While the series is as finicky as ever, Emergency 20 does present a good jumping on point for people who are ok with janky games with a theme they like. The remastering of several classic missions is also a nice touch, as is functioning fullscreen windowed mode for those of us who use multi-monitor setups.

That said, this is a wavering thumbs up, Emergency has always been a very janky series, and is not for everyone, especially people who can't look past bugs. So it's a yes, but like.. a 7/10 style yes.

I must say was surprised, sadly not in a good way. I have been a big fan of the early emergency titles <= EM 4, and when i came across this "new" Emergency which finally had some positive reviews, i couldn't wait to try it.
I really don't understand how it got there....

Let's start with the "new", basically you are paying 30$ for a game bundle of games and a tiny bit of a new developed anniversary edition. But even that is just a poorly made remaster of some missions from older games.

The handling of units is just as bulky and unintuitive as it have been since EM4. And the "do stuff automagically" function is the worst of all. During the avalanche mission I lost one of my doctors, he didn't die or anything, I plainly just couldn't find him any more.
During the same mission, i send an engineer to shut down the high voltage power pole...I wonder what went through his head... "Hurr durr... I studied 6 years of engineering I can F*** walk over a sparking power line.... I AM POWER... I AM brrzrzrzrzr **** DEAD*** "
But the thing that made me throw that piece of garbage away was when I ordered firemen to cool down buildings in the port fire mission. So they were happily cooling the buildings UNTIL they caught fire. And what do you do when a building catches fire that you are already hosing with water??? EXACTLY you stop doing this, because it requires a "different action" now.

Seriously guys...has you developer taking care of scripts and logic left 10 years ago and you never filled that position again?

Seriously disappointed....Please try and release a new game when you have learned how to code proper path finding.

ma ya

I feel this is the wet dream of any micro-manager. Instead of allowing you to assign units a sequence of actions, you need to tell them every little thing, one at a time. Once completed, they will stand there forever, waiting for you to scroll across the map and assign a follow-up action. I had hopes I would be in charge of large scale coordination, like a proper crisis coordinator, but instead I sit here telling firemen to also extinguish the next tree on fire.

Just played the first two out of 10 mission from 20 years emergency (Street Race and Arsonist). Works very well. Graphics are like emergency 2017. Must have if you like the Emergency series!
EM5, EM2016, EM17 and multiplayer all in one!

- - -[ Audience: ] - - -

☑ Kids
☑ Everyone
☐ Casual players
☐ Pro players

- - - [ Graphics/Animation: ] - - -

☐ Potato
☐ Really bad
☐ Bad
☐ OK
☑ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Masterpiece

- - - [ Price/quality: ] - - -

☐ Free
☐ Full price
☐ Wait for sale
☑ Average
☐ Refund it if you can
☐ Don't do it

- - - [ Requirments: ] - - -

☐ 90's PC
☐ Minimum
☑ Medium
☐ Fast
☐ High end
☐ NASA computer

- - - [ Difficulty: ] - - -

☑ You just need 2 arms
☐ Ez
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Hard
☐ Dark Souls

- - - [ Game time/length ] - - -

☐ Really short ( 0 - 2 hours)
☐ Short ( 2 - 8 hours)
☐ Few hours ( 8 - 12 hours) ((story mode)
☐ Long ( 12+ hours)
☑ Endless ((endless mode))

- - - [ Story] - - -

☐ It doesn't have
☐ Still better than Twilight?
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Fantastic

- - - [ Bugs ] - - -

☐ Game itself is one big BUG
☐ Bugs destroying the game
☐ Lot of bugs
☐ Few Bugs
☐ You can use them for speedrun
☑ Nothing (I've seen)

First off what EM20 gives you:
Emergency 5 + All DLC
EM20 Campaign (A Remaster of the most popular missions from each Emergency game with developer interviews)
Access to the mod manager in their launcher

Is it worth it?
Well that depends.

Are you buying this game because you want to play an emergency game or are you buying this because you bought emergency 4 for the mods and now you want to check out Emergency 5?
As you will get a different reaction depending on the reason,

If you're buying this game because you enjoy the strategic elements of the RTS Genre and the previous emergency games then yeah this is totally worth it as it gives you the same gameplay although much more simplified from its predecessors (there is a lot more automation from the previous games however this can be turned off in settings)

So if you're buying the game to play emergency and not for the mods then the review ends for you here.

However if you're buying this purely to play the mods then you're in for a disappointment.
As of this review the modding scene for this game has not taken off and it really does not look like it will. At least not on the scale emergency 4 had as I will explain below.

Currently there are only 5 notable mods that actually change the gameplay and don't just tweak the files of the base game and those are:
Biberfelde Next Generations (A German mod)
Wuppertal (Very similar to Biberfelde)
Ludenscheid - Quite possibly the best mod out of them all, another German mod with revised gameplay and a custom dispatch system
Beaverfield - An American version of Biberfelde with quite a bit of bugs.

There is also Biberfelde airport which is in development so no rating on that.

Why didn't the modding scene take off?

Despite the massive set of modding tools the game provides the fundamental engine cannot support mods on the scale of what Emergency 4 had and as such making em4 sized mods is just impossible without encountering fundamental engine issues so many mod developers from em4 just didn't bother with trying to create em5 mods leading to only a few hardline modders to remain.
Another aspect is the community. Many modders in the community are hostile towards new modders viewing them as competition rather than helping them or encouraging them (this is more prevalent in the German side of the community) as such people are discouraged from making new mods.
If you're looking to buy an Emergency game with better graphics but still want to keep the mods I recommend just using graphic enhancers like reshade on Emergency 4 over buying emergency 5.

Do I recommend it? Yeah it's not a bad game.
Should you buy it? Depends why you're buying it.

At the beggining let me say that i'm big Emergency fan. I have played literally every single game from this series.

Emergency 5 - old concept + 4 maps, very good game, minor bugs which you can live with.

Emergency 16 - kind of dissapointment, I expected more of big events, not just a storyline with only smaller accidents... Definitely too short :(

Emergency 17 - same as EM16 - short but playable

Emergency 20 - Perfect idea, pure pleasure to play and see remastered versions of events :)

Why wouldn't I recommend it?
If it were on sale i would have been happy, if it was sold as DLC to Em5 i would have been happy, but in this case calling EM 16 and 17 a full game is a bit of misunderstanding, maps are the same as in Em5 (in this wersion), events exept story line are the same. It lacks "that thing" which all previous games had...

Game content includes Emergency 5 which sets the basis of the game series for new comers, Emergency 2016 with a twist on the potential of a epidemic outbreak and Emergency 2017 dealing with the subject of terror and how it reflects in socierty. (Note: although there are anti-islamic placards displayed by protestors during their event/missions).

Emergency 20 itself is a remastering of Emergency 1, 2, 3 and 4 (also known as 9:11 First Responders) more note worthy mission; and people who have played those previous games will note that the game characterists are also remastered with Doctors riding with Ambulances. ...And pausing the game will freeze the UI too, so you can't order units about with time frozen.

you can tell its not a British game because it has respectable ambulance response times