Recent reviews by maksus

Look, it may be another idle game on steam, but this is indeed the progenitor of the entire genere. And it shows by just being well crafted and enjoyable. It's still being updated, albeit slowly, and there's a lot of varied ways to gain more of the cookies everyone craves so, not just by pure idle or paying real money.

I'm enjoying it. It gives a good dopamine flow to my brain, and the music by C418 makes watching the numbers go up a very calming experience. I'd reccomend it if you have some spare change.

It is rare when a game can take tens of hours from you, constantly, without getting boring in any way. And geniuses from Ghost Ship Games managed to find that particular formula.

In Deep Rock Galactic, you play as one of 4 dwarf combat miners, working for the titular corporation, in order to exploit a mineral rich, but lethal planet; Hoxxes IV.
Breaching into one of thousands of deep caves that vein the globe, you'll find yourself in many differing enviroments. Fungus Bogs will welcome you with thick overegrowths that limit your visibility, and further hamper your excursions with fungi that spew toxic gasses. Magma Core will constantly try to set you on fire, and just when you thought that you're in the safe, a hoxquake will hit, and crack the ground under your feet wide open.
Each mission, each biome and each cave will be different, and will play out different. You could breeze through one raking through the precious minerals, only for the next one to suddenly swarm you with a wave after a wave, while you desperately attempt to find your way through labirynth-like tunnels.
Thank goodness you're a part of the team!
...Right?

DRG is a Co-Op at heart; gather up with 3 other people and reach for greater rewards! IF you manage to work together...
Each dwarf is differently equipped, and will have different strengths and weaknesses. The key to getting out alive, is to cover each one of those weak parts.
-Gunner is the one to keep the constant pressure of the local angry aliens away from your beard. When he's not using an enormous firearm, he drops shield generators to protect himself and others from intense onslaughts, and can provide a zipline to "safely" provide a way beyond chasms and notable drops.
-Scout is the one to carry a grappling gun, which gives him mobility beyond any other teammate, as well as the flare gun, which will pierce through the constant darkness of the caverns. His assault rifle and the sawn-off does not allow him to survive in sustained combat however.
-Engineer is able to place sentry guns, which with the help of his grenade launcher will provide immense coverage of the areas, and if the need arises, his platform gun can be used to create impromptu bridges, or platforms to enhance your defensive positions.
-Driller is a walking area of denial factory, using the flamethrower to wreathe paths of charging bugs in flames, using his powerful satchel charges to eradicate clumps of them, or to quickly clear out rubble out of the tunnels. And as his name suggests; his power drills will carve through rock, dirt, sand and chitin faster than you can gasp in awe.
Gasp in awe, at the magnificent destruction system that ties the game together. Practically 90% of the game enviroment can be destroyed; with your tools, weapons, explosions or pickaxes, it's up to you if you want to walk the available paths, or if you will take a shortcut to your goal. Some of my most favorite moments in the game came from making it to the escape pod by the skin of our teeth, just barely surviving the neverending swarms of enemies while digging through the granite. It is absolutely exhilerating to have such amount of freedom.

While there are generic mining missions, DRG gives you plenty of variety when it comes to the gameplay.
With either recovering the equipment of a failed expedition; gathering and repairing broken bots, or setting up a refinery of liquid crystal, complete with pipelines which you build by your own, all the way to hunting down particularily dangerous alien specimens.
Add in the fact that each biome follows a completely different generation ruleset, and each one of the assignments into a unique outing that requires tight coordination, especially at higher difficulties:
- Have an engineer shoot a platform under a mineral vein high up, so scout can reach it and mine it out.
- Point out areas to hold out in, so the driller can remove boulders and other obstacles to allow for easier manouvering.
- Seek vantage points for gunner to put up ziplines, giving your team a quick escape, or a higher ground to shoot from.

