Recent reviews by EnterElysium

I am incredibly disappointed with Evil Genius 2. It lacks all the flair, flavour, and fun of the first game. EG1 was the first strategy game I ever really got immersed in. I've put 35-40hrs in EG2 now for my channels so I think I can finally give a grounded opinion.

EG2 still has the basis of EG1 and the veneer. But it simplifies mechanics from EG1 in weird ways, draws on a lot of facebook/mobile gameplay loops, missions are bland and generic, campaign structure is drawn out and repetitive, writing and comedy is low effort and poor.

Flavour: EG1 was a set in that cold war spy veneer of nostalgia... EG2? It puts that all through the wash. What once was Western Europe, part of the SABRE faction with themed missions and agents... is now "HAMMER West" part of HAMMER the generic red folks.

EG2 factions are interchangeable. Here are the 5 different factions investigator models from EG1. See how they theme differently and to the tropes? Now all sense of flavour is gone as the only different is the colour attached.

The heart is gone.

Sidenote: minions and agents are now available in more than one gender and ethnicity. That's great and definitely to be lauded, but it doesn't help with this area in that the game seems to have forgotten what it is.

Flavour again, let's talk about Evil Geniuses. There's 4 of them this time, but they feel quite... bland. The EGs and the different Islands (base locations) are obviously something being lent on hard as a way to sell DLC packs and that raised a few warning flags for me.

There's 4 EGs and 3 Islands at launch - that's not a bad number. However aside from their own personal doomsday projects they all share the exact same lines in cutscenes with different voice actors and voice acting so far is lacklustre to mediocre. What's more it ends up making little sense for the character of the EGs! For instance Zalika, the super scientist asks her basic scientist minion what "research" means in a joke that falls completely flat, especially given her theme! It's obvious that most of the scripting was done with the default Max in mind, but why the other EGs deliver those same lines makes no sense. Furthermore it completely undermines any sense of characterisation and theme - something they plan to use to sell the season pass. They also act very strangely in cutscenes, delivering lines with a nonchalant voice while the character model seethes with barely constrained anger.

The only area where EGs get any love at all is their sanctum. Here each EG has a different model for their personal desk, conference table, and even the wallpaper/panels. These are beautiful. HOWEVER given that these inner sanctums are probably the only area of the game where it feels like someone went the extra mile I can't help but cynically note that it's very particularly a noticeable feature that can be presented when advertising the season pack EGs.

So EG2 has no heart. But what about it's brain? Unfortunately the core gameplay loops aren't much better. Here's some examples. The World Map, Desertion, Loot Missions.

The World Map is where you send minions to do nefarious schemes. It's how you interact with the outside world. In EG1 minions went, did missions, and (hopefully) came back (or at least some did) with your ill gotten gains. Now once you send minions they never come back. Which is an odd simplification to say the least. But now regions generator a passive money tick, in addition to being able to actively do schemes for money. HOWEVER they also passively gain heat, eventually causing tougher agents to come calling at your lair. I found that after I got into the midgame, I only occasionally activated a mission for money as the passive tick was plenty. However every few minutes I would need to go to the map, click the generic "reduce heat" mission of half the provinces, and leave.

Sidenote: Minions used to return from missions with briefcases of cash (nice trope) in EG1 and take them to your vault. When they needed to buy something for your lair they went to the vault, grabbed a briefcase and went to the helipad to exchange it. Not so in EG2! In EG2 money just "appears" in your vault as you gain it. As you spend it it just "disappears". No one ever interacts with your vault with the exception of rogues who comes to steal it... And in my experience just tend to teleport right in there when they appear on the map. This removes an entire gameplay section of designing and defending your vault. If you are never going to interact with it then you just put it somewhere you don't care and forget about it.

Ok, deserters. In EG1 if a minion got too low on morale they would try and desert. beat em up, stick em in a cell for a while to cool their heels and think about the error of their ways and they'd realise they were wrong.

In EG2... sigh. Deserters in EG2 have to die.

Capture them? They just tick down to escape.
Interrogate them? They die.
AH HA! There's a brainwashing machine that turns agents into obedient minions, perfect right?
No.
Your minions turn into basic tier workers. Who immediately desert.

