Why EG2's rating is so low.

[mecklenberg]

I did a review some time ago which was broadly favourable of the game at launch (tho' with reservations).

The review score of EG2 is currently under 60% which is grossly unfair, particularly after a number of patches. The last third of EG2, when your base is running properly and your traps are set up, is way better than EG1, even if I miss the 30-minute realtime assembly of the weapon in the original.

I suspect that the problem for a lot of people is that to get to that happy state, you first have to get through the first two-thirds of the game, which is frankly a grind.

A lot of this is simply due to the decision to charge a ludicrous amount for gold storage containers. You could probably cut out 10 hours of pointless grind by (1) making initial pallets free, (2) setting the cost of the first upgrade to the cost of the current basic pallet, and (3) making the final upgrade upgrade a block of 3 rather than singles, and charging the same price for the set as for the current single (which is also tedious to reposition at present). In addition, basic pallets and the first upgrade should not have a power cost!

Think of it like this: you get some gold, and rather than using it to improve your base and become a better Evil Genius, you then have to spend that gold to buy storage for more gold, and then spend even more gold still to build generators to pay the power cost of storing the gold. This simply doesn't advance the plot: there is no payoff for the player in terms of minion improvement or base defence, and to make matters worse, the absence of storage is a hard cap on what missions you can usefully take - because there's nowhere to store the gold reward - further delaying progress.

Or at the very least, give the player the option on starting a run to opt for a lower gold storage cost along the lines suggested above. I suspect that 90% or more players would leap at the opportunity.

[andrew.ch.]

Are you really sure that the reason for the negative reviews is in the pallets with gold?)))

Read these reviews, people write why the review is bad. If I wrote a review now, it would also be negative, because many things were removed in EG2 for which I loved EG1 so much.

[mecklenberg]

If a person plays a game and sees a problem with it, certainly one alternative is to rubbish the title and urge people not to buy it.

Another alternative is to make constructive criticism with specific proposals about how the game could be improved.

[andrew.ch.]

Originally posted by mecklenberg:

If a person plays a game and sees a problem with it, certainly one alternative is to rubbish the title and urge people not to buy it.

Another alternative is to make constructive criticism with specific proposals about how the game could be improved.

Both happened. There were people who said that the game design is very bad and that it is worth bringing the game back. There were people who pointed out the weak points of the game design and suggested solutions. Players have already discussed every aspect of the game. Now it's up to the developers, it all depends on how well the developers listened to the players. If the developers make the changes expected by the players, then I think the reviews will also change over time.

Pallets of gold are the smallest problem in the game. There are many others and more significant ones.

[Marauder]

Originally posted by mecklenberg:

If a person plays a game and sees a problem with it, certainly one alternative is to rubbish the title and urge people not to buy it.

Another alternative is to make constructive criticism with specific proposals about how the game could be improved.

Reviews are NOT for devs, which also assumes they actually bother to read them and take all of them into account when fixing the game. Something Rebellion for the most part did not.

They're for other players and costumers. When buying pizza from a pizzeria and it's atrociously bad. You don't go online and tell them how to make a better pizza, you tell other people how bad the pizza from that place is so they can stay clear.

If they fix their issues, great. But it's not the responsibility of the costumers to shield them from the negative repercussions of them selling bad pizza in the first place, or act like unpaid employees.

[Lula O Honesto]

1.0 version was broken. They fixed the game but the reviews are now low

[SpellSword0]

There are multiple sets of issues people have with the game that contribute to its low score.

At launch, the game was a mess. This has contributed to the bulk of negative reviews. Think No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk's initial launch versus where it is now or will be in the future. Even though the games have or may yet improve, the reputation of their first impressions and botched launches will always haunt them. It's no different for EG2.

Looking past the poor launch, softlocks riddled the game for the longest time. Only in recent weeks have they made significant progress in fixing many of them. While the majority of them are solved now, it took a considerable amount of time to do, and in that time the review score of the game was understandably impacted by it.

Simple DLC's such as adding new items and henchmen were incompatible with existing saves. This was a HUGE blunder at the start! It didn't help that many players felt burned by the pacing of DLC releases while the game was still in a broken state, and then are told they need to start their entire game over in order to use the DLC they bought. This HAS been fixed, yes, very recently. But it was a very big contributing hit towards the general perspective of the game.