In DRG, each class feels impactful and incredibly enjoyable to play, giving you a plethora of reasons to return to the game, to try out something new, or test your skills on hardest hazard levels.
Enemy roster does not fall behind, as beyond the creepy spider-like glyphids you'll also encounter flying macteras, swarming naedocytes and many others. Some serve as a tank, to breach through your position with the massive plates of armor, others cover the area in slowing goo, and some attempt to flank and take higher ground in order to shoot your face with toxic needles easily. And that's not to mention of the massive boss-like monsters, which can wipe the whole team with a single move if approached carelessly, or other terrible examples of natural abominations which are looking forward to your demise. And to go even further, biomes also have differing fauna, with differing tricks. Keep your head up, and your laser pointer ready!

A dwarf without their weapon and pickaxe is still a dwarf, but a rather boring one. Thankfully, you get paid for your work.
Game has a robust system of upgrades and unlocks, allowing you to customize your weapons and tools to your own liking; from bigger magazines to piercing rounds, or bullets that ignite those on the recieving end.
And of course, you need to show your style on the mission, thus, you can also pick up a fancy headwear from the store, or a new hair / beard cut. With many kinds of sideburns, moustaches, eyebrows and main beards, as well as many colours to dye your manes, it's very easy to lose time, trying to make your compact mercenary look just right.
Veteran dwarfs will be able to gain matrix cores, which grant them not just blueprints for particularily exquisite cosmetics, but powerful weapon overclocks as well. Ranging from simple, risk-less modifications, down to those that change your piece completely; revolver firing sniper rifle rounds? Sure! Upping the strength of the minigun to the point that you turn into a living gun platform? Can do! Loading a godsdamned nuke into your grenade launcher?! What are you, a leaf lover?! OF COURSE YOU CAN!

Despite having a simple, polygonal based style, DRG excels in creating pleasant look that never gets boring or eye-searing, and can easily support older GPUs. The greatest strength is in game's fantastic lighting; an obvious priority considering the locations the game takes place in. All acompanied by equally fantastic synthwave soundtrack, with both suspensful ambience, and heart-pounding combat beats.
Just in general, the style of the game just screams DWARF through and through, embracing the glorious, stubborn manlet trope with joy. After all, what other game lets you ride on a massive drill, firing a gun twice your size, while drunk?

All in all, it is an absolute must-have. The fine-tuned gameplay loop, with the "just one more mission" vibe to it, combines together into a well made and refined title, that I'll continue supporting and playing in the future.
Grab your pickaxes, drink up and dive down! Rock and Stone, to the bone!

It's a game of chess.
It's a game of UNO.
It's a game of Secret Hitler.
It's a session of D&D / Pathfinder.
It's a load of laughing during a Cards Against Humanity game.
It's everything you'll probably ever need for the future friend meetings.
It's all the damn tabletop games there have been ever made, and if not, someone else made it.
It's not a game.
It's an experience.

If you love shooters, don't look further than this.
It's fairly short in comparison to other games of this genere, but it's very well done and enjoyable, with mechanics that easily work with one another, providing an excellent show of carnage and viscera, like in the good ol' 90s, where Quake was considered a satanic ritual.
Story is fairly uninventive, but it keeps you going, and doesn't get in the way of the game. Characters are fairly memorable and enjoyable to listen to, with great voice acting all around.
The graphics and sound design are spot on, and nicely show the alternate continuity where the nazi scum has unfortunately won the war. Every gun feels great to fire and dual wield, and splatting nazis apart on the walls with high powered lasers or explosives continue to be the most cathartic things, no matter how many times they happen.

All in all, it's short, but not without bang for it's buck. Consider this a concentrated version of all the best, juicy bits of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Get it, if you enjoy a solid action game.

I've played a fair share of strategy games.
A lot of them involved my team dying to a stupid mistake on my side.
I've also love the setting of WW2.
Even though in most of them I die to a random grenade I couldn't get away from in time.
In Silent Storm, I kill off my entire team with my own explosive that I couldn't get away from in time, causing the 2 story house to collapse in on itself, due to a mistake on my part.
And I love every second of it.

