Recent reviews by Cosmic Cat

At this point in time I cannot recommend this game.

Too many gamebreaking bugs (some have been around for months), now they also decided to increase DLC prices, and at the same time give less content for the money.
That's not respecting the customer.

The official content isn't worth a full price-tag, especially when there are free mods 10 times more polished.


All in all, if you really like WH Fantasy and the TW-concept, wait until a decent sale and buy it sometime next year, if they fix all the major bugs.

I'd stick to playing modded WH2 for now...

A pretty fun game that lets you train gladiators to use in the Roman arena. You can improve them in many different ways and either let the AI control them for you in actual battles, or control them yourself manually.
You can also upgrade your gladiator grounds with various new features. There's a light story to the game as well, but not its selling point.
As you progress the game you can take on harder and harder arena challenges. You can even train animals (like Lions).
The only downside also exists in other games (think X-Com), and that's how frustrating it can be to lose your favourite veteran character in a fight.

One wonders how much they tested this before releasing it...

*Imperial ships look awful. Couldn't they get inspiration from something else? Perhaps "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" or some other show/movie? There's absolutely nothing imperial or regal about them.

*The new Crisis mechanic hasn't been balanced at all, and I hear that by the time you build those system destroyers you've already whon the game 100 years ago or so. So the whole feature becomes kind of pointless in its current iteration.

*Pop growth changes are atrocious. Why did they even add this crap? Wasn't that job-revamp going to be sufficient? No wonder mods that remove/alter this new poop are so popular right now (and will be in perpetuity unless Paradox decides to fix their mess).

*Spying is a great concept, but also poorly balanced in this version. Should it really take 100~ years to find out stuff about your neighbours?
And can they finally decide what they want to do with envoys? Are they ever going to become fully functional leaders or not?

*I'm a bit unsure if I like the new districts or not.. But I really dislike the new building slot unlock system. It doesn't make sense that planets have an artifical "pop cap", considering there are many ways to fit more citizens into one area. It also ruins the option of playing tall.

Conclusion:
If you're thinking about buying this, I suggest you wait and let them fix all the nonsense first. It's not worth it in its current state and I recommend rolling back and playing the previous version for now.

I'd love to recommend this game but I can't due to two reasons:

1. No coop and a game that quickly ends up quite repetitive (something multiplayer would alleviate). Then there's the annoying immersion breaking thing about the player character not developing some kind of lethal weapon to combat the dangers of the ocean.

The reason they gave for not including lethal weapons was according to one of the lead developers that they decided against it because of mass school shootings in the US and because they are against guns. That same developer had several shooter games in his top most played games, when you entered and looked at his Steam-profile.


2. The developers being a gang of hypocrite social justice-advocates and having a haughty attitude in general.

They fire a member of their staff (sound designer) who says politically incorrect things for "racism" and being "transphobic", but when another member of their staff bashes "white cis males" she gets off without any or little consequence.


Conclusion:

In short, if you just want a game for playing - go ahead and buy it. It's not too bad with a decent amount of content, suspense, a decent progression system etctera (as long as you're not the person who gets bored quickly)...
But if you believe in principle (which everyone should do, and clearly UWE believe in their own strongly) then make a stand and avoid funding these kind of people to send a message.

An excellent space game where Freelancer meets Mount & Blade!

Imagine flying around and doing space battles, just with the added strategy aspect option of working for a faction, governing your own space sector as a system-lord or ignore all that and become a cutthroat mercenary!

Some positives & negatives:

+ The game doesn't force you to play in a certain way, there are many optional paths you can take and it adds to the replayability (mulitple gamemodes like campaign-mode or "sandbox"). Recommend playing the campaign first as it gives quite a lot of insight into the lore!

+ Speaking of lore, I lost myself dwelved deep into reading all the faction backgrounds and other tidbits found across the galaxy. The campaign mode does a decent job describing some of the story background from previous games in the series.

+ Good looking graphics and beautiful skyboxes

+ Quite an amount of different ships and missions available.

+ Beautiful music that gives space the right atmosphere!

+ Being able to change difficulty mid-game (I felt the game was a bit too easy on normal after a few hours in, but quite a challenge on hard now).

+ Modding and workshop is available which lets you tailor your experience!

+ The developers seem to actually listening to their community, unlike many others who totally ignore the players.

- I wish there was some more variation to chatter, I think I've heard "Ma? Pa? Is that you, Fluffy?" (or whatever they say) like a hundred times by now :-D

- Would be nice if it would be easier to see who is who on the starchart. Sometimes when several factions have the same colour due to being allied, neutral or enemies - it can often be hard to notice who owns what region.

- Some stuff that works great early on (like civilian fleet tasks for resources) become a bit obsolete mid/late-game (unless you trade with other factions).

- No coop or multiplayer :-( (but the game is still lots of fun!)



So.. What are you waiting for? Go get the game! It's currently on sale as well! And you always have a refund if you don't like it for some reason.

Bethesda, unwilling to accept that the community rejected the paid mods-idea is back once more with another attempt - driven by pure greed.
It's not enough to have sold their games incredibly well (even at full price), apparently there's no limit for how much money they want to put their grubby paws on.

