Recent reviews by jagdtiger

Short version: Bang per buck, it's probably one of the best games I've bought. If you're into ships, that is.

Longer version: the main game modes are:

- academy: supposed to be a tutorial, but currently seems harder than both other modes. So don't get discouraged if the tutorial roflstomps you :p

- battle: just pick which major power you want to lead in battle, against whom, the year and ship compositions. Make up your own scenario. What if the High Seas Fleet did sally forth at the end of WW1 for a rematch with the Royal Navy? What if the Hood didn't blow up against the Bismarck? Go nuts.

- campaign: pick a major power and the starting year (between 1890 and 1940) and lead its navy. Prioritize key research, design ships, appease or antagonize other major powers, upgrade old ships, and sooner or later watch the sparks (and rivets) fly.

Note however that you don't play as the leader of the whole country, but just its navy. You can somewhat help steer the relationships with other major powers, and have some indirect influence on the GDP, but that's about it. If you're Austria-Hungary and suddenly your government decides to attack Serbia, which draws Russia in, etc... well, them's the breaks. Serbia is not a major power so you have not much influence there.

Other notes:

- for new players, I'd recommend starting the campaign in 1910. Then you already have dreadnoughts, destroyers, and generally ships that are worth something. Starting in 1890 can get you a benefit in the long term, but the ships are slow and can pretty much miss even when shooting at the ocean. Conversely if you're starting in 1940, there's not a lot you can change before the sparks fly.

- the weight and power calculations for ship designs aren't very historically accurate, but they work well for game purposes.

- in campaign mode, never let the AI auto-generate your starting fleet. Always build your own. Essentially you get a turn "zero" where you have the naval budget for the last 5 years, and must design a fleet within that budget. This will represent your pre-existing fleet, and will be instantly built at the start of turn one. (Everything after that, obviously takes time to build.)

- it helps if you have some idea of what doctrine you're going for, when you build your fleet. For example Jeune Ecole (just use many dozens of torpedo boats to swarm the enemy battleships) works pretty well in 1890, less so in 1910 when they learned how to aim those secondaries.

- You need tonnage for naval invasions. You may have 120 torpedo boats to make the enemy bleed, but they probably won't be enough to support a naval invasion of China. Just saying.

- bigger and more expensive is not always the best. Also look at your port capacity and dockyard capacity. As I was saying, sometimes Jeune Ecole actually works. And then sometimes it doesn't.

And so on, but the fun is learning for yourself, am I right? So put on your big admiral hat and pants, and go sink their battleship :p

To start with the bad news: on modern computers it can crash after you play for several hours in a row, especially if you even think of setting the resolution above 1920x1080. That doesn't sound so bad, BUT if it crashed while saving or at the end of a mission, it can nuke your profile, AND save that to Steam, so basically you restart from zero. You must obsessively exit and back up your saves directory every time, if you don't want that to happen.

Why do I still give it a thumbs up? Well, because IF you can do that obsessive backup (and restore when, not if, it screws you over) actually, gameplay wise I think it's actually the best Tropico game ever, followed closely by Tropico 5 and Tropico 3, and at a distance by Tropico 6. Note that that judgment is made with the expansion packs included, and also based on available mods.

It's not perfect, though, including stuff like that exporting spiced rum doesn't fulfil a contract to export rum, or exporting smoked beef doesn't fulfil a mission to export beef. And you can't deactivate the upgrade, so you can actually produce what the contract says. And you can't drop the contract, or really any mission, once accepted. Etc.

It also probably doesn't help that graphics-wise, not only it's behind Tropico 5 and 6, but arguably in some aspects (e.g., grass) is behind Tropico 3.

Note that I'm not saying that Tropico 3, 5 and 6 are BAD. No, they're all good games. Just this one has more missions, more buildings, etc, and it's IMHO better balanced than Tropico 6 too. Basically it's bigger, meaner, better than some already damn good games.

Which is quite an achievement.

