Recent reviews by Hundred-Man Guts

If you have not played Crusader Kings 2: A tentative yes. Read some of the reviews with gameplay stories and decide if that's the kind of thing you are into. It's more fun to play like the sims than a conventional 4x game, so don't worry too much about being "successful," enjoy the whackiness of the middle ages.

If you have played CK2: Yes on sale. I think 60 is a bit steep but 40 dollars is a fair price. Paradox seems to have learned their lesson and at least made a complete game rather than a DLC template. While it obviously isn't as jam-packed as CK2 with the 20+ dlcs, the core experience is mostly intact. In addition there have been some pretty significant quality of life improvements, and even though it's not particularly important, it looks a little better and sleeker. There are a few nitpicks I could point to and say CK2 did better, but it won't be easy going back after trying this. Nothing glaring is missing, and just enough was improved to merit purchase. If I had a complaint, it would be that nothing particularly innovative is on offer, but it's an upgrade worth having.

Despite some flaws, Arsenal of Democracy represents the best, most balanced, and dynamic WW2-Early Cold war simulation in the Hearts of Iron series. While I give this game a thumbs up, I think there are still some significant flaws which can make the experience a bit frustrating:

1. Naval invasion AI. Like all HoI games, the AI has never been very good at naval invasions, which cripples the allies, D-Day, if it happens, will only happen when the Germans are so weakened by the soviets, that the reds will have taken mainland europe anyway. I've never seen a situation where the allied AI manages to create a real second front to take pressure off the soviets.
2. Germans steamroll soviets more often than not. In my experience, 75% of the time the Germans completely destroy the Soviets by 1943, sometimes as early as 1 year after the eastern war starts. German tanks can be in central asia by late 1941. (Important note: I figured out this issue has a LOT to do with the speed you run the game at, while I have zero understanding of why, playing at normal speed when WW2 starts even though as the Americans or whatever you are sitting there until 1941-2 gets a more balanced outcome.)
3. AI doesn't seem to suffer from the same supply problems as the player. Keeping a large number of troops on a hostile front without a solid supply line will cripple your armies. Despite this, the AI seems to have no problem stacking troops in these same provinces. A player italy will have problems even keeping enough troops supplied to hold north africa, while AI italy seems to be able to take over the entire continent without breaking a sweat.
Nukes cause too much dissent. If the soviets manage to nuke the US twice, the country will pretty much collapse into anarchy. Same goes for the soviets, the nukes are punishing enough when they take out massive portions of an industrial base, 40% dissent seems like too much.

Despite these problems, if you get a good game going by praying to the RNG AI gods, it's an extremely technical simulation of this time period, and worth trying out if that idea interests you.

One of the greatest political simulators of all time. The only thing the remakes do better is adding vehicles, tropicans have a real hard time walking the length of larger islands. Still runs excellent on modern machines.

Why is Tropico one of the greatest simulators of all time?
1. Clear factions that know what they want - people follow factions to varying degrees, factions have measurements of how you are doing based on their own criteria. Communists like housing and income equality, capitalists like industry, religious people like cathedrals and a robust clergy etc. In theory you can make all the factions happy, but if you actually manage do that, turn up your difficulty.
2. Clear needs that make sense - Tropicans have clear needs and desires, which they seek to fulfill using infrastructure you provide at varying quality. They will always want something, and the influx of immigrants to your island means that there are always more services to provide for your citizens. Failure will result in domino affects regarding your factional and popular support.
3. Class system - I have never seen a game create a more dynamic and interesting class system. You only have 2 tools but they are very powerful. First, you set wages for every job (the UI makes this very simple), this means that you can decide that soldiers make 10x what a farmer does. This will make them happy directly. Second, you control the quality, location, and fees of the infrastructure. This means you can create special housing, entertainment, and even entire districts which are set aside for the group you deem the upper class of your society. In a dictatorship, this is an important tool to secure the loyalty of the army, in a more free society, political faction leaders tend to be the most educated and well paid, keeping leaders happy will help you secure political support.
4. Dynamic consequences - Tropico is at heart a city building game, what makes it interesting is the political consequences. If you do a bad job building your island, your people will try to remove you from power. Every few years, they will demand an election which you may or may not agree to. If you repeatedly refuse elections because you are unpopular, chances are the average man on the street who composes the army will revolt against you, so without a democratic mandate, you are in danger of a coup (in rare cases, even with a democratic mandate). If the army is happily repressing the people on your behalf, some of them will escape into the wilderness and fight against your regime as rebels who destroy infrastructure and can even topple a regime with a loyal but weak military. Finally, if conditions become truly bad but the army is still on your side, you might get a full blown Arab Spring where a good portion of the population rises up against you. As your soldiers gun down a mob of citizens charging your palace, you will ask yourself "how did I let it come to this?"

