Recent reviews by «AS»Mandalor

Simple and fun.

How's a game supposed to be fun if you never win and constantly get hit with bad events? I have not won once in my 32 playthroughs in 15 hours and have only reached the boss twice. There are way too many random events and bad luck in every run. I will die after either running out of fuel, running out of missiles, not having enough scrap for repairs or the later said items, or not having my ship upgraded enough against the boss. This is all from playing on the “easy” difficulty… This game sucks the fun out of you after you have put an hour into a save only to die in one of these ways.

Games are for enjoyment and this game does the exact opposite. At this point I’m playing it to beat it once and remove from my library entirely.

A fun election simulator.

I am glad that the game veers away from reality when there is no candidate with an Electoral College majority; instead of having the House of Representatives vote, the game continues to eliminate players until there is a tie between two candidates, or until a player reaches an electoral college majority. This is a fun elimination setup.

An addicting game to play. I zoned out for 30 minutes straight.

Supraball is a great competitive game that lacks a large player base. Although it is labeled as a football game, it reminds me more of lacrosse.

It's pretty said that my negative review on 2K17 could be copied and pasted to this review because nothing has changed from then till now. I won't waste my time on this game. It's the same garbage.

This is the most flawed Paradox game. There are so many frustrating flaws.

-My vassals keep conquering provinces, going over their demesne limit, and continuously having rebellions. Usually if the rebellion is too large, the rebels win, establishing a religious group province, which then raises the revolt risk in the surrounding provinces. I then have to come in and remove the rebels, with rebellions occurring now on the surrounding provinces, and redistribute the province to a clansman that isn’t over their demesne limit or clansman who have no provinces. It ends up being an endless cycle as I declare war on other clans and my vassals continue to swallow up the enemy clan’s provinces, forcing them over the limit again.

I’ve tried so many strategies to counter a vassal growing too large. I’ve tried only granting three provinces and tried granting only one demesne, but the vassals just keeps going off on their own sieges and taking territory. I can’t revoke titles because they get angry after one revoke and some even refuse to when they have gotten very large.

Just imagine an AI vassal, hoarding provinces, only to lose them over time because they’re away in other lands acquiring more provinces. Why. Why. Why. I’ve never had any issue like this in any Paradox game.

-Every time I’m about to conquer a province, all my vassals begin to ask for the next province I’m about to conquer. My only options in the dialogue to them is to promise them that I will give it to them, which will remove honor from me if I fail on the promise, or to reject them, which lowers their opinion of me. I’ve had to deal with losing five honor points each time so I’m forced to delve into the Shinto religion, which gives me honor bonuses, to counter this issue. An irony in this is that my vassals, with more than five provinces, ask for a province when I cannot give them one because the game restricts me.

- What’s the point of having multiple heirs if brothers end up killing each other for the demesne and titles? In one playthrough, my youngest son killed his five brothers to inherit nine demesnes and ended up with endless rebellions, in the middle of a war against another clan. Ikko-Ikki began to spawn in my region along with the rebel groups. What’s the point of having children and male heirs? It should be most helpful in a time of war, when your enemy is attempting to assassinate your clan leader, but instead your own son kills off every heir and eventually gets assassinated. Why?

-Plots are useless. I’ve wasted my honor points starting them and they suddenly disappear.
-Marrying your daughters is useless. I can’t persuade other vassals, who are married to my daughters, to switch to my side even when I coaxed them with gold. What else am I supposed to do? There reaches a point where gold stops increasing opinion. Pointless system.

-Breaking up clans is impossible. I spent hundreds of gold in a session killing off clan leaders, only to find an endless replacement.

-Ninja clans are useless. Again, I’ve dumped hundreds of gold in a session using the assassinate and dishonor option, with the rare six or greater ninja ability and stealth clan, and they almost never succeed.

-Ninja clans come rare. Despite having a court member with a high intrigue, I cannot receive enough ninja clans to provide protection. They seem to come once every three months.

-AI use of ninja clans is unfair. My enemy’s clan leaders will send an endless barrage of ninja clans at me, and their vassals will too! I can’t tell if my vassals are doing anything but they sure aren’t coordinating with me if they are hiring ninja clans. Against a large clan in the endgame, ninja clan attacks come one after the other, until my clan leaders are dead, their heirs are dead, and my lineage is killed off. Very balanced game!

