Recent reviews by Mat [MM]

A lovely, chilling game with atmospheric and detailed 2d animations, a traditional retro visual style and a surprisingly coherent vibe and feel. It's basically a slow-paced building game with competitive aspects only becoming active in late-mid game; the pace is similar to the classic Settlers.

There are still a lot of rough edges and unpolished details, but the game is playable in sandbox and is also enjoyable in multiplayer (up to 6 players), with the possibility to play against the developer and make him rage quit, dubbed as "an unfortunate de-sync event". The whole gaming experience is surprisingly coherent compared to what you'd expect from a game that just barely entered EA.

I found it before it came to Steam and while I'm not fond of trying things in EA in general, I feel comfortable about this game. Being essentially a one-man show, the dev's attitude is crucial, and in this case he is active and responsive on the game's discord channel, is self-critical of development bugs, accepts constructive criticism without bullshitting and tries to address player-reported critical issues on short schedule. He is also eager to provide help or explain his game concept, basically acting like you'd ideally expect from someone working on his passion project.

Being a (compared to it's real hardcore players, a mere casual) CK2 & sci-fi fan, got Stellaris as soon as it went gold, I initially found the game a bit sterile and hard to get attached to, but after a couple iterations of fixes and buying some DLCs, I find it more and more appealing to me. Now I can recommend it to any strategy lover.

Pros:
- there have been a lot of fine-tune and design overhaul since released, the game has became a lot less hungry for constant micromanagement and leaves more time for grand strategy. They take care of their core game just as much as they're hatching DLCs. It's quite important for a starter.
-The game is rock solid. I barely have the nerves to play anything in Iron Man mode as a random crash can ruin my entire day (since my playtime is very limited). Stellaris crashed maybe once since I own it, and even that happened before I got to the main menu (maybe even more related to Steam than Stellaris). Once I'm in-game - I feel safe from random crashes. It's very comforting.
- Diplomacy has depth and weight compared to most non-paradox strategy games.

Cons:
- main game is less appealing and rich in content than it's medieval counterpart, Crusader Kings 2, but is also more approachable.
- UI is a bit... weak. Still way better than in their other grand strategy games, though.
- Same frustrating 'catch me if you can' thingy with the opponents' armies like in CK2. On low speed, things never happen. On faster speed, you always miss to click in the perfect 0.1 second window to catch a hostile fleet. Half of a war is composed of this annoying minigame.
-micromanagement on core systems is too tedious. Vassals and sectors don't help here and as far as I'm aware of, there is no easy way to switch through ports and armies of non-core systems - making core worlds (and making as many of them as possible) a necessary evil to have.
- sometimes winning conditions are buggy. Like I once lost an iron man game to a federation victory against an alien race that has never been part of any federation. That can ruin iron man games.

Overall, I think it's a good deal to anyone with a taste for strategy games and sci-fi setting.

Well worth even it's full price.

Don't expect a very detailed, deep strategy game - it's a "casual" game but with a solid game design and a few cool ideas - one of the good indie games. Easy to understand the basics and is really fun as a short game.

A great enhancement to the original Shadowrun Returns. Biggest pros are the multi-dimensional characters, the correct pace of the main story and the atmospheric writing which makes it hard not to take just another mission or spend just one more hour in-game. You feel the price of your decisions more often than not, and that's a cool thing to give weight to these situations.

Another big pro is the studio behind the game - HBS - itself. Making Dragonfall - Director's Cut available to all DLC purchasers and backers for free wasn't something I'd have expected (not a common attitude nowadays when even a skinpack of two new textures or 'upgrades' between versions with almost no differences have their pricetags) and it speaks volumes about how the guys in HBS intends to handle their relationship towards their players. That builds trust towards both them and the games they create for me.

Cons are nuisances. Since you have an own team with rich backstory and personality, you barely need to hire random runners so that part seems a bit neglected. Custom builds for street samurai is still a weak point due to the over-simplied essence and cyber/bioware slot system. The engine has its flaws, but not to the point it would ruin atmosphere. Voice-acting could have served great (still, I never felt they used up their limited budget unwisely).

Dragonfall is a great deal for anyone who likes futuristic fantasy/cyperpunk hybrids set in Europe for a change and don't get intimidated by a rich, written narrative (yes, you need to read a lot).

Brought my best Amiga-era memories back. Solid storytelling (bar the last 1-2 missions), true to the SR universe (as far as I remember). A bit short.