A majority of achievements have been terribly broken or clearly untested. While achievements aren't the most significant aspect of any game, a lot of people still really like their achievements. And when those achievements don't work, or have extremely confusing and obscure conditions not mentioned in the achievement description, it can piss some people off. Great strides have been made in solving this but I still feel it is a long ways away from no longer being a problem. I'd count it as another strong point against the game when people choose to review it.

A lot of basic features you'd expect in this genre of game are simply not present. Such as mass selection and deleting of objects. Actions that don't take five menus to accomplish, like deleting an object...... Hotkeys to save and jump between different camera positions on the map. The ability to mass toggle things that the game even ASK US TO DO as an objective, yet demands we do it individually object by object! What stings even more about this is that the first game, 17 years older, had all of these features! This is really one of my biggest pet peeves, and a major contributor to a negative review score for me.

Something that continues to be a huge problem in the game to this day, is the games lack of information concerning any of its systems or mechanics. While I wouldn't attribute this to every problem, a lot of peoples problems stem from them simply not understanding how the game works. And the game makes little to no effort to show its players how it works. What kind of stats does a specific trap drain on an agent? Doesn't say. How much of a stat does a trap take? Doesn't say. What's the likely hood of an agent disabling one tier of trap over another? Doesn't say. What is the function of workers working on a communications array? Doesn't say, but there is none apparently. What does it mean for the player when a minion goes down to 0 smarts?! DOESN'T SAY! What exactly does heat do? Doesn't say! What does the threat level of the F.o.J on the threat tracker actually mean? Doesn't say... But you know what it does say? Something is either wrong with the minions or the training room, boss! x10000

Sure, there will always be veteran players on the forum helping out new players understand some of the games mechanics when asked, but this isn't a proper alternative to the game giving you any sort of useful information. Very minimal effort has been made to correct this so far, with promises of more effort to come.

Recently, someone posted that they had encountered a bug with their camera system shutting down completely when symmetry attacked their base. It's not a bug, but I don't blame the player for thinking it was given how little the game tells you about what's going on. I've seen people restart whole games over non bugs like this... So whether legit or not, they will reflect these "bugs" and frustrations in their review of the game.

The side story availability structure is atrocious. Side stories having all of these very specific conditions based on henchmen acquired (or not acquired), specific minion counts, progress made in the campaign or timed cut off points. None of this is made clear or mentioned by the game, so you have a lot of people confused as to why a side story appears or doesn't appear. This ties back into the achievements, two of which require you to get every loot item and recruit every henchman. Near impossible if you don't know the asinine conditions of every side story, which the game will not tell you. People get understandably pissed about this when they invest 60+ hours into a campaign trying to get achievements, while having unknowingly locked themselves out of it 5 hours in. That's not going to go over well for the games reputation.


All that alone is rationale enough to understand why reviews of the game may be so poor, and I haven't even touched the actual game design and gameplay yet.

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In MY Opinion

The game design is as poorly thought out as all the above issues, which didn't need to be issues with proper Q&A, time, and some forethought. Though this is a highly contentious topic. If you still find the game fun and enjoy it, great! I enjoyed my time in the game too! ...Post 1.3 patch anyway.

But peoples complaints about how the game plays stems from two main issues: The games refusal to provide information on how it works, leading to many misunderstandings and misconceptions about the game. And people who have spent way too much time trying to demystify the game, and finding the core foundations of the gameplay loop lacking...

Concerning details and constructive criticism, there have been many threads discussing gameplay to death and how to change it. But as the patches rolled out to mixed reception, people grew tired of talking about it and have moved on. And the reality is the core gameplay is unlikely to ever change, so any discussions about full on revamps are a bit pointless. The game is what it is, take it or leave it.

Of course there are small things that can be changed to try to improve the current game without overhauling its foundations, which we can still openly talk about (and sometimes do). And the devs have already done this a handful of times to generally positive reception I'd say. But giving proper feedback and criticism about gameplay changes is rather difficult when the game strives to keep the functions of its mechanics hidden!!!

So I personally refrain from talking about gameplay changes these days, until we can know more about how the current game actually functions. The number one priority in my opinion right now is information. The game needs more of it, the devs need to be more transparent about it. If we can have a full rundown on exactly how things work in the game, then we can provide better feedback on what works and what doesn't, and how we would like to see it changed.

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In conclusion, ignorance is bliss!

If you don't see any of the games issues, even at launch, and you are just loving your time with it? Great! It doesn't mean those issues don't exist though, only that you happen to be blissfully unaware and unaffected by them. And there is nothing wrong with that! In fact I'd wager more people around here would LIKE to be blissfully unaware of all the games problems and just enjoy it...