Loot missions. They are generic as all hell and share a lot of the same issues the main campaign does. For instance, Excalibre. In EG1 you'd steal this and then display it in your base which would buff your minions as they basked in your sword stealing glory. EG2 the sword SEEMS to do nothing. Occasionally muscle minions try and pull it out of the stone (DESPITE a point of the mission to obtain it involving getting the sword out of the stone)... and it drains smarts as they do so. It literally wastes there time and floor space. There might be some sort of benefit. I studied minions interacting with it, around it, near it, for any sign of a buff. I couldn't find one. Minions certainly seem to think about it a lot (pop-up bubble's about it appear). But this leads me nicely in the UX of the game.

UX is the user experience, how you interact with the game. And it's really not great. For instance as mentioned above, some objects give bonus... but they don't say. Some do and say, but don't give details. So you actually have little idea of the mechanics of the game. On the World Map mission icons will appear BEHIND other things making finding them annoying and worse there is no easy way to find which region is getting high on heat, which has no mission active or anything useful easily. The AI voice assistant is THE WORST. She constantly, even paused, reminds you you have no gold, or little gold, on repeat in the early game which makes disabling voices all together my recommendation. She occasionally is helpful but it's lost in the sea of constant reminders. Finally the design of the objectives is tedious. Quite often it is just "do missions on the World Map until the number is big enough" or "kill X agents in the lair". But it's very copy-paste-repeat. Nothing themed or flavoured at all. The majority of agents that show up during these events display default behaviour and pathing and don't show any new mechanics and variation from the normal everyday ones. The gameplay is tedious and boring in the midgame and incredibly unfun.

Sidenote: I figured out why I'm a bit confused about rooms in EG2.
Staff room is for Morale
Archive is for Smarts
Medbay is for Vitality
Cafeteria? Bunks? Why is there overlap? When are these for?
It's because they kept all the rooms for EG1 but reduced stats from 5 to 3, making some rooms lose their role.

It lacks brain.

So let's deal with the final straw, let's talk about courage and finish off our Wizard of Oz analogy.

Reviews were embargo'd until the day before release. This is NEVER a good sign. There is no reason for this to happen ever to a single player game period. The game also comes bundled with the horrifically anti-consumer Denovu DRM, so it's unlikely we'll get mods to fix these issues.

:(

So full disclosure: I got given this copy for coverage. Now I have a few more hours under my belt, mostly because I really wanted a good Necromunda game I feel secure in giving a verdict: It's bad.

Firstly there's the state of the game, then there's the content and design. We'll start of with the first one since that's the easiest to critique and the one most widely lampooned.


Fair warning, I haven't played the multiplayer and don't intend to. From what I understand getting a connection is rough since even in offline game the game helpful tells me once every few hours that I have been disconnected from the server and that I should check my internet cable was plugged in. Once while I was streaming the game...

The bugs are omnipresent, the obvious one is the AI.

- It'll throw a buff AoE on just one character... twice in the same turn. Even though it doesn't stack. In another characters turn it'll do it again... and again... Last match it buffed the same two characters SIX times despite the buffs not stacking.
- It'll walk into walls and objects until it reaches timeout before trying another action... often walking into a different wall or object...
- It'll disengage from melee. Walk away. Walk back. Then go back into melee.
- It'll place traps... and then walk over their own traps. In the same turn. With the same character.
- It'll sometimes send a full game hiding one unit in a corner. Doing nothing but repeat buffs.
- The AI does not understand destructible scenery the main feature of one class, the secondary feature of another, and something that is necessary to be able to achieve the objective on many maps.

Other bugs, such as being unable to interact with objects on certain maps or in certain places (like stairs), are an ever present situation. In terms of polish, this feels more like a janky public alpha or an internal late alpha. Putting this out as a finished product is highly disrespectful to customers.