If I haven't made this clear enough, the strength of Tropico as a political simulator lies in the dynamic nature of the experience. The game never forces your hand, you check a box that says "communist dictatorship," but it just gives you a few bonuses, it never limits your choices. You are completely free to structure the economy and socio-political system as you see fit to maintain your hold on power. Maybe your Maoist death-camp has a change of heart in the 1970's and becomes a modern functional democracy. Maybe what started as a tourist paradise island slowly degrades into a military Junta when the economy goes sour. In Tropico, gameplay IS politics, and the result is endless replayability. If you are ever in a position to make everyone happy on your island, raise the difficulty, this is a game about balancing interests and sitting on bayonets, good luck Presidente.

You want a full review of this game? Just buy it. I'm too busy playing Factorio.

TLDR: If you like the idea of an MMO wargame, try it out. It's not for everyone but what it offers is unique. Sales are frequent, 10 bucks is a bargain for foxhole if it's your thang.

Foxhole is a wargame like no other. Every soldier in the massive multi-server spanning map is a real person, with hopes and dreams. Every bullet was once metal, pulled out of the ground by scrappers (the unsung heroes of foxhole), turned into bullets and driven lovingly to the front by logistics drivers (the sometimes-sung heroes of foxhole). Every square inch of ground, building, vehicle and sandbag was the result of the collective will and strategic choices of hundreds of people, and all of this aggregates into something uniquely compelling.

This level of authenticity however, comes at a cost. The level of effort required to make any real "progress" in Foxhole for one team or the other is very high, and depending on the task you have chosen to accomplish and the given situation, the simulationist elements of foxhole can become tedious when you just want to blow something up. Unlike most games, I would argue that Foxhole isn't trying to be intrinsically "fun" it's trying to be "satisfying." Foxhole is a sandbox in the truest sense of the word, the tools are there for you to make your own experiences, and those experiences will shape your impression of the game, for better or worse. This is the kind of game where you have to find the fun, rather than it finding you.

There is nothing quite like the experience of being part of a well executed large military offensive in Foxhole. When the hive mind of an entire team aligns itself toward a goal and people specialize in particular jobs to accomplish that greater task, it starts to resemble something closer to the logic and atmosphere of a real military operation than most games can achieve. However, at it's worst, players can feel like a cog in a pointless, incomprehensible machine, or even an inconsequential speck of dust in the uncaring face of an endless stalemate. Because of the level of player investment required to make progress, when people argue, it gets pretty real and personal. As a result, when things get salty, and for the uninitiated who might stumble into a particularly troubling time for an army this can all look pretty toxic and disgusting. In general however, while things can get a little dark, just remember that literally nothing in foxhole is possible without teamwork, the vast majority of people are silently cooperating and contributing, or the concept of this game wouldn't work. It's not as toxic as some people are making it out to be, although I understand where they are coming from, it just appears so on the surface, or if you get a little too invested. Cooperation is in this game's DNA, it just comes in the form of a sort of collective gestalt conciousness of the internet, which means it is expressed amidst copious amount of salt, rage, and memes.

That's pretty much my review. Because this game is a sandbox, and how you approach it will color your experience of the game significantly, the next section is sort of general advice on how to get the most out of the tools foxhole gives you:

When you spawn on the home island as an unranked Noob, go to the deployment tent and find the most active map your team has. Interact with the town that you spawn at, and open your map, go (drop all your stuff and run) where all the dots are, those are your bros. Once you are with your bros, try to stay alive and observe what they are doing carefully. Just take everything in, stay with people and slowly learn and mimic what the people around you are doing. As comrades and enemies die around you, they will drop shiny and interesting loot, use this as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the many weapons of foxhole. The most important thing is that you stay with the team. This game is not particularly interesting or compelling if you go off and try to do stuff on your own. I only know a few grand master chess level foxhole wizards who do stuff like that, and while they are certainly satisfied with what they do, I wonder if they actually have "fun" anymore. The social element of foxhole is probably the most important thing, don't just run off and play single player.

This game generally favors defense over offense, and patience over impetuousness. Offensives of course, are the most fun and interesting part of foxhole, so this means that a slow and steady offensive, rather than a crazy blitz (even though it will be fun for a minute) is the recipe for sustainable fun. Overextension is a recipe for disaster in foxhole, losing all the progress you worked for over the course of a couple hours is not fun or satisfying. Just remember not to blitz too hard and burn out, and that there are a ton of other jobs that need doing for every inch of ground that is captured. Running a mile ahead only to die over and over isn't particularly fun, instead, just spend a little time helping out so everyone can spawn closer and work as a team again. A little patience and thinking about the all the different factors in the war outside of killing the enemy goes a super long way in foxhole.