This is a spit in the face of the fanbase, the fact they see us as uneducated silly sheep to accept this kind of behaviour is frankly appalling.

The game itself is fine, even though lacking many loveable features from previous installments - but does do some of the new stuff right.

Roughly 5-6 hours in and I'm having fun exploring, dying to wild beasts and struggling against savage african tribesmen. Haven't experienced any technical issues yet and loading screens are quite fast (most settings on ultra with a decent PC).

That said, there's not super much content currently in the game. Just looking at the amount of craftable stuff the list isn't super long, and environment interaction seems a bit limited (ie. not enough unique stuff like loot chests, unique loot, caves, bosses etc). But this is to expected since it was just released into Early Access.

The biggest problem right now is to fix animations and make combat enjoyable. There's also apparently some rubberbanding going on for players who play on large servers with high population.

All in all this game has great potential and I do recommend it for anyone who enjoys the world of Robert E Howard and has read the books like I have. The music is pretty good too! A big plus to them reusing some assets from Age of Conan as that game had a lot of good stuff.
Just don't expect a full fledged game for obvious reasons. But if you don't experience any technical issues like me, you should easily get at least a dozen hours of fun before the content starts to run out.

Let's hope Funcom patches often and adds more content for our enjoyment!

Summary:
+ Conan/Hyborian-Lore/Robert E Howard
+ Looks pleasent to the eye and runs pretty well
+ Has potential
+ Great music
+ Great to be able to tweak your own settings for most stuff

- Combat is barebones and not very enjoyable right now
- Animations need some work
- Needs more content
- AI needs some improvement

Honestly? This is what Diablo 3 should have been.

Crate Entertainment delivers a spirital successor to the magnificent legacy of Diablo 2 - with a blend-in of popular features from Titan Quest (they even had a designer from the former Diablo 2 team join them recently & Crate themselves consist of many of the old devs behind Titan Quest).
Even the game being in early access (as of when this review was written) it already has kept me occupied for around 100 hours and there's still so much to do.

Pros
+ Rich storyline.
+ Beautifully crafted environments!
+ Choices matter - for example killing or saving a person will have different consequences, adding to replayability.
+ Six classes to chose from & being able to combine two classes if you wish, broadening your versatility.
+ Easy to respecc skills, allowing lots of experimentation.
+ Addicting reputation-system (similar to WoW). Also enemy factions will spawn more bosses/heroes to fight you the more they hate you - while friendly factions unlock rewards, additional quests & even dungeons!
+ Nemesis bosses! Once you've maxed negative reputation with an enemy faction, legendary bosses/heroes will hunt you out in the wild! Some of the strongest in-game! Run!
+ Modding-friendly! Toolset to be released after the game is finished.
+ Expansions/dlc planned! Bring on more content! My money awaits!
+ Multiplayer/Coop-friendly (unless you play with awful connections, then you might experience desyncs/lagspikes).


Cons
- No character customization.
- No hide helmet toggle (for the occasional ugly helmet).
- Soundtrack does not seem complete (hopefully more songs are planned), too few tracks replaying over and over again.
- More epic item variety would be nice, but I assume this will be added before the final release. Gief more content!! Now!


Summary: If you loved Diablo 2 or Titan Quest, getting Grim Dawn is a no-brainer. Expect hundreds of hours of gameplay!
Game is planned to be released at the end of 2015.

Not really a proper review.

The game itself is good, but after the paid mods debacle I can't help but to discourage people from purchasing products from a company who indulges in said marketting strategies.

As many other players who pre-ordered Starbound, I was quite hyped and happy. "Finally a Terraria in a sci-fi setting - just up my alley" - I thought.

The game itself has potential in many aspects (sandbox creation, roleplaying immersion etc). You get to create your own character with some basic customization - then you start on a broken spaceship and have to descend onto the planet below to gather resources to be able to continue on into the galaxy and other planets. A lot of exploration follows, but most planets are very generic and alike.

Rince and repeat.

Currently the gameplay and content is very limited. You will keep collecting resources like ore/wood, fighting monsters that pretty much do the same thing over and over again. The combat mechanics are pretty plain. There's not much point into making any houses on a planet with the ship being a viable storing and farm-option. The same thing repeats over several tiers until you hit the end-tier.

What prompted me to not recommend this game to any one new to Starbound is the lack of updates from the developers. They've not been upfront or honest with the community and their backers - dates keep being pushed, updates not appearing for many months and a constant change of development strategies (like reworking basic core features, re-prioritizing content creation and contradicting earlier statements quite often).
And there has also been a harsh censorship going on on their forums, where even people who aren't rude nor trolling - but raising valid questions and concerns are getting suspended. I shall also not mention how certain members of their staff have been rude towards the community, which is very unprofessional from a business perspective.
There are many other examples of early access developers (be it indie or otherwise) that have handled their projects in a much more professional way.


All in all, if the developers at Chucklefish get their thing together one beautiful day - this game might be worth investing in. Until then, do yourself a favor and do not buy this product.