You can take the side of "Allies" which consist of USA, USSR, and Britain; or choose the "Axis" where Germany, Japan, and Italy reside. Of course, they're not the only countries fighting there, but more on that later.
Once you choose those, create your character using a "decent" editor, and choosing one of 6 classes.
After that, you'll be dropped straight into the game, where your avatar will be faced with a seemingly impossible to do task. Of course, you'll get through it, for which you'll be promoted to a leader of a covert ops unit, which will be tasked with other seemingly impossible missions.

Doing these alone is a suicide, so you'll have to gather a team of similar badasses.
You'll have a choice of a rather robust dossiers on both sides of the conflict; multiple nationalities, along with suprising amount of backstories and personalities for each agent you decide to take with you.

After that, you also get to arm your team, with an astounding amount of explosives, rifles, pistols, SMGs, bazookas, melee weapons, equipment-THERE IS A LOT OF STUFF TO ARM YOURSELF WITH, OKAY?
Just don't go overboard, since you have limited inventory space, and also need to carry ammo for eventual reloads. And you DO want to leave some space for an eventual looted supergun that you can bring back to the quartermaster to get more ammo for it, so you can actually utilise it.

Such amount of customisation is very welcome in a strategy game, but how goes the gameplay?

First of all, enemies won't always be seen right away, sometimes they might not appear in the beggining phases, which means you have to advance slowly and be ready for possible ambushes or patrols. Suprisingly, you can choose to be stealthy, using sneaking, melee, throwing knifes and silenced pistols, but once gunshots are heard, things get intense FAST.

Not only you need to take care of manually placing your team and yourself in cover, but also make sure they crouch, lay prone, or even prepare to run, in dire cases. There will be a lot of moving and planning in this turn-based combat.
All the action is acompanied by a rather advanced for it's time physics engine, allowing for amazing amount of bulletholes and decals, as well as complete destruction of buildings.

If you find it hard to find a flanking route, you can just blow up the wall. If a sniper is backed up by a machinegunner camping the only entrance to the sharpshooter's lair, you can always blow the floor from under his feet. And if that damn officer keeps rallying his troops and hiding behind that wood fence, you can send a lovely burst from your Tomphson, reducing both the fence and the coward into tiny shreds.

Yes, the previous statement also means you can shoot through certain things, which ties to the fact that your characters and enemies actually have object pernamence: If someone steps away from someone else's sight, they'll instead be heard through obstacles, giving them an outline, describing their approximate position. This in turn, means that a single scout could give you incredible amount of intel, as one could sent him/her near possible enemy groups, and give clues towards where to shoot through the hedges, or where to throw a biiiig grenade.

Of course, enemy team can use the same tactics against you, so don't be suprised when you're suddenly hit with a point-blank pistol headshot from a suprise spy, or the house you were bunkered in suddenly crushes you, when the dude with a Panzershreck decides he had enough of your bullsh!t.
This entire array of features makes each encounter in Silent Storm a fight that is very likely to suprise you, and thus, keep going further, just to see what other crazy stuff you'll see.

The destruction doesn't stop on the terrain, as people can be destroyed and damaged horribly as well.
Each shot, shrapnel, stab or hit means a soldier might suffer from something more than just a loss of HP.

If head gets too bonked, the victim might have a hard time moving and aiming, could lose sight or hearing for a brief period of time. Injured legs mean difficulties in running, a bullet in the gut makes everything else hurt more; the list goes on. And if you don't have a decently experienced medic AND the right tools for the job, that in-game headache might turn into a real life one.

And of course, if you really need that additional edge in combat, you can ask your doc to give your Rambo something special; painkillers, to briefly stop negative effects, stimulants to make them shoot a tiny bit better, or even a liquid that puts their bodies into complete overdrive.
That is, if you can take the eventual comedowns, haziness, increased vulnerabilities, and possibly passing out in the middle of a firefight.

If you're the craftier type, you can fake a retreat, and use your engineers to plant mines, traps, and lock doors (or open them), in order to catch the bloodthirsty pursuers off-guard.
There is also an another use for those brainiacs, but it comes with such a massive spoiler, that I can't really tell much about it, but once it appears, just know that sh!t gets real at that point.

