Recent reviews by Scotias

I see a lot of comments about bots with winning hands but I've yet to experience this. I'm a mediocre poker player but I definitely come out on top more often than not. I would recommend the 'Sit and go' games on each map for the best experience. The reason being, in the standard 'Cash games' you have millionaires whose hands keep restocking so they can go all in often without much of a care. In the Sit and go games, it's more like a tournament - you get bust, you're out and no topping back up your chips :-) Increasing blinds too. IMO these are where the best games are to be had here ( Poker is always best when you feel there is something to lose after all! )

In-game achievements are cool, encourages you to move up to higher stakes games. Daily rewards are good also, keeps you playing for another game.

Got invited to a team, just more rewards pretty much but cool to see how you stack up against others.

I should say I haven't tried the slots or blackjack, stick to the poker and it's a thumbs up from me. I reckon there's just a lot of salty folks who can't handle a loss, if anything I've found most people are easy to lead into poor bets to my benefit :-P

I thoroughly enjoy this Gangsters themed logistics sim. If you want lots of combat and fancy graphics I'm sorry to say you won't find it here ( combat is more of a means to an end ). I do like the simple graphics myself, but then I am an old fart.

What you will find is an underrated gem - starting out with nothing but some booze in your uncle / aunt's backroom, you spend your early turns building up your cash to open up your first backroom production. You must pay attention to the resources available with the locals and produced in your starting building ( usually part of ingredients to make a certain type of booze ).

One of the cool things I like about this game is that you have no idea what anyone near you is selling or willing to buy until you explore - even then, if they don't like or trust you, based on how you interact with their family and friends, you may never find out. So it does pay to be a true Mafioso and not go in guns blazing all the time. Also, the maps are HUGE.

You develop relationships over time with business owners, using this and favours they owe you to open up opportunities for buying and selling, missions and introductions to unknown business owners who may be useful to you, based on what you already hold, produce or use in your production. It's extremely satisfying when all of your turns and turns worth of saving, planning and scouting pay off and a business becomes self sufficient with the delivery system in place - you don't even need to collect your own money at this point, have one of your goons do it for you!

So, as mentioned, the delivery system - essentially pickup/collection routes that you can create to save you from having to manually go and pick up your booze and sell it around town yourself. I eventually had multiple delivery drivers, some auto-buying bottles, crocks etc for my production, others picking up the booze and selling it to designated customers around the map and others yet moving T1 products to another of my buildings to either be sold or used as input for higher tier alcohol.

Developing your businesses is quite fun too - there are optional upgrades, depending on the many many skills that you can learn by using your favours and completing missions from characters across the map. Did I mention the maps are HUGE? Every building ( or just about ) has an interact-able character for you to extort, buy, sell, learn skills from, give you missions etc etc.

Okay, so the negatives

Combat is very basic, really it's just a means to an end and as long as you outnumber the opponent you will be fine. There are interactions with other gangs beyond whacking them, like deals not to take over territory within 3 tiles of eachother etc. I felt like diplomacy was something to be worked on in an update that never came.
Unfortunately when it comes to conflict, the options beyond killing all of the enemy outfit are limited in variety and practicality - shutting down their territory expanding 'front' buildings does next to nothing, really it's much less hassle to just wipe them out at the source.

By the time you get a good few strong illicit buildings up and running you'll be swimming in money and able to wipe out any other gang with ease, pay off every cop etc. The mid-end game is where the game does fall short, with the amount of characters and businesses under your control becoming unmanageable somewhat. I would have really liked some sort of 'delegate' system where your captains could be given neighbourhoods to manage for you as under-bosses or something, this would have been awesome.

In summary;

An underrated turn-based gangsters themed logistics sim, missed a few tricks that you can't help but feel would come with further patches and development. If you are a fan of the gangster theme and enjoy managing logistics, you definitely want to pick this up and make your own mind up. Personally, I'm crossing my fingers and toes they are working on a sequel because nothing else has ever come close to my ideal old-school gangster game.

