Recent reviews by lockdown51

This game truly feels like 3 games in 1 and it does none of them particularly well. Not aggressively poorly enough to be off putting but you really feel how thinly spread the dev(s?) are on this.

The global map has a neat strategic layer to it. There is production, supply chains, having to feed your populous, raising armies, the works. Think HOI IV but the palest imitation of it. Setting up your troops is a nightmare due to the lack of QoL things that should be quite standard in 2026. Imagine customizing a unit in HOI only you get to pick from every possible upgrade in existence. Even things you A: don't own or B: haven't researched yet. Add to it that the logistics network in the game is barely existent and even on Easy difficulty which handwaves a lot of the logistics, you still have to move guns produced in city A to City B because that is where you are mustering the army. Also the army builds at 1 man per day and armies are capped at 300 people. So almost a year per army to be built. Equipping your squads is a nightmare to say the least.

The next game it is trying to be is a tactical RTS. Which it can do. But again, not as well as say, Company of Heroes (COH). Units are slow. There are no formations. Your units are all strung out in a loose line and they just sort of find cover where they can (which is cool). IFV and Armor are king. The side with more vehicles usually wins.

Finally, this game is trying to be a FPS. I've seen people compare this to Mount and Blade but I don't think that is the correct comparison. MB lets you have a character, inventory, companions, basic settlement management. Total Conflict: Resistance has basic settlement management. You can play as any person in your army for that battle, so that is nice.

On the whole, each part is pretty okay. Not great. Not so bad you instantly turn away from it. The FPS is fun. The tactical level has some jank but also can be fun. The strategic map serves its purpose. Each layer independently could be its own, shallow game. By their powers combined, they form a sandwich of game that rivals that bread and bean sandwich that Micky Mouse made in that really old Disney Jack and the Bean Stalk retelling. You know, the sandwich that drove Donald insane and made him try to murder the cow.

But yeah, 3 okay is games combining to make somehow, a worse overall product.

The game crashes after every ducking mission. So I hope you like replaying the missions.
The devs say it has been fixed.

With that fix, I would say the game is worth the price and you get a solid 10 hours out of it if you only do the campaign. The campaign is fun, and has a Homeworld feel to it. Well, the whole game does but still does enough to stand apart and not be a straight rip off. The action is what you expect and the campaign doesn't rush you, which I always like in a campaign.

If you played Warship Gunners on the PS or Warship Gunners 2 on the PS2, then your long search is finally over.

This game is a spiritual successor and is faithful to that spirit. It is a fun arcade-like game with enough realism to keep things ground, but with the whimsical nature that makes it fun. It is not as fleshed out or deep as its ancient spiritual liege, but for what it is, it is well worth the money and hits all the right notes.

Pure nostalgic joy.
The grind is not bad at all. You may only have to do missions 2-3 times to gather all the loot from them. Most missions are in the 5 minute range on average. There is only 1 "survive" style mission that is 10 minutes.
The ship editor is pretty good for what is there. Very functional. Just wish you could right click to deselect the thing you currently have in your "hand" as it were.
Story wise, it is well balanced and a lot of fun. All the characters are pretty great. Each players their role well and we have a very varied cast.

My only complaint is that the wheel-chair bound character is a career Navy man. In no universe would any navy allow someone who is in need of a wheel-chair be on a ship. Ships are not handicap friendly and will never be due to their very nature. Having the intelligence character as the wheel-chair bound person would have made a lot more sense.

Gameplay wise, my only other complaint is the fact that this game is clearly a shoot short of game. Having 2 race courses that you have to complete in ships you can't even customize sucks huge balls as that is a large departure from what the game is. These optional bonus missions are cool and all, but really have no place in this game. If you want wacky racing, go play Hot Wheels Turbo Racing.