What doesn't kill, or turn you into dogfood, will make you, and your team stronger, as they train both their attributes and skills by making use of them.
All that time, they will gain perk points to distribute across a detailed tree, giving such bonuses as better resistance against injuries, reduced penalties for equipment they can't yet use, or becoming harder to hit when near death.
Needless to say, the depth of the gameplay seems hard to grasp at first, but it becomes much easier to wrap your head around it, once you warm up.
There are some issues of course.

Worst thing about this glorious game is the fact...
...That it can get reaaaally slooooow.
It's because of the animations, as every character has a rather clunky set of those. And this is a game, where there can be more than 30+ characters! Thankfully, there is a mod that speeds up those, making the wait for your turn much shorter.
Apart from that, the AI tends to have brainfarts, making the enemy troops run up to you, only to stand there, as they ran out of Action Points to actually shoot, etc.
There is also a plethora of tiny bugs; the game may forget that houses have ceilings, which means that soldiers will happily phase through the attics to climb over a wall to another room. Other time, the grenade I threw decided to hang in mid-air, before exploding on spot, forcing me to reload a save.

To put it all simply, it's a great, forgotten, flawed gem of a game that is very worth checking out, if you like good strategy games, and the gritty setting of WW2. It also comes with an "Sentinels" expansion pack, which brings a completely new campaign, with so much different things, that it deserves a seperate review.

+ Fantastic physics engine.
+ Graphics have aged well.
+ Great deal of customisation and gameplay choices.
+ It. Just. Hooks. You. In.

- Occasional glitches.
- Slow progress.
- AI can show it's dumb side.
- Voice acting and storyline is cheesy.

The single player is good, the Online portion however is the most broken ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing I have seen in my gaming life.

You will NEVER feel like you're earning money, all of it will get squandered on overpriced goods and "Activities" that will not pay you off. Being able to buy a tank to have a classic GTA style rampage? One million dollars. And it's less resistant than a vehicle you can pay less for. And you can pay a million more to have a version you can store in a garage, modify, and even swim in.

With everything costing so much, you think you could just run a few heists, or maybe do work for the much-talked about
CEO and MC missions to gather cash? Forget it. I have put over 1k hours into Online, and throughout all of it, the only time I could afford enough stuff to enjoy it was when I recieved modded cash from many, many, MANY cheaters and modders, but on that later.

So, why not BUY A SHARK CARD?
I have 2 words for this question:
Shove off.
The cards are horribly overpriced for the amounts they give. The most expensive one costs 75 euros, and gives you 8 million GTA$. You could buy a helicopter, tank, 2 good cars and maybe a basic CEO setup. While this seems good, in a sea of items to buy, you WILL feel ripped off. Cars are added constantly, with their prices almost never reaching below 400k GTA$. Modifying them to work better and look better cost even more, with a simple engine tune up costing upwards to 50k GTA$.
You want to paint your car a specific shade of yellow? 14k pls.
You want a set of wheels that don't look horrible? 5k pls.
you want to add hydraulics that don't work properly 50% of the time, to a very limited assortment of vehicles? 100k pls.
YOU WANT TO UPGRADE THOSE TO ACTUALLY LIFT YOU? HALF A MILLION PLEASE.


We can't of course forget about the freeroam, which is full of people using cheap tactics and items to turn your free-roaming sandbox experience into a Battlefield ripoff. Costant attacking and blowing up vehicles is pretty much the only hobby of the majority of players here, as it's not punished in any way. You can't enjoy the world you're given, because there's always a kid in a full combat armor trying to shoot you and blow up your car for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason.
Of course, you can leave the session and go into an invite-only one, or friends-only one.
Only then you lose 80% of your income, as CEO and MC work largely needs a public session, which means you won't be making any money.
You probably won't be making any money in a public session anyway, due to the afromentioned soldier boys making sure that any sort of delivery or sell will go up in flames.
That's about 5 hours spent on making the product, and just 1 second of pulling the trigger on a fighter jet to blow it all up, and if you do manage to sell it, it's most likely gonna give you lousy 300k.
That's how it feels to try and progress in this game.