Pretty good and fun simulation, if you're into economic simulations at all. Sure, it makes some simplifications, but I'm ok with those for the sake of gameplay. If I were to have any wishes, and mind you, I'm not necessarily saying they should be free, I'm willing to pay for an EP:

- let me go to a design bureau and pay extra for a ship for my own specifications, including capacity (within reasonable limits), fuel capacity (ditto), max speed, and...

- hull speed. See that "spur" in front of some ship hulls? The whole point is that the waves created by it, are in opposition and cancel out the waves from the rest of the hull. But that only works for one give speed. And that (or its lack) and the rest of the hull's length to width ratio, gives you an ideal cruising speed, and gives you an optimal-ish speed for consumption ratio.

But anyway, I remember a game from the '90s offering custom designed ships, I can's see why 30 years later we can't.

- More ship types, from car carriers to small coastal freighters that just carry stuff from Antwerp to Rotterdam. Again, this was available in the 90's.

- Some more and especially bigger contracts. There's hardly a point in having the biggest tanker if 90% of the contracts will involve carrying 9,000 tons. Yeah, maybe I'll once in a while be able to queue 3 of them on the same trip, but I'm still sailing with 75% of the hold empty.

- Some more possibilities to negotiate contracts. Like, I might want to literally BUY me some time, as in, negotiate for more time in exchange for less pay, or the other way around. That kind of deals happen in RL management all the time.

- Insurance, especially for those pirate-y routes

- Fractional contracts. Like, say, France is willing to buy 100,000 tons of LNG from Russia, the port of Azov has a contract for 100,000 tons of LNG to Le Havre. But my ship can only carry, dunno, 60,000. Let me take those 60,000 and leave another 40,000 fot thr next ship. (Possibly mine too:p) Thar's really closer to what the world economy actually works.

Etc.

Again, I'm not whining that they should be in the base game or anything, I'm not some entitled kid and all that. But if anyone wants to make a realism EP... hey, you have my Steam handle. As a wise man once said, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" :p

The perfect simulator for the current USA Congress. Stalls and opposes even things their party actually likes, and passes about 2 laws in 4 years :p

Well, *ahem* I mean, it launched seriously sub-par. but it's gotten a fair bit better in the meantime, so I'll change my review.

Is it there yet? Quoth Bender: Ha ha ha! Wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder. HA HA HA!

Well, more seriously, not by a long shot. A VERY long shot.

But it's actually possible to play it and get some enjoyment out of it, so here's a tentative thumbs up.

Short story, to channel Sir Nigel Bickleworth, I give it three 'Meh's out of five. I suppose it's over half, so thumbs tentatively up.

The longer story is, although this is essentially Two Point Hospital with a college instead, that is exactly the problem. The hospital one was a continuous affair, where at any moment the composition of the patients could start to change, or you'd just get more of them, so it was a continuous action and reaction. The college format splits it into school years and vacations, with the courses (and thus number of students) only changing between years, and thus no real reason to build more classes or hire more teachers other than between the years. The game also tells you exactly what rooms and what teachers you'll need over the next year, so again, it's not a dynamic do this and react to that affair like in TPH. Just meet those requirements and then sit and watch for a year.

Worse yet, although the game doesn't force you to, it strongly rewards sitting on your butt during that vacation, dismissing employment candidates until a more qualified one shows up. I mean, you could hire the first teacher that pops up, and then spend a small fortune and two years training them to level 5 in whatever course they're teaching, or sit and wait until a level 5 on shows up. Which is very boring.

The gaining experience and levels from TPH is also gone, basically giving you one less thing to react to.

Add to that such tasks as "make 5000$ a month profit" to clear the last star of a level. Since one time stuff like research don't count, essentially you may find yourself just waiting for a month where the student experience bonus pushes you just over the threshold. Since xp is gained faster at low levels, AND you can only add more students for a new year, essentially that tends to be one of the very first months of a year. Then you'll twiddle your thumbs for the rest of the year, hoping you can do better the next one. Again, that's very boring, and I consider including such tasks to be simply bad game design.

