Recent reviews by Umi Sonoda

Sui-chan wa kyou mo chiisai kawaii

Sui-chan waaaaaaaa

Suisex DLC when

suipiss dlc when

It's not the most authentic World War I game, but it is probably the most fun

A year and some change later, the game has finally almost come up to standard.... by Halo launch standards. Forge is amazing, map makers have been going crazy recreating classic Halo and other video games maps. Co-op campaign is here, though split screen co-op is still in a shallow grave somewhere. Other than that, there's no alternate PVE mode like Spartan Ops or Firefight (Forge creations, while cool, do not count), the Core system is still a baffling cosmetic direction, and the battlepass system is still weak despite the challenges being tweaked to make progression go a bit faster.

Overall Halo feels like a gacha game where I'm only really logging into pvp to get the 500xp daily reward and calling it there. The gameplay is still good but having the bulk of your battlepass xp tied to completing the challenges instead of playing the video game is a bit of a motivation killer.

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Gameplay wise I think its fantastic though in terms of progression its in dire need of a rework. I can look past it to a degree since I think my group of friends and I are more interested in how modular forge and custom games can get. From what we've tinkered with so far there's a lot of fun settings and even AI to mess around with. But even then it does feel pretty bad that most player customization is locked by a pretty unintuitive progression system. You really can't get a worse battlepass like Modern Warfare's where you actually had weapons locked behind levels, but its definitely no Dota battlepass either. It's not pay to win by any stretch of the imagination - anyone who thinks that is out of their mind - but its disappointing how poorly the pass was implemented when MCC had a good model to base it on.

Overall the core gameplay is solid with room for improvement for progression.

I've never felt more nostalgic to someone saying they f*cked my mom after I killed them in a video game

This game pretty much forced me to learn how to parry

I keep this game filed under "Mental Stability Test"

TL;DR: It's fine. Overall side grade from the original but with a few updates could be an upgrade.

Pros:
* New maps and CIVs
* New game modes
* New cards
* Graphics and Audio overhaul
* Improved (Land) AI
* All cards are unlocked

Cons:
* I find units get stuck more in the terrain, especially in river crossings
* A lot of the destruction physics were removed
* Online multiplayer isn't particularly stable
* Navy AI is still broken
* Removing mining for Fur Trading for North American Native civs
* UI isn't very intuitive
* Optimization isn't great

Stuff I Don't Care About:
* Plantation being changed to Estate
* Colonial Age being changed to Commerce Age (ok I do find the irony funny)
* Renaming the North American Natives