And of course, the modding plauge.
Despite Rockstar's constant nagging that "they're fighting the cheating menus" and the supposed presence of an anti-cheat, going into public lobbies still have a 75% chance of your character getting endlessly teleported over the ocean, getting blown up endlessly, getting blamed on blowing up everyone, losing your money pernamently, losing your weapons and having to buy them again, having your character get disfigured, and thus, having to pay 100k to change it's appearance back to normal, and even your character getting litteraly raped by someone.
It's a lawless wasteland due to that, which already lowers your chance of actually doing something meaningful.

And then, there's the netcode.
Or the lack of it, as the game RUNS ON PEER TO PEER.
This is 2016-2017 people! We don't need this outdated system which is more likely to leak your IP address and lag you out, and back to single player because someone from Yemen joined in. And even if you manage to live through that, game often times out when connecting to someone, sometimes ignores invites and friends coming online, forcing you to reload online to fix it, and simply refusing to save your progress to cloud at certain times. It's infuriating at best, and downright maddening at worst.

And in case you still had any sort of hope left for this game...

http://gtaforums.com/topic/889348-take-two-vs-modding/

Take 2 Interactive; Grand Theft Auto V's publisher and "owner" of Rockstar Games,
has shut down OpenIV, the only modding tool for GTA IV and V, threathing the authors with lawsuits, in a badly written email,
effectivly making modding GTA V illegal.

All in all, good story mode, HORRENDEOUS ONLINE MODE,
and utterly pathetic, scummy, disgusting, greedy, slimey, dissapointing, annoying and moronic publishers.

TL;DR: Simply put, avoid at all costs; the story is worth it, But Online is an endless, broken grind with overpriced, usless microtransactions plauged with scummy playerbase and cheaters, making even sessions with friends boring and annoying to go through. Not to mention the scumbags behind the scense who only want your money and nothing else.

It's a really fun and simple game that does what a Tycoon game should do good.
The graphics are simple, but pleasing to the eye, the mechanics are really easy to learn, but take a while to master, and it provides a lot of ways to rise your company to the top, wether be it releasing a good piece of entertainment rarely and just scrape by, or overflow the market with your endless shooter sequels. Finaly, the fact that it also provides a great Steam Workshop support is an icing on the cake.
It might be a bit short, but it's an entertaining, relaxing game that's worth to spend your money on.

I decapitated a terrorist and kicked his head around like a football while everyone around were vomiting their guts out.
10/10 would cause controversies again.

That's it. That's all I can say about this game, and that's all you need to know.



Okay. I'll try and make a serious review here.



In the game, you control The Postal Dude, a guy who is the butt monkey of life in the city of Paradise (oh the irony).
He lives in a rusty, broken down trailer on the back of someone's house. He has an awful wife. He loses his job just a day after he starts. His car doesn't work. He has to run some errands.
Obviously, things will not go right.


Straight from the beggining, you are free to do as you please. The city is rather big, and packed full of secrets or events.
The game is split into 7 days (originaly 5, untill Apocalypse weekend expansion was included) where you need to do several tasks; get some milk, get some people to sign your petition, get an autograph from Gary Coleman and so on.
Unfortunately, Paradise is a very, VERY VERY bad place. Wanna go confess in church? Well, better get your arse moving, because as soon as you are done, terrorists will attack this place. Go to the bank so you can cash in your check? Robbery! Try to buy some milk? LONG QUEUES. Here, the game gives you 2 choices: be passive and run away, wait for your turn, kindly pay for the stuff you buy. Effective, risk free, boring.

