Recent reviews by Illusion

Only recommended if:
* It's not full price
* You love civ games but want to try something new
* You believe that you can tolerate this game's many shortcomings...

This game is rough around the edges, there's no denying it. I bought this six months after its notorious launch after watching gameplay footage. The UI is awful, the AI is mediocre and the overall experience is unfinished. Despite that, the 12 hours I've played so far have all been good fun. The core gameplay is unlike any other title in this series and I am definitely going to keep a close eye on its development over the next year (keep in mind that Civ V and VI both had shaky starts, and are now both incredibly successful, staple 4X titles). The age progression sets the game apart from the previous titles, and I can definitely get into it. I know this puts a lot of people off, and if you are one of them, don't buy this game yet.

Things that need fixing/adding:
* UI overhaul. To me, the UI is of a quality that I would have expected a decade ago. It's bland, uninformative and a pain to navigate.
* AI improvements. The AI is... interesting. In a war, they seem to launch units at you at a ridiculous pace (considering their stats at the time), but will be more than happy to give you one of their two remaining cities to stop a war that they are probably winning by some accounts. It's a give-and-take of random nonsense that does balance out to be fun if you accept that it's not up to civ VI's standard yet.
* More tooltips and a complete civilopedia. There are too many things to search for that have no entries yet.
* Eventually, as an expansion, a fourth age. This game looks like it was designed with a fourth in mind in the initial planning stages, as ending the game at rocketry means that you can't build an empire into the 21st century. I want my futuristic techs!

Overall, this game barely gets my recommendation simply because it can only realistically improve from here (and is with updates), and that I've enjoyed playing it. If you get this, keep an open mind!

9/10: VR would be a lot more popular if more games were of this quality, and this is already a few years old! The mechanics are enjoyable and well thought through, the environment is deeply immersive and the difficulty is fair.

The story took me 12 hours on normal difficulty, which is slightly shorter than ideal, but I'm already planning to play it through again on hard to get all the achievements I missed the first time around. I did have a couple of minor, infrequent gripes with the game:
* There were one or two places where you can get pretty easily stuck, where your head is lodged in the wall and there's no escape, meaning you'll have to reload. This is barely an issue though as it autosaves very frequently.
* The miniboss Jeff in chapter 7 can hit you through walls and from below when you're out of reach. Again, barely a problem, but hilariously terrifying. Maybe this is actually a bonus?
* The final chapter: I feel as though this could have been done better. The first half with the warped buildings is cool, but pointless without combat really. The second half was some of the most fun (with the green lightning attacks), but was very short. If we had more time to play around with that, I think the ending would have been perfect.

This game has turned my free time into dying in the snowy pits over and over again

Great game - I like how you are probably more likely to download mods to make this game easier instead of harder (it gives me the incentive to get good enough to beat it vanilla!)

A fun little time-waster, which allows for interesting synergy-based gameplay. Sometimes frustrating, but most of the best games are!

If you like creative, base building games, I would be surprised if this one doesn't do it for you. All of my review is from a singleplayer perspective.

This game offers a play style that's best described as halfway between survival and sandbox. You have to do things yourself, but the consequences of death are minimal, and any deconstruction will give you everything back that you put in to it. This leads to a game unlike any I've played before, and it really scratches an itch that I didn't know I had.

The base building mechanics are very satisfying to mess around with and you are provided with targets and goals, yet you are free to go at your own pace and play the way you want to in this open world. I've found one or two very minor bugs (e.g. needing to replace conveyor belts to make it run as intended), but these don't detract from the experience.

Overall, it feels like it deserves to be out of early access, and the price tag is fair. I can see myself wasting countless hours on this, and that's before I even consider trying multiplayer!

It feels too far from a finished product, both in terms of optimisation and polish, for something that's meant to get to full release by the end of this year. It has potential, but I can't recommend it.

I like the exploring, gathering and crafting backbone to game play that Pacific Drive is centred around. The setting is very intriguing and I am actively looking forward to delving deeper into the zone - learning more about what's going on and why, and seeing if there's any real conclusion. I can recommend this game, but I would perhaps suggest watching a video of the game first to see if it's something you would be interested in trying.

This game is still a great example of the golden age of this franchise almost eleven years on, and I would highly recommend it, particularly if you have friends to play with. The campaign is fairly iconic, if somewhat confusing and ends very abruptly and far too soon, but I would imagine most people would get the most time out of this game on multiplayer, which still stands tall today with enough players to make it worthwhile picking this title up on a sale.

After thinking it over for a while, I think this is the best battlefield, just beating the previous title. BF1's war stories have brilliant narratives and really do feel true to the first world war theme. The graphical detail must have been pretty cutting edge for its time, and still looks fantastic to this day. Multiplayer keeps up enough with this to also feel somewhat immersive, while retaining sufficient balance. It's just a shame the chat is filled with racists quite often, but hey, at least it gives you some morons to antagonise!

Not the best of the franchise, and has a noticeable number of bugs throughout, but it's still a fun game to play and the war stories are enjoyable and engrossing (not to the same degree as BF1, but makes for a slightly different change of pace). The multiplayer appears well balanced and I've had a good time playing it, both when winning and losing. I would recommend this game on a moderate sale.