7.75/10

If you played the previous game, you'll enjoy it.

Always heard of Dwarf Fortress referenced from playing Rimworld, Songs of Syx etc and I can see why. It really is the grand-daddy of many of my favourite games. I've barely scratched the surface but I'm loving it so far.

Complex as hell but rewarding when things work out, I'd say pick it up if you like a deep game to lose yourself in for hours - be prepared to do lots of pausing to research how things work to begin with though!

Great game with amazing scale that manages to keep the small details in there. I can see the possibility for different play types, chilled city builder / trader, warmongering empire etc. Min/max or go with the flow, population and resource management is interesting here. Investing in your army / techs / goods for your people are all meaningful, very well done.

Initially I was thrown by the amount of options and details I could control, finding out how things worked was under my own steam, checking the forums etc as there is work to be done yet on tutorials and such but the tool tips are all there which are very handy.

The Dev has said its not perfectly balanced but so far i cant see any game breaking or even minor issues worth noting, just another good thing to look forward to when he gets around to tweaking things properly. I've not tried any mods yet but I can see the modding community is good and healthy.

Given the fact its not even finished yet I am exited to see where it will go in the future, some of the planned features sound awesome and can only add to an already fantastic gem.

As a Rimworld fan I can say It's on par and worth a go if you enjoyed that, with more of a lean towards city management but individual citizen development is there into the thousands of people which is really cool.

Am I enjoying this game? Yes absolutely. No other game scratches the itch - Stellaris is a constant comparison but it's much more arcadey than DW2. I love starting new games and finding out what the RNG gods have provided, or how f***ed I am, making the best of a bad starting position ( it's always interesting and engrossing either way ). The combat is deep, exploration is a plus and ship design is suitably complex.

Is it in the state it should be at release? No, definitely not. In the past 2 weeks I've seen half a dozen patches to make it playable due to initial problems with performance issues - these are largely cleared up now except for a minority which they are working on. From next week it's liveable gameplay issues that are being worked on which I'm glad about. Thing is, the Devs are well aware of its shortcomings and are working hard on it.

TLDR; The game isn't 100% what it should have been at launch, but it plays well now - pick it up if you enjoyed DWU ( just be prepared to think 'why did theay leave x or y feature out!?' while the game gets patched ).

As a fan of the old Gangsters: Organised crime ( and Gangsters 2 ) its difficult to find something to scratch that particular itch. This is the first game I've come across in a long while to come close.

I picked it up after the initial teething issues so no bugs or extreme imbalances to speak of. Could use a little more depth yet but upcoming freelc looks to be taking it in the right direction.

Combat is XCOM style and difficult enough to slow your expansion pace. Lots of weapons and equipment to play with and the upgrade trees for different gangster types are plenty varied with meaningful choices to be made.

The business management is deep enough to tread water but I expect it will be improved more with updates which would complete the game for me.

Diplomacy is tacked on, it works and you can work with other gangs if needs be, building relationships to call them Into war with you and they are active enough in that role. Another thing I expect will get more fleshed out in tbe future but I'm fine with how it is for now.

Missions arise related to your businesses and hired Gangsters to keep you busy between mobbing it up.

I'd give it a 7.5/10 for my tastes, worth getting if you're really into the genre but if not wait to pick it up a little cheaper on sale. I see it becoming a solid 9 with more updates.

If you like EU:Rome, you’ll enjoy this. Ignore negative reviews, I’m loving it so far! Plus I know it will get better and better with free updates and DLC plan.

Absolutely hands-down my favourite 4X game and I've played a great many of them. Unique is probably the single word I'd use to describe it. It's a pretty deep game that kinda takes time to learn but I often find those are the most worth investing time into. Even now I still get on the forums to find stuff out.

If you can't handle dated graphics then it may not be for you.. look out for the sequel that's in development though for sure!

Brilliant game. Not even finished yet and I've been hooked for weeks now, knowing the game will get even better is great!