Sadly the game mechanics and design choices don't feel much better. The elephant in the room is that it features just 3 clans. This means that'll you'll be facing the same clans over and over and no match will stand out. This despite having several load screens that tell you cool tactics and units that other clans have... who aren't featured in the game in any way. Speaking of units, the variety of classes (only 5) combined means everything is a rather homogenous. Most squads run the same 5 different classes in their 5 person squad - or they run 4 different and 1 dupe. Which, when combine with the AI which always seems to use the same tactics (it's hard to tell if there are any other AI profiles such as offensive/defensive/mobile/objective focused or whether it's just so bug ridden that they all look the same), means that every match feels like every other match. This is by far the biggest complaint to be level in terms of the content - there's hardly any actual meat. Little variety and load scenes that actually look more inviting than the game you're playing.

The one slightly redeeming factor is the maps are pretty numerous, however they all follow a similar 3D layout which means that although the maps might be different the general playstyle is the same. This, however, is also defeated by the mobility system. Necromunda uses a system that gauges how far you move by measuring your distance from your starting point or last action - great! This is better than Mordheim (the studios previous game) where you felt you had to optimise each move.

But sadly they made a huge and obvious mistake. Every map is hugely 3D with typically 5 distinct floors and multiple ways of traversing them... while shooting ranges etc. are measure in 3D space your movement, and the refund system, is measured only in 2D space. Which means you can run up a spiral staircase 7 levels and not have used any movement points at all. In more practical terms it means that you can, and the AI will jump off a ledge 5 floor, take a zipline, walk down some stairs, take a lift up 3 floors, walk across a bridge... and end where you started without having spent many movement points at all. While you might not do this the AI will and does since it calculates it. It'll often do this just to attack the same character it started the turn in melee with. Or you can just use the system to move ludicrous distances across the map in one turn.

This contributes massively to how long a turn takes. Because each AI will take its turn (and sometimes you’ll play in a 4-gang fight) with long walks and pauses between each action the only way I have managed to get this far was by watching Netflix with Necromunda on in the background for when it was my turn.

The campaign is awful, forces you to play a certain gang, the voice acting is bad, the writing is something for a cereal packet, and it's littered with bugs. I stopped playing so I could just (wishfully) enjoy freeplay Operations mode. But of course unlocks for Operations are gated behind the Campaign? Sigh. When you first start operations it won't even let you have access to the shop for 2 missions, which in the release candidate means that you would have to fight with only 4 people against gangs of 5 despite the game telling you to get a 5th - you didn't have the money. As a day 1 patch they reduced the number of gangers in easy enemy gangs to 4, but it is galling that this is the sort of balancing and thought that went into this. Which leads me to the shop and items...

The Shop has limited goods, and when it restocks it seemingly only has a single type of items in a class. For instance left leg armour. In my campaign I didn't get a single piece of chest armour until I used unlocks from Infamy. All the items are classed into tiers , fans of 40k will recognise a Lasrifle, Autogun, and Plasmagun... but they maybe wouldn't put them all on the same power tier. Common Tier 1 Autoguns being just as powerful and expensive as tech marvel Tier 1 Plasmaguns makes little sense, and further compounds the homogenous feeling of the game when all that matters is the tier rating of the weapon and less so the type.

A far better solution would be limiting rarities like plasmaguns to higher tiers and introducing variants of weapons. A Mars and a Triplex pattern lasgun are hugely different for instance. The game doesn't even touch sniper rifles, longlas, or bolters (despite having boltpistols).

There's more. Oh so much more. Like the game modes all being incredibly similar. Or the rare game mode that forces melee only invalidating a third of the clans and half the classes. Or the special archaeotech mission that sounds really cool... but is just another ‘collect the item’ mission. Or the boltpistol soundeffect. Or the fact that your own abilities can cancel each other out as invalid after your turn. Or that basic UI elements are missing such as the ability to switch character in the gang menu, or that the customisation menu is bizarrely laid out.

The focus in this game is all over the place and feels like something that was redesigned a few times before being given up on and pushed out the door for being over time and out of budget and given to fans of the franchise as a burden to pick up the tab for poor development pipelines.

I really want a good Necromunda game, and somewhere in here I can see the bones of one... and it makes me want to like it so much... but I know that this is not it. It's not good. It's laden with bugs, poor design choices, and medicre presentation. Even the load screens tease you about gangs you wish you were playing instead of the game that you load into. It has half the gangs and classes it needs for a price point of twice what it should be, even without the state it is in.