Pathfinder is a great game hailing back to the true classics like Baulder's Gate. The kingdom management aspect is something generally now seen and pretty well done. Overall the story is fun and it has lots of neat ideas. Generally speaking, I do recommend the game were it not for some of the dumbest and laziest writing faux pas in history. As in all recorded history. I'm even counting "My Immortal" as less of a sin against the written word than this. And no, this isn't about Valerie. See below.

However, it is not without its deep faults. Firstly, it is a loading screen simulator. I hope you have a book you can read because you will finish a few books while waiting for things to load. It's not that the load times are horrifically long, it is there are so many of them. Things are particularly bad in your capital where you must load into the throne room, load into the main market square, then load to get to the overworld map. Anytime you go anywhere, loading.

The general speed of the game is slow. Like glacial slow. Walking takes forever. As in the same example as above, it takes a good 30 seconds to exit your throne room due to having to walk, and another 30 to exit the market square. Why there isn't an option to go directly to the overmap I don't know. Why the throne room is that huge and still devoid of anything important is likewise unknown. The Devs clearly thought it was a good idea to be able to go from overworld directly to the throne room, but not the reverse.

The advisor system and the card game you play with the kingdom management is pretty good. However, the durations of things is way, way too long. All timers should be cut in half, at least. Especially given that you get buried under events pretty quickly. You simply aren't given the tools to handle it.

Additionally, they have to have set times when people can accost/ petition you. You are the ruler, they wait for you, not the other way around. I can't count the number of events I have missed because I was out surveying my lands. The worst part is you don't know you are missing the events until after the fact because you were out of town.

However, it is clear the Devs don't know this little fact that rulers in the past and even today, have set dates for people to directly talk to them. It is very clear the Devs did next to no research on nobility because of the giant faux pas they wrote into the game.

First off, if someone gives you a barony, you aren't independent. Someone giving you land, and a baron title means you are the lowest level of nobility which means you owe fealty to whoever gave you the title and land. Ergo, the PC isn't independent. Not even a little. The Swordlords really have no idea how badly they screwed themselves by helping set up baronies techically loyal to their enemies.

Ignoring that, which we have to since the entire game is built on the idea you are an independent nation-state, not a vassal which you should totally be, there is an even larger error that shows Dev laziness and weak google fu. Upon becoming baron everyone addresses you are "Your Grace". This is wrong on so many levels it hurts me due to the ignorance of the writers and the their sheer level of incompetence that could have been avoided with 30 seconds of googling.

BARONS ARE ADDRESSED AS MY LORD or YOUR LORDSHIP! DUKES ARE ADDRESSED AS YOUR GRACE!

Clearly the Dev/writer didn't care enough to do any research into this. Which is frankly disheartening given that we have the internet, which is only the entirely of human knowledge and freely available literally at our finger tips.

Now, it would make sense to address the PC as "your grace" if we were an actual independent country and styled ourselves as a duchy instead of a barony. There were plenty of independent duchies back in the day, can't think of any independent baronies though.

So there you have it, a pretty fun game that is a loading simulator that needs some more polish. Check it out in a few months, most of the bugs will be fixed then. However, I guarentee they will never fix their writing mistake and thus their ignorance shall stand for all time for the world to see.

Too unoptimized to recommend. While the game is lovely with vibrant characters and a great setting, the game itself is clunky. It chugs and stutters and freezes at such regular intervals that you can tell time by them. These pauses completely ruin your enjoyment of the game because of how often they happen. Cut scene? have about 2-3 stutters for 10 seconds of show. Going overland to explore? You moved 10 feet, now jump cut for 10 more feet. In combat? You swung 2 times, now time to lag out while the enemy still gets free hits on you.

The sad thing is they are up to patch 1.4.3 which is the version I bought it thinking that after almost 3 months they would have some of the more glaring issues sorted out. As has become custom with companies, they let the bug fixing and technical support fall to their community to fix, which is very disheartening. Mods shouldn't fix basic game issues, mods should to add to a game instead.