Sure, I will concede that not every complaint thread and not every negative review gives very good or structured detail on the games issues. I feel that's just a symptom of not everyone having the experience or care to be a decent Q&A person. It's not always because they don't want to though, a majority of people simply don't know how to put their frustrations into better detail. They only feel frustrated and want to vent that frustration.

And I think that's fine. We can't expect every player of every game to be really articulate and thorough about a games ups and downs. But that shouldn't invalidate their frustrations or make it seem as nothing is wrong, or that the review score is unfair simply because people aren't being detailed. It only means that you have to look a little harder to find the people who are articulately detailed about their issues, and then see if you can compare that generally to the emotionally charged and vague thoughts of everyone else.

Or at least, apply one persons list of detailed gripes with everyones curse riddled tirades. While it might not apply to every single person, there is a good chance it applies to a lot of them and can explain the issues that they themselves couldn't quite put into words.

[mecklenberg]

If you don't see any of the games issues...

Haha! I saw a few! Another pet peeve is the way missions are summarised in the charts tab. At the moment missions are shown by type only. It would be much more helpful to show missions by result, i.e. money-raising missions versus heat-reducing missions (or better still, both).

However, by far the most significant issue I saw (in over 60 hours of gameplay) in terms of progress, pacing, and immersion was the gold-related problem I highlighted. Spending gold to buy storage for more gold, and then spending even more gold to build generators to pay the power cost of storing the gold is simply a chore. It puts people off before they even get to the stage of exploring the more interesting and absorbing aspects of the game.

[Twelvefield]

I simply think it's next to impossible to make a satisfying sequel out of a game that's over 15 years old, unless you do it through iteration. For example, Out Of The Park Baseball is around the same age as EG, and it's one of the best if not the best games ever made, period. However, OOTP had sequels that were produced every year, so there's developer continuity.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has been around for almost as long as PC's. While MSFS has some parts that are brilliant, there are other parts that have critical errors: ACES was fired in the early 2000's and was only replaced recently by Asobo. Asobo has a great deal of expertise in creating convincing aerial scenery, but not so much practice in creating aviation simulation. Had Microsoft continued to produce sequels at the rate they were doing before ACES was fired, MSFS2020 would be a much different game today.

Same goes for EG1 & EG2: the new devs had to re-invent the wheel to bring the game up to the 2020's and their mistakes show. They seem to have learned a lot, though, and I hope for a great EG3!

[Sentient Entropy]

Originally posted by mecklenberg:

I did a review some time ago which was broadly favourable of the game at launch (tho' with reservations).

The review score of EG2 is currently under 60% which is grossly unfair, particularly after a number of patches.

I think what's grossly unfair is that a game with a tutorial longer than two hours can only be returned for a refund inside the same two hour span as any other game. Lord knows I would have gotten my money back for this if I could. You say they've fixed the game with the patches? I think the patches show they don't know how to fix the game. The world map alone needs completely overhauled, not to have some numbers tweaked. And the problems with this game don't end there, not by any measure.

[Quinox]

Fundamentally, the problem with looking at where a thing is after changes is that it's by and large irrelevant to customers who already bought the product. Even though you can, normally, replay a game you've bought at any point in the future; the time you spend with a game is typically limited for a lot of customers and replaying mostly old content even with important changes is almost never the same as a fresh experience.

Entertainment that has fallen flat is much like getting poor service at a restaurant or fast food joint. It's harder to come back to the same thing, even with an improved product or service. It's not on the customer to put aside their past experiences to tell people what a business is like now, instead of what they got the last time. If you order food and it's bad, then you're not obligated to keep going back and review the food until it is. At least I think it's pretty reasonable to not have that expectation.

To put it another way, you reap what you sow, and if the customer leaves a review that's based on their personal experience with a product, and not for something unrelated to the product, then this is just the natural outcome to having an open record of reviews. Reviews with political or social manipulation unrelated to the product would be a misfortunate, sad state of affairs, but I don't see these reviews as being that case. Nor do I see this as a case of people complaining that their Italian food had too much pasta in it.

Bad experiences create bad reviews, and an aggregation of bad personal experiences leads to a largely bad overall review. Shigeru Miyamoto's quote, "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever," exists because a customer's experience is what it is, and can't simply be changed retroactively.

[Devil Dog]

I don't have this game, probably won't considering all the issues I keep reading about that are likely never going to be fixed. Almost 4 months later it still at a Mixed review status says a lot. I got v1 on GOG about a year ago, was really fun even with the dated graphics, but most stuff just worked. Even had camera presets and building mechanics that looked satisfying, not some goofy ray guns magically demolishing or building stuff.

