles, the sea churning with explosions, blocks flying in every direction, lasers burning through armor, shields deflecting exploding shells. Guns, lasers, missiles, torpedoes, mines, aircraft, ballooncraft, ships of every description, AND WOODEN SPACE SHIPS! Incredible battles with meticulously crafted vehicles, where unprecedented customization finally passes the barrier of mere "customization in games" and actually becomes ENGINEERING.

So, I have trouble recommending this game because not everyone can enjoy it as it should be enjoyed. But for those who can... get it. Get it now. WHY AREN'T YOU GETTING IT YET?!
Posted June 15, 2015.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
201 people found this review helpful
5 people found this review funny
1,074.6 hrs on record (952.7 hrs at review time)
The short of it: This game is really good, BUT ONLY WITH THE EXPANSION! DO NOT BUY AND PLAY THIS GAME NAKED!

Unlike a lot of 4X games, Endless Space is more about building your empire than about developing your colonies or really fighting wars. Not that you won't fight wars, the AI is usually vicious enough to wait and plot and it will build up an overwhelming force based on your existing military might before waging war on you. And it WILL do that. Every single chance it can, unless it can't, it will do that. Never think it won't, since it has no reason not to.

We'll get more into that later, but right now let's focus on the empire-building. Building up the empire is the primary focus of this game. Oftentimes if you look at too little at a time, you'll tunnel vision yourself into a corner when you should be keeping yourself as distant as possible. A prime example of this is expressed in happiness. The morale of a system and its subsequent production bonuses are NOT more important than the overall happiness of your empire. After all, a 15% production bonus across 4 stars is better than a 30% bonus in just one. If, when settling a new system, you have a planet with lots of production, or a planet with a high amount of happiness-boosting, you pick the one that makes your empire happy, or you lose the game.

Now then, let's talk about war. War is problematic in this game because A) it's inevitable, and B) it's boring. The game takes a very hands-off approach to combat and in the vanilla game technology is both everything and a linear arms race. The guy with the most ship tonnage and the best weapons will always win. You can employ tactics cards, but these will only have a minimal impact on the outcome. This leads to a very boring experience, and can force you into certain types of tech progression and thus certain modes of gameplay. To deviate from established doctrine is to lose in the vanilla game.

DO NOT PLAY THE VANILLA GAME. Instead, do yourself a favor and get the Disharmony expansion. The Disharmony expansion does away with about 75% of the weapon-tech in favor of just four generations of guns. Each is a sizable improvement over the last generation, and keeping up the with the AI is definitely important, but with tactics, ship design, aimpoint selections, and formation management you can steal victory from the jaws of supposedly assured defeat.

Endless Space encourages you to use your distant veiw not to mess with the minutae of your own empire, but rather to mess with the other guys. Through trade, trade routes, blockades, invasions, explorations, treaties, and wars you are charged to take away the choices of the enemy for as long as possible while you improve your own choices. How you do this is entirely up to you, and Endless Space: Disharmony actually allows you quite a bit of wiggle room on how you do it.
Posted April 6, 2015.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
4 people found this review helpful
4.9 hrs on record
There is nothing, NOTHING redeemable about this game in comparison to the original, and I've only played it less than 5 hours. Get the first game if you want a good game, and then get the expansion to the first if you want a great game. Then mod it to become even better than that. Don't. Waste. Your. Money. On. Trash. This is trash. More below.

From the limited unit selection, to the insufferably stupid resource handling, and the unskippable cutscenes SupCom 2 disappoints across almost every possible angle to disappoint. In the original SupCom, you played as a nameless "Supreme Commander," a single human being trained and chosen to pilot an Automated Command Units, IE of a god-machine that, by itself, can level entire cities within a day, yet can rule if not destroy an entire PLANET within hours by creating an infinitely replenishing army of tanks, planes, and ships.
It was a game of epic scale, where it didn't matter that you had absolutely no characterization, because though you played a walking war god, in the universe that wasn't really all that special. The galaxy was full of war gods protecting or annihilating regular mortals. Again, I use the phrase "epic scale" to describe why it wasn't important that your guy had no character arc, because he/she didn't NEED any. You, the player, ultimately didn't matter in the so-called Infinite War... except you do; you become the most important person in a thousand year war fought with god machines that no one fighting it sees any end towards until-... Well, I won't spoilt it, get the first game.
This is the genius of the original SupCom and it was carried over to FA; what made you special and important and integral to the story wasn't that you had daddy issues or someone to fight for. No, none of that small-scale, whiny, too-human ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, it was all about your skill as a Supreme Commander. It was about how well you piloted your god-machine and its countless legions of mechanized death. Sometimes. I say sometimes because sometimes, in both games, events overtake your skill and you still wind up losing, yet surviving to fight another day.

