Recent reviews by Minamoto no Raikou

"I sentence you to a lifetime of lewd on Monstergirl Island! Don't worry, it's just a name."
*three sex scenes later*
"He said it was just a name!"
"What he meant is that Monstergirl Island is actually a Peninsula."

What I like about this game the most is the allegory.

You can read many other reviews praising or ciriticizing gameplay, I generally speaking think it's very solid. Rewarding aggressiveness in Multiplayer is frustrating, though thematically appropriate, and in single player more patient strategies can be employed. Lagging behind on HQ upgrades can be an advantage in some circumstances, and while I would appreciate more rebalancing to allow calculated and patient gameplay in multiplayer, I'm more than satisfied with the current form, and very impressed with the simulated Market.

But this game also tells an interesting story. The story of De Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie. In English: "The United East-India Company". The game's mechanics perfectly translate the concepts underlying the VOC's heyday to a future space travel setting, with trading monopolies, seemingly absentee governments that grow dependent and friendly to your business, and cities being bought and owned as corporate entities through Monopoly Charters.

When playing this game I encourage all players to consider their actions in that context, and imagine the relationship that you, the CEO, have with the locals, the other companies, the black markets and privateers, and the goldmine that is shipping these precious resources back home. Because I don't think I've seen a better demonstration or grasp of the financial and political dynamics of the 18th Century spice trade than here.

Europa Universalis 4 is an excercise in powerlessness.

Ironic, for a game that pits you as leader of a kingdom. Nonetheless your impact on the affairs of the nation and the world is immeasurably insignificant. For example, if you save up enough money, you can spend them all in exchange for a tiny fraction of an incremental monthy increase in your money that takes thirty in game years to break even. Choo choo, all aboard the money train, except no because France decided it wants your money and france takes whatever france wants and nobody stands up to france and lives. Oh well, there go those tiny fractions of a penny you earned, and also all your land.

It seems much like actual history you have two choices, to play as a historical empire that conquered half the world, or to be the half the world that got conquered by it. In either instance you have remarkably little agency over the fate of your nation. Even the great empires get railroaded into what they can do.

Part of the problem is that everything in this game is in tiny increments. You expend a lot of your power to pass a law that increases your Trade Power by 10%. This doesn't directly translate into income though, see your trade power grows by 10%, but because your "trade power" is a value that competes with other nations, so even if your trade power increases you may still only have a 30% share of the trade value. But hey, you still increased your Trade Value by 3%. Only now that has to go through your 20% Trade Efficiency modifier, and the result is your net income increase of fifty cents per month.

Some mechanics just downright don't make sense. Technological development costs Monarch Points, a score that you accumulate each month reflecting the abilities of your government. Wait, but why? Since when do bureaucrats invent Ships, Firearms, and Scientific Theories? Why do all of your nation's innovators and artistans colectively get the dumb when a monarch who isn't very talented in Administration is in power? It becomes even worse when the Economic Development of your cities is something you manually increase (because as we all know, economies never grow on their own) by spending monarch points. the same monarch points that increase your technology. Do you see the problem here? The result is that you have to choose between improving your economy or improving your technology. If you spend your efforts improving your economy, you actually end up falling behind the rest of the world in technology, and if you have advanced technology it's because you've probably neglected your economy, and so your kingdom has likely grown very little in productivity and wealth. This is by no means an accurate picture of society, in actuality a more robust and developed economy translates to more technological innovations because the infrastructure is in place to support experimenters, and without that kind of infrastructure new technologies may not actually prove useful. Yet in EU4, you have to choose one or the other! Your economy or your technology? And being so much as *one* tech behind in this game is devastating to warfare, so you better pick Technology. Sure, some techs do improve your economic output, and with the Institutions system investing in improving your domestic economy can prevent you from suffering maluses that increase the cost of new technologies, *but you still do so at the cost of the ability to simply research the technologies directly*. Was a simple system of having a research rate just too complicated? Surely not in the game that has ten different stats to determine the outcome of battles.

And the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game is like that. Everything in the game involves mustering large amounts of power to affect incredibly tiny changes that won't show any meaningful consequence for decades, and that's assuming you aren't targeted for war by a more powerful entity. There is only one thing you can do in this game and have any meaningful agency over, and it's wage war. Which is thoroughly depressing. A game about building a vast global empire is before you, and the only thing you can do that's actually of consequence is tell a stack of soldiers with a series of stat modifiers to attack another stack of soldiers with another series of stat modifiers, and wait for one of them to retreat or die off, then take your opponent's land in a peace deal. You can have very large, enormous land gains this way if you're smart with your army. But your army is your only meaningful tool with which to affect change in this game, anything you gain you gain either by force or by waiting 200 years for the Modifier Modifier Rate Accleration Bonus Modifier to increase your Score Points enough.