Or, you could just go POSTAL.
*Taped laughter plays*


Yes, sooner or later you'll find yourself fighting for whatever the reasons.
Smacking with shovels, zapping with tasers, shooting guns, spilling gasoline, throwing machetes, sledgehammers and scissors, the list of your mostly improvised weaponry just keeps increasing. With all these tools of destruction, it's very hard to resist going nuts on the residents. Especialy when they keep calling you a "freaking pinko".
Obviously, the police will try to stop you, and they are rather effective at their job, searching for you when you evade their patrols, and calling in reinforcements when things go south.
The fights will end up very bloody and gory, as you can decapitate, chop off limbs and cleave people in half, burn them to a crisp, or electrocute them till they wet themselfs.
But there is a lot more stuff to do than just cause chaos:

• Urinate on various things!
  
• Befriend some dogs!
  
• Visit the local Elephant ranch!
  
• Play a game in the arcade!
  
• Rob a store/bank/drug dealer!
  
• Raid a secret terrorist base!
  
• Use a cat as you silencer!

...And much more!


The game's weak point is the graphics. They're, well, ugly.
The textures have low resolution, and the models tend to be very simple. You'll see many clones of the citizens, and the animations aren't so great either. While that aspect can be ignored, it is still present in game.
What's also present? Glitches. Thankfully, the minor ones. Sometimes, my dog spawned in a wall, effectivly freezing him, The police managed to shoot me through the wall one time, and bigger physics objects can cause the people to leviatate when they smack into them.


While the storyline is remarked as bad, it is bad.
As in "bad".
Going through Monday to Friday (and later through the weekend) you'll visit many places and see new stuff happening, as the situation in the city gets worse and worse. Over the game, you'll make many enemies; Book haters, Rednecks, Butchers, Video game protestors, which will try to kill you if they see you.
You'll also go from buying some milk, to giving a birthday gift to the town's resident leader of zealots. All while the building is being attacked by special forces.
And then there's the game's specific sense of humor. You see, the devs know that the game is not the best, and it's very offensive, disgusting and just plain stupid and pointless.
And they are sure to point that out.
Cue many jokes towards "violent video games" and the people who protest them, The Dude calling you out if you utilise the quicksave button too much, or if you cheat, the store owner clearly works with the terrorists, during one of the days, you'll be made a gimp, and then in the graveyard you can find a tombstone of a Steam user, who died while collecting trading cards. You'll either die laughing, or chuckle out of pity.


In conclusion, POSTAL 2 is a very specific kind of game. It's as offensive as you make it, and while the graphics are not too great, it makes up with the pure, undiluted carnage that is the perfect way to have some fun and forget about your stresses.

PROS:
# Open world, ready to be slaughtered.
# Doesn't take itself seriously.
# Lasts a long time, and it's mod-friendly.
# It gets as violent as you want it to be.

CONS:
# The graphics are horrible.
# The humor might not be funny for all.
# Same with the gore.
# There are some minor glitches that happen frequently through the game.

A long list is appearing on your screen. Take time, or just skip to results.

As I grew up, my favorite game was Age of Empires II, the first strategy game I played. The first game I ever played.
It focused on growing your nation from the darkness of early Middle Ages, with your troops still using clubs and such, all the way to the Renaissance with cannons, mighty castles and wonders to build and hold.

But then the third game changed its ways.


AoE III Starts where it left off, only a bit further. It's Colonial age, and many nations build their ships in order to claim the newly discovered America. So, you're free to choose one of the 8 nations, each with its own gimmick. The Dutch get Banks to build, which generate money, Russians train their troops very quickly, French have more powerfull villagers, etc.

This is an incredible improvement over the previous game, where each nation only had some buildings, units and techs locked from them, alongside with a diffrent special unit and technology to make in castles.
The problem comes in, when you acknowledge that some Nations are simply unstoppable if they get just the right things, which can be just near them in some maps. For example, letting Dutch build a lot of their banks, can make them nearly unstoppable, because they get enough coin to support large armies with a lot of upgrades. And this can happen if the map has a lot of food and/or wood near starting places.

While the game has many maps, you'll have a bit of trouble finding out what kind of it will it be if you don't know US states well, as almost every map has is named like that: "Orinoco" "New England" "Carolina" etc. Thankfully, you won't be bored. Islands, Deserts, Plains, Woods, Taigas, if you can name it, it's probably here.