I get the feeling there's none of that in this piece of hot garbage. Don't buy it. I genuinely hate it. It's made by people who don't know how to tell an engaging war story, the promised improvements to unit movement never materialized (and being a technical and mechanics guy that was particularly biting), and the only reason that the game "runs better" than the first one is because, again, of a failure of scale compared to the first game. You can't make huge armies because of the clunky, counter-intuitive resource scheme, and forced SLOWNESS of making things.

And now the short of it: From a sub-par plot that fails at grasping the scale of the universe that obviously no who made this cared about, to neutered unit selection, a laughably stupid unit customization scheme, clunky resource management, and unskippable cutscene featuring god-awful angst and horrendous voice-acting SupCom 2 is a load of feotid shrimp wrapped in a diaper. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Go buy the first game.
Posted December 24, 2014.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
6 people found this review helpful
12.3 hrs on record
Do not buy this game. It is buggy, unfinished, and will never be finished. Wait until there is a good modding scene, if that ever happens considering how many people have been burned buying this, and then pirate it for yourself.

Don't be like me. Don't support Double Fine, don't support early access.
Posted December 10, 2014.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
8 people found this review helpful
4.7 hrs on record
I just played the game for a few hours tonight. I will not be playing it again until its business model undergoes a drastic overhaul.

I tried to ignore the accusations of "pay to win" leveed at the game after watching Jim Sterling reveiw the game on his YouTube channel. Since the aesthetic and lore appealed to me, I tried reaaally hard, and for a while I was vindicated. Then three things happened in quick succession.

First off, repair prices began to become unreasonable for the quality and utility of my gear, AND I was facing the orge boss, a beast I can not stun, has almost no wind-up, constantly knocks me down, ATTACKS WHILE I AM DOWN, and is more or less DESIGNED to force you to either lame him out with ranged spells - which suck, and never get better unless you're willing to grind for days OR shell out cash, so add that as a FOURTH P2W strike against this increasingly infuriating and nakedly parasitic experience - or prepare to have your gear battered into uselessness as you die over and over.

So, fueled by incoherant rage against an instentionally badly made boss, I decide to just lame him out by tossing fireballs at his face and chest which do about as much damage as a firm handshake... and then some jerk curses me by sending high-level ranged trash mobs at me. These curses aren't available to ME, so I can't curse him back, and when I look them up... THEY'RE AVAILABLE IN THE STORE FOR AN AMOUNT THAT I MUST PAY FOR IN ORDER TO AFFORD. So, this fragger kills me, forces me to undo twenty minutes of not-fun-but-work spellcraft, and then the final nail is driven into the coffin holding my attention for this game.

I am, in a sense, periodically invaded by other players. Not the players themselves, so far as I've seen, but facimilies using their gear and spells and things. This isn't bad, per say, it's actually quite an interesting conceit when it's done right. Opperative phrase being "when it's done right." I was invaded by a person two levels under me, but they were completely decked out in blue-quality gear, with a defense rating so high that I couldn't even damage them, and so much attack that they killed me in five hits WHICH I COULD NOT BLOCK. These were all items, by the way, that were immediately available IN THE STORE. I was, literally, pay-to-win-ed by someone who forked over money and bought a complete set of stuff in the last 15 minutes.

Oh, and yes, my armor and weapons were being battered to all heck during all of this. So even if I did continue to play (which I won't for a very long time), I'd need to fork over money in order to use my gear again.

I am going to enjoy watching this game be uninstalled from my system. Heck, I might even transfer it over to a little thumb stick beforehand so I can ritually purify the game from my life. It'd be a better use of 20 dollars than giving it to the developers who made this game.
Posted May 22, 2014. Last edited May 22, 2014.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
1 person found this review helpful
0.7 hrs on record
Only played 40 minutes of this game. Couldn't swallow my dignity or sense of appreciate for quality enough to keep going.
Posted May 11, 2014.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Showing 1-8 of 8 entries