If the game ever becomes stable enough to play for more than 10 seconds, I would recommend it. But seeing as I've played smoother Alphas, I'd say that Warhorse Studios is treating this release as a live Beta test instead of an actual ready for release game. The shower of game breaking quest bugs from early in the game's "release" is proof of this.

Before those fanboys say "new game, expect bugs" that is true to a point, but the number of reported game breaking bugs that made it to "release" shows that this game isn't release ready.

TL:DR game is laggy and unoptimized as all get out. Wait for about 4 more major patches or so. Otherwise really fun if you have the zen like focus of a monk who can stand constant predictable stuttering, lagging, frame jumping.

I will say that this is a nice cutesy game that fuses Harvest Moon with Minecraft. That said, both have done the farming better, and the building better. It truly feels like an early alpha rather than full release. There isn't a lot going on and the world seems very lacking. Many objects lack purpose other than to be eye candy. Comparing this game to Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley is a bit mean. Both of those were full rich games on launch. This is a nice looking skeleton. Add it to your wishlist and wait a year or two. It might have some meat by then.

This is seriously a gem of a 2D capital ship space game. It has a very Freelancer feel to it with a story line that reminds you very much of Firefly. The sound track definately adds to the feeling.

Pros:

+Freedom. You can go almost anywhere and do anything. Want to be a trader? Go do that. Want to be a pirate. Go do that. Want to be Batman? I guess you could do that if Bruce Wayne built his own capital class space ship. He built a space station, twice, so why not? It's your imagination after all.

+Capital Ship Combat. Ever want to command a multi-ton vessel as is slides up to another massive craft and unleashes a devestating broadside? In space? With highly volitile plasma?! This is the game for you. Combat is 2D for you because you are in command of a capital class ship. Fighters and gunboats will still wander in all 3 directions but you don't care. You're in a gorram capital ship! You aren't here to dog fight. Barrel rolls are for poor people how can't afford proper ships.

+No Carriers. Sure there are some fighters and gunboats in the game but this game is about a giant mountain of steel doing its best to obliterate another giant mountain of steel with hot balls of light in a beautiful salvo of broadside combat.

+The sound track and sound in general. The music really sets the mood. And I say this as a person that usually turns off the game sounds after an hour or so. Not with this game. The music really immerses you that extra little bit to make playing the game without it a crime.

+Characters. The Voice Acting is great and the modeling of people is also good. Might be a little limited in variety but the characters that are in the game are their own entities. You can see the tediousness in the traders eyes as you trade with them in deep space. You can hear distain the local militia forces have for you as you ask stupid questions.

+Character Creation. There isn't one. This game isn't about you, it's about giant ships. As such, the character creater is limited only by your imagination. You can't find a more powerful creator with that many options anywhere else on the market.

Cons:
-Camera issues. With how big your ship is, and it takes up a glorious portion of the screen, this is a both a good and bad thing. It adds to the sense of mass your ship has, but also makes it really hard to aim or even be aware of your surroundings.

-Some of the UI could use a little work. The trade interface in particular could use a little tweaking to help you out some.

-The smaller craft in the game (fighters and gunboats) seem overpowered at the moment. I understand they are suppose to be some threat to the PC, but right now they punch way above their weight class. They are THE threat to the PC, not other capital ships. And they out range capital ships, which is pretty crazy.

-No Superdreadnaught or Titan class ships. Personal gripe. I always want bigger ships. And more guns. And bigger guns. I just want a flying gun with more guns on it. Is that so bad?

Conslusion: Get this game if you enjoyed Freelancer but wanted to pilot something bigger than a single seat craft.

It's a bit meta as you are playing a game in which you make games but it is highly addicting. The game has improved a lot to have reliable feed back to help you with making the right choices in making games. If you like manager sims and don't mind taking a look at the wiki, this is a good game.

Its a good solid story with great action. Some things could have fleshed out the game a lot more but on the whole I'd give it a 7/10. Well worth getting if its on sale.