When you first choose your nation, you'll be treated to your Home City (Which name can be changed before confirming your choice), Which is the main feature of the game. Here you can unlock "cards" which you can add to your "deck", up to 21 cards can be in your deck. But don't worry, it's not the main game.

Cards are simply shipments from your HC that are sent to your colony: from a few villagers and resource crates, through military units, special technologies and carts with enough materials to build an enormous fort to the powerful mercenaries and upgrades.
Each card is locked to a certain age, so if you want to get more powerful ones, you have to advance. You also need to gain XP points which represent your growing might. When you get enough, you can send a new shipment, or wait a bit if you want something diffrent.

XP is gained through killing enemies, building, winning matches, and simply being good at the game. Reaching enough XP also levels up your Home City, which allows you to unlock new cards and new items to change the looks of it.

BUT; You will most likely die before you fully expand your city. Really. It takes more time than you can imagine, even with long matches and a lot of tactics.


When it comes to fightin', collectin' and buildin', AoE III does it with more BANG.
The matches are much faster than in the previous game, and fights are more juicy.

Villagers collect resources much quicker, without a long walk to the nearest drop-off point. Even building is fast and training large armies in short time is a achiveable goal. The problem is, you have no fun in doing that.

In AoE II you could make your units form a box in order to protect weaker units inside, or spread apart to make flanking easier.
In III, the most complicated thing to do for your "Imperial" musketeers is to spread apart slightly, so the splash damage won't be so bad. The units can be simply spammed without knowledge, and it'll be a good tactic. Only sometimes making for example; some Halberdiers is a good idea, and I don't like that.

Thankfully there are also other things to take care of: Treasures await in the maps, which grant many things, from resources to rare units and upgrades. You can meet native tribes and make alliances with them. You can control a Trade Route which will be generating resources for you. And with every nation having it's own way in things, every match is great fun, even though you won't be caring about your army much.


When it comes to the graphics and sounds, the game still looks great and sounds fantastic (apart from the a bit narmy and hammy voice actors).

The buildings fall apart when damaged, and turn into a pile of rubble. Explosions leave behind a column of dirt and smoke, every musket has it's own puff and flash. The water and forage look really nice, and you'll feel the power of your Bombards, muskets and ships just by listening.

Some textures are a bit outdated, and when zoomed in, the models do look a bit primitive, but since you're playing zoomed out to get as much view as possible, this won't be a problem.


The biggest problem I have with this game, is the campaign, which is passable at best.
The storyline is very easy to predict and characters aren't that great. While some missions are engaging, there are some that will end before you manage to get your plan together, or will make you sputter curses untill the next one (Act 2 Mission 2).
You can try it out if you want something different, but don't expect anything groundbreaking.


With the Complete Collection, you also get The Warchiefs and The Asian Dynasties expansion packs.
Each gives you 3 new nations, 2 new campaigns and many, many changes.

The Warchiefs expand the native tribes, and even lets you play as some, while The Asian Dynasties gives you control over Japanese, Chineese and Indians (duh) and again, each with their own gimmicks.
Expansion packs also give you new maps, game modes and changes to some things.


In conclusion, AoE III CC is a certainly good RTS that may lack some things, but will be a great addition to your game library if you like the older AoEs, strategies or simply want to spam IM IN UR BASE KILLIN UR DOODZ in chat during multiplayer games.

Even though it doesn't support achievements, or the Workshop, it doesn't mean that the game is bad. Those things could make the game even better, but so far with everything you got here, they won't be needed for now.


# Good variety of maps to choose.
# Each Nation brings something new to the game.
# Good Graphics and Sounds.
# Home City and Shipment cards system.
# Expansion packs extend the already rich gameplay.
# Simply enjoyable RTS experience.


# Campaign isn't that great.
# Voices "smell of cheese and ham".
# Less control over your armies.
# Home City is almost impossible to fully upgrade.
# Some Nations are unstoppable with certain conditions met.

PS: At the time I'm done writing this, I'll have litle time played, this is because I played it before, just bought the steam version to access multiplayer.