-The AI teams up against you. No matter what, I find myself fighting a war on two fronts. If I declare war on a neighboring clan, another neighboring clan will declare war on me. If I’m at peace, two clans will declare war on me. It seems that when I’m at peace, waiting for my neighboring clans to fight each other, we end up in the longest peacetime ever until one of them declares war on me. Totally fine.

- The game has a recurring style of “big fish eating little fish”. The small clans don’t team up to fight a larger clan and the larger clan just swallows up the smaller one until the game comes to an end and there are a few big clans fighting for the shogun title. Small clans are suicide. The conquering system is so simple, that larger clans can swallow up small clans whole, and not endure revolt risk.

I’ve played four times with the small Nanbu clan (which seems to be a community favorite) and three times with the smaller Magoimi, clan and I still can’t win as a smaller clan. It’s just frustrating. I’ve played as the Yamana, a larger clan, and that was even worse, Larger clans tend to already be at war with many clans, who also happen to be at war with other clans. Despite this assumed equal playing field, all your enemies team up against you, wipe you out first, while losing their own land, then return to combat their invaders. This leads into my next point of how far the game is rigged against you.

-The AI will always try to cheat so that one of their clans is always larger than you. I have played a clan through until the 1620 C.E. deadline and it took almost until the commencement of the 1600s for a few Empires to have large, 20% or 30% control on Japan. I tried playing again from the start, this time with the difficulty lowered from Normal to Very Easy (lowering the difficulty gives the player a lot of advantages and gives the AI disadvantages) and by 1517 C.E. I was steamrolling through the north with the Nanbu clan, having 12% control. This is a much faster rate than playing on Normal. But for some reason the Kudo clan continued to expand at the same rate from 16% in 1501 C.E., to 25% in 1517 C.E. How do you get nearly a 10% increase in 16 years, in the volatile central and southern region? Their surrounding clans practically allowed themselves to be walked over; instead of naturally, when a clan continues declaring war on the surrounding smaller clans, all the smaller clans would declare war and try to repel the growing clan. Not surprisingly, the Kudo clan continued to extend north, DESPITE having smaller clans south which would have been easier pickings, just so they could block my advancement and declare war on me.

There’s an issue when the community plays predominantly as one clan: the Nanbu clan. The Nanbu clan benefit from being away from the wars in central and south Japan, having five provinces, all assigned to your clan leader, being surrounded by small clans that can easily be conquering, and being placed in northern Japan, were the linear path of conquest provides you with few neighboring clans. The Nanbu clan remains a utopia in this hellish Mad Max island.

I’m like someone suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Those small moments when none of these issues is present are a godsend and this horrible game feels amazing. I’m on a roll with my clan, with balanced vassals, and controlling nearly 20% of Japan. Look! So many small clans at my feet to conquer! Nothing can stop me! But it’s all an illusion when I realize, south of these small clans, there lays a larger 40% clan waiting to eat me.

I tried lowering the difficulty of the game from Normal to Very Easy, and the game accelerated to the same end point where vassals grew over their demesne limit, a larger clan grew enough to always be ahead of me and formed a late game confrontation, and my entire clan died out because of an endless barrage of ninja attacks. What am I doing wrong? The game is rigged against you. I’ve played nine times now, from beginning until end, for a total of 49 hours, and have not been able to reach the Shogun title. This game is designed to not to let you win.

Now I have friends to play Risk with! Oh wait, that's just the AI.

I’ve only seen bonsai in films and had not really thought about what the art entailed until I played this game. Without consulting any instructions, I played the game and ended the fourth year with a naked small tree. I realized I was not the best bonsai artist and, after reading the instructions, I can say I’ve improved and can appreciate the detail in the game.

The game provided a well tuned simulation of a bonsai tree, with intricate ways to interact that model the actual art. I’ve been given a deeper appreciation for the art through this digital medium. The addition of devil fruit and the Chinese zodiac adds an interesting twist to the simulation.

Don’t be fooled by the Early Access label. This game is already molded well. I’m pleased that the game benefits from an active developer who’s shown a good record of fixing issues and pushing games into full release.

This game brought a surprisingly enjoyable experience to playing out Julius Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.