I remember when this game was about 2 months from release, a dev hosted some game play videos - the guy looked about 25, didn't seem all that interested in explaining any game mechanics, even ignored chat questions about how things worked. He talked a lot about how the game looked, colors, animations. I kept thinking, they're making a game for kids, not a successor to the original, which means it's probably gonna suck. Kinda like Orcs Must Die devs with two awesome pc versions but went the mobile way, almost put them out of business if not for a Google save with a goofy Stadia exclusive.

Overall kinda sucks this game should have been really cool by just taking all the good from the original with some polish. Sure 99% of the original title buyers would have helped sales take off with much better reviews. What a waste.

[Glory]

It definitely deserves its mixed status.

Less content than EG1, nickel and dime DLC, frankly insultingly easy and shallow gameplay loop, there's just nothing to EG2 that really stands out.

It treats the player like a small child, while paradoxically obscuring gameplay mechanics like super agent abilities or minion traits.

The writing, automated gameplay, and dumbed down systems makes it feel like its afraid to give the player complexity or an actual challenge that doesn't involve waiting on timers.

[Mouse Lover]

Traps are still trash in this game. Even if you made a long corridor of traps they cannot kill a single soldier / agent (traps are easy to be disarmed by agents / soldiers).
[ No, I did not play wrong, I even tried META builds and they still did trash damage. My muscle minions always end up cleaning the mess. So why the duck should I bother with traps. ]

Not to mention the durability is horrible for traps, your engineers will spend a lot of time trying to fix them with no time to rest (Specially if you made a long maze of traps), making them rage quit.

Now main reason I left a bad review was for the damn AI voice on how annoying she is.
[ Vault full, vault not full, etc. I hear the latest patch fix the notifications of the AI, but I am not risking coming back for another ear bleeding session. ]

Once I hear that traps got a massive buff and increased their durability, I might be willing to give this game another try. But until then, I will just keep reading patches.

[Daltaine]

I don't understand this post. If the first two thirds of a movie were bad, then I'd give it a bad review. I don't see how anyone can see two thirds of something being bad and one third being good as a positive thing.

[Schadenfreude]

Originally posted by Bloodletting Finale:

Traps are still trash in this game. Even if you made a long corridor of traps they cannot kill a single soldier / agent (traps are easy to be disarmed by agents / soldiers).
[ No, I did not play wrong, I even tried META builds and they still did trash damage. My muscle minions always end up cleaning the mess. So why the duck should I bother with traps. ]

Not to mention the durability is horrible for traps, your engineers will spend a lot of time trying to fix them with no time to rest (Specially if you made a long maze of traps), making them rage quit.

Now main reason I left a bad review was for the damn AI voice on how annoying she is.
[ Vault full, vault not full, etc. I hear the latest patch fix the notifications of the AI, but I am not risking coming back for another ear bleeding session. ]

Once I hear that traps got a massive buff and increased their durability, I might be willing to give this game another try. But until then, I will just keep reading patches.

What traps are you actually using? Using better builds helps a tad, but in reality (at least for me) its what traps you use.
It took me a bit but I figured out that the trap tiers mean something other than when you can unlock them. traps such as the giant fan and the magnet become kind of easy for agents to hack into at the late game unless you put them perfectly with other fans/ magnets supporting it (and even then they may turn off everything a fair amount of the time) though high tier traps such as the Laser Disco are harder to disable. The hardest in my experience are the Puppy of Death, and the Venus Spy Trap. They are expensive on both construction and power (especially on hard) but are rarely turned off even by the super agents.

I just have 4 halls in the setup that the 2nd and 3rd hall are connected so they can be looped around infinitely by a henchmen. If they only go through 3 of the 4 halls, they go through about 10 Venus spy traps with Puppies of death as filler, since even the highest tier agents have max 250 HP and spy traps do 125, they die in two hits. Unless my power is off I have never had anyone survive. If you don't have quantum chemists yet, then laser discos are the 2nd best bet, they wont kill them, but they will severally weaken all of them. (Added bonus of dancing, which leaves them vulnerable to attack)


And yes, I.R.I.S should be able to be muted, or set what she can alert you of, hearing "Your vaults are full" and "Your vaults are almost full" all the time is annoying. Goes along with "A minion is deserting" 5 times, or "A minion has caught fire!" 15 times during the Red Ivan campaign.