It is *profoundly* boring. Fans of war games will also be dissapointed, as you have very little control over your soldiers' actions on the battlefield. Personally I do not enjoy war strategy games, as I am no good at managing waves of troops, so normally I would be thankful for this as it would allow me to still effectively wage war in this game, were it not for the fact that warfare is the most exciting part of the game and the one you have the most control over. It's the only thing you can really do from your seat of imaginary power which makes it underwhelming that it amounts to basically measuring whose Modifiers are bigger than the other's Modifiers.

Some insist the game is more fun once you have more experience with it. When asked how much time it usually takes the answer is 200 hours.

That's enough time to pass a mathematics honors course at a university, which is a far more entertaining and productive use of your time. At least you control what moves your pencil makes on the paper when you're solving esoteric math problems, and you may even be able to use *different methods* to solve them, rather than having to adhere rigidly to a metagame that's so set in stone an AI could do it. The only reason the AI in this game isn't legendary for awfulness, and only known for a few hiccups, is that the AI never has an opportunity to screw things up. At no juncture in this game are you ever asked to genuinely think critically about making tradeoffs, as every action takes months to get underway, and events are usually choices between two negative modifiers and two positive modifiers, of which one is almost always universally the better option, the exception being where the modifiers are so small it makes no difference whatsoever which one you choose.

I've come all this way without mentioning the ways the game nickel-and-dimes you. DLC themed around different regions of the world is a great idea, and a great way to allow poeple who only are really concerned with one nation or region to save money on DLC. The problem is that the devs also decide to take features that apply to the entire game, not just the one region, features that are small compared to the rest of the DLC but very very useful to players no matter where they are in the world, and they randomly decide to mix them in with region themed DLCs. A good example is a feature that allows you to change culture of a province to one other than your dominant culture. It's very useful in case you're interested in deliberately westernizing your nation, or maybe with Byzantium gone you feel obligated to take up the mantle, and so you wish to culturally emulate the old byzantines and continue their legacy in spirit. It's a minor but great improvement for players across the map, but in order to get it you MUST spend $30 on a DLC pack for Russia and the Mongols. Even if you never intend to use the Russia and Mongolia features.

I, quite simply, hate this game. The only reason i haven't refunded it is because people I know regard this game as a social status symbol because people seem to conflate "ability to stare blankly at a screen watching invisible dice roll" with "intellect". Playing it is a chore, and one I do to avoid getting picked on by my peers for being a casual.

At the time of writing, Stellaris is the youngest of Paradox's grand strategy lineup, and that certainly shows. But what I commend it for is potential, creativity, and uniqueness. Stellaris takes full advantage of the galatic and futuristic setting to throw off the reigns of history that, in my opinion, have dragged back other games by this studio. It's a breath of fresh air in a cast of mostly militaristically focused games that equate history with war to see a game give peace a chance. Stellaris is truly flexible in that both militarists and pacifists will find a way to enjoy their adventures through the galaxy, destroying enemies under your imperial foot, or sharing the light of liberty with friends. Though many mechanics are still simple and in need of redesign and improvment. Combine this with a beautiful aesthetic and understandable UI, plus extroardinary soundtracks and creative modding communities, with many updates planned in the future, and Stellars is a truly cosmopolitan experience.

This game just plain does not work. It crashes after the second level and the only thing you can do to stop that is pray that you are one of the lucky souls to be endowed with a solution to the crash. The rest of us are stuck constantly trying to play and being told "Galgun2.exe has stopped working" every single time.

Do not buy this game. Not because it isn't fun, but because only God himself can decide if you will even be allowed to actually play it.

The best one of the franchise to date. Be the good guy or the bad guy. Play poker. Have sex. Shoot laser guns. What more do you want?

Rocket falling apart? Add stabilizers! Rocket not moving? Add thrust! Bored? Check out kerbalspaceport.com for awesome features like Lazors and Kethane.

Every goal you imagine will require a transport. Every transport will require a prototype. Every protorype will require tweaking and engineering. Every tweak or solution will require deep thought, and if you are serious enough, mathematics.

Remember, though. This game is not supposed to have an aim. You have to be willing to say "What could I do next?" instead of "What am I supposed to do now?"

Anyone who says this game is annoying or unfair needs to go outside and get familiar with life. This game is very much like a solo game of DnD. It is decided by the fates of chance, but investing in skills improves those chances. You can take all the time you need to think. You can still actually give orders and activate weapons while the game is paused. You do, however, need to be aware of this simple feedback loop: 1) Your ship is inadequate to fight an enemy and suffers heavy hull damage. You survive, barely. 2) You find a repair station and pay about $50 for a full repair. 3) This is $50 you can no longer invest in defenses against advanced ships or advacing your own weaponry. 4) Because of this, the cycle repeats until a) you die. b) you meet the Flagship and almost certainly die.

So, advice for newbies? Upgrade Shields+Engines. Then Weapons.

Best part was the fight with Freeze. You really have to invest in gadgetry and skill in order to take him. This is because, unlike the other bosses (i.e. clayface, beaten by just spamming freeze grenades at him), you cannot use the same tactic twice. Found a way to injure him? Make the most of it and start thinking of another one, mate. Fries is not an idiot.