In foxhole, you are part of a hivemind. A little droplet, that if joined together with other droplets, will form a river, and that river, over a long period of time can make the grand canyon (blah blah). People are generally used to having a little more agency and control over their video games, and at times the choices that the hive mind makes can be frustrating, or even clearly dumb, having somehow gained an idiotic momentum all their own. This can induce lethal levels of salt and rage for some people, especially when they are stuck in the situation for an extended period of time. I think the best approach to this is just embrace the hive mind mentality and go with the flow. Inform the hivemind of pertinent information ("enemy tanks here" "need supplies there" "bringing supplies" etc) Choose your battles and gently nudge the hive mind when it's an issue that's really important to you. Stay positive and try to be persuasive rather than salty, and always try to lead by example and most importantly MAKE IT FUN for people to work toward whatever goal you're trying to achieve. Be supportive of people with good ideas, or in the absence of good ideas, anyone with ideas, having a reputation of encouraging others and being helpful in their plans will generally make them much more likely to want to help you with yours later on.

It's not a terrible game, but compared to other grand strategy options offered by paradox it's pretty barebones. Maybe worth recommending on the basis that it's a simplified introduction to Paradox Grand strategy titles with more depth. However, in terms of sheer accessibility, I think CK2 or HOI4 work better as entry titles, CK2 for the stories that players can experience and HOI4 because a lot of people are interested in WW2. Thus it becomes a title only really worth recommending to history buffs who are fond of early antiquity.

Some people seem bothered by the negative response to this game, I think it comes from three places:

First, this game wasn't released in a vacuum, they are borrowing every single mechanic used in this game from either EU4 or their earlier failed attempt at a Rome game. There just isn't much innovation on display for people who are familiar with paradox offerings. This comparison isn't unfair in my opinion, it's running on the same engine and using the same ideas as other paradox games, but the package seems less cohesive. It's not unreasonable to expect some recycling of ideas across titles, but here the idea recycling seems more blatant and there aren't enough new ideas to distract from it.

Second, this feeds into similar backlash about Rome Total War 2. To fans of these grand strategy titles, it looks like a "dumbing down" of the genre. Every flashy new thing they add belies some complexity that has been taken away, and things have been abstracted to the point where historical simulationist neckbeards start to get annoyed. A similar backlash happened when they added the concept of "monarch points" to EU. Despite later EU titles being better games, this "dumbing down" of games is hated by the hardcore fans. Paradox can totally get away with changing things, HOI4 is a prime example where they essentially scrapped what was an insanely complex system for something more accessible and it sold like gangbusters. But that's because they really invested a lot of energy in getting the new logistics system right, hence it was a success, despite the whimpers of hardcore HOI3 fans.

The last thing has been talked about ad nauseum. Paradox's policy of releasing incomplete game templates to market dlc. I think there are fair arguments on both sides, but in this case, it just seems like it was more blatant than usual, and there's no shiny new feature to distract from it. Finally, the thing that bothers me is this: the game runs like ass. This puzzles me because EU4 has a larger map with what seems to be more going on, and while it also runs like ass, it took paradox bloating it with about 8 dlcs before it chugged. What is going to happen when they finally "complete" this game?

In a vacuum, this game is a solid grand strategy offering, but in the context of other paradox iterations it's left wanting to the point where many lessons they should have learned by now aren't being applied, and there's not enough innovation or evolution in what they did here to merit purchase. Supposedly this is a game that is more focused on raw combat, and less on empire and dynasty building than CK2 and EU4, however, the problem with that is that there really isn't much strategic depth to the combat system beyond choosing unit types and avoiding attrition. If they wanted to make a combat focused game, they needed to improve the combat system and adapt it for this specific historical period, like they did with HOI4.

TLDR: Only buy it if you're a Rome nerd, even then, you're probably looking for the Europa Barbarorum mod honestly. Otherwise, wait until the DLC starts rolling in and see if it adds enough to make it worth playing past a few dozen hours.

Solid simulation, shaping up to be a true love letter to Space Station 13. The updates so far have been fast and frequent.

I don't remember buying this, maybe I was drunk? Either way, this game is terrible, stay away.

Complicated, a bit obtuse and the UI is somewaht impenetrable, but that is pretty standard for this style of wargame, everything works and several improvements have been made to the mechanics since I purchased it.

As far as I can tell, Gaslamp Studios has been closed and this game is therefore abandoned. I really think they gave this game their all, and I respected them as an indie studio, however at this point I think they are being deliberately unclear that this game is abandoned and are trying to scam an extra 30 bucks from people who aren't aware of it. Not as bad as towns or DF9, but the end result here is basically the same. RIP gaslamp.