Yes. Sorry, I assume you were asking whether you should get this game? I assume you like 4X (and have a PC that can run it) since you were looking at the reviews and all you need to know on that front is "yes" you should. Stellaris takes Paradox's grand strategy feel into space and does it really well giving you a good deal of customisation of your race including, importantly, ethics that strong influence how you interact with other race (spiritualists don't like materialists and no-one likes a xenophobe). If I were to give it a score (out of 10) personally I'd like to give it a 9 but I can see a strong argument for an 8 based on a few bugs, unfinished features and gameplay plateaus that I am sure Paradox will fix/fill in a timely fashion.

It's a great game, the only main issues are some bugs (mostly pretty minor so nothing to mention compared to most releases these days) and a fairly passive AI who plays war much more defensively than they could and a mid-game plateau where little of interest happens unless you are playing a very militaristic expansionistic empire. Additionally it is worth noting that the 'revolt' feature - particuarly important to slaves and races dependant on them, has not been implemented due to lack of time. Right now you can enslave away without fear of slave revolts and it is disappointing that this feature was cut froim release even if Paradox do intend to roll it out soon after. These are issue I have faith will be filled based on Paradox's previous titles (faith based on evidence - should have probably used a different word, oh well) and the game itself is still incredibly fun even for these failings.

Now something I have to sing massive praise for Paradox for doing is the accessibility. Stellaris is incredibly easy to get into - there is a small advisor bot (who is helpfully voiced and is even amusing on occasion) who asks how much guidance you want when you start your first game. This alone with the early game 'missions' that walk you through some basic empire growing steps really helps push new players in the right direction. If you have ever had issues getting in Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings II you are fully justified - those Paradox games offer no manual, no tutorial, no guidance and are downright obscure at times (apart from Paradox's ever helpful dedication to tooltips which I love) - Stellaris however just works. You can pick Stellaris up and play - no YouTube guides or LPs needed (although you'd be remiss if you didn't watch my excel- ahem, where was I?). Stellaris is likely to be the Paradox gateway drug for players new to their titles.

If you love 4X or Paradox games, then this is certainly the game for you. Does it have some flaws? Sure, but not too major and ones I do believe will be fixed in the near future. Does it have some bugs? Sure, the lack of upgradeable warp drives on troop transports is particularly egregious. But these are issues that will be gone within the month most likely and Paradox has a long history of supporting their titles with updates, fixes and optional DLC. Get it.

-EE

(p.s. Yes I focus on negatives more than I should with great games but that's because I want them to be perfect so bad!)

The first 40min to an hour goes by well and it feels really spectacular and looks good (running a 980GTX) however the game quickly decends into a very repetitive set of four copy paste objectives with little tension from the oxygen mechanic as oxygen refills are scattered around like candy on halloween.

Scientifically it makes little sense either as you lose oxygen while stationary in space but don't when inside... in a station with open doors and broken windows... (along with a load of other tiny nuisances). In addition the solution for the failed/unready lifeboats seems to be to reboot some computers which leads to 2 questions: Firstly why do the lifeboats depends on the station computers? And second why was such a boring mechanic chosen when the concept of repairing, reinforcing and macgyvering worked so well in The Martian and would have been a perfect fit here.

The map system is atrocious with the 3D world very poorly interpretted by the 2D map and objectives aren't actually marked - only the closest of a series of waypoints to follow which left me very confused about why they wanted me to backtrack away from the objective I had floated to (they wanted me to weeve in and out of some debris rather than jsut head straight past).

The mechanics are dreadful which leaves the experience as an interactive story but the story is so weak with the repetitive mechanics and fairly sparse character detail (the all alone feeling plays well until you realise that oxygen isn't an issue and you get bored rather than afraid and alone) kinda leaves it falling flat.

As an experience the first 40min is great, but as a game, a interactive story, or a piece of entertainment it falls flat soon after. Which is a shame because the underlying system is strong and a real opportunity was missed here by not giving it a more interesting story and a better set of gameplay objectives and mechanics.

Noteably I also crashed every 20-30min although I was recording at the time so I'm not the best example on that.

Wasn't playing in VR although I doubt that'd fix my gripes.