Now add some more niggling details, like that the AI seems a bit... lobotomized. I've repeatedly watched such stuff as a janitor just running back and forth because it can't seem to decide between two tasks, and ending up doing neither until something else to do appears.

Now also add such... bizarre decisions as that you can't increase a lecture room's capacity by adding more chairs, nor does there seem to be any obvious way to increase the number of lecture rooms for a course and year. You can and will literally end up with stuff like 31 students for year 1 and the fixed 8 students capacity for the lecture room. I realize that they had to make other stuff like the private tuition and library and upgrading other rooms too useful SOMEHOW, but it seems bizarre that adding 8 more seats in the lecture room doesn't actually increase its capacity.

Etc.

On the whole, it's not the worst game, especially during the summer draught of new games, and you can get some enjoyment out of it. Hence the tentative thumbs up. But if you haven't played Two Point Hospital yet, I would recommend buying that one instead.

Jaysus F Christ... what is it with the Japanese and A. minigames, and B. excessive cut-scenes.

Now admittedly FF7R doesn't come anywhere near the old PSO2 (Phantasy Star Online 2, and not the new genesys game of the same name), where one mission could open the floodgates to literally 1 to 3 HOURS of cut-scenes (no, seriously, that's not hyperbole) and they're not idiotic drivel like the PSO2 ones. So there's that in FF7R's favour. In fact, I might even like them if they were in an anime, instead of interrupting gameplay and player agency in a game.

On the flip side, those in PSO2 tended to be mostly AFTER the mission. Well, ok, there were some exceptions, but even those tended to be short and to the point and, more importantly, before or after the action. The ones in FF7R... at times it feels like I'm trying to do something and every 1 to 2 minutes, either the game grabs and turns my camera to show me some cinematic shot (which actually annoys me even more than the cut scenes) or has some long emotional cut-scene that just interrupts the action.

Sometimes it even has has cutscenes IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT, fer screw's sake. And they can cause your buffs to be wasted, or even your limit break to do nothing, because the cut-scene started.

But generally, you know it's bad when even the person dying in such a cutscene, while everyone else is having an emotional moment around, goes, "didn't you guys have something to do?" Yeah, duh, we had, now that you mention it. We're under assault and (as the plot goes) in a race against the time. Thanks for reminding us, really, because apparently it had escaped everyone's mind.

AGAIN. Because it's not even the first time in that particular race against the time, that everyone kinda forgot about it.

Yeah, I know it's what TV Tropes calls hanging a lampshade, but here's a novel idea: if it ever feels like there's a need to lampshade the fact that you keep taking control (and agency) from the player... THEN JUST DON'T DO IT. Not the least because a lampshade actually draws attention to it.


And it also doesn't help immersion when the rules and game mechanics suddenly change between cut scenes and normal gameplay, or even from one section of gameplay to the next one.

And I don't just mean that Phoenix Down and Revive materia don't work in cutscenes.

But for example, at one moment, Cloud can jump to a point some 100 ft away and 10 ft upwards, with a child under each arm. Barely half an hour later, he can't get from one railway platform to the one across the rail, without using some cranes to place a rail car to go through. Like, wth, I'm an old guy and definitely not some Mako-enriched SOLDIER, and even I can drop like 2 ft down to the rail line, and then climb on the other platform.

Then in the middle of playing with the cranes, he has to go around because there's a fallen file cabinet in the way. Like, WTH, now he can't even go over a 1ft tall obstacle if it's not a cutscene?

And it's not just in cut scenes. In combat all characters can jump 10 ft up or more to hit a flying enemy, but are at a loss at what to do when the same enemy crawled 6 ft up a wall. And then combat ends and, see above, suddenly even a 1ft tall obstacle is too much for him.

And I mean, sure, it's a JRPG, it's normal that you have to go around even a fallen twig. But most don't draw attention that nope, that character can actually jump like Superman. Once you've drawn my attention in a cutscene AND in every other combat to the fact that he CAN, it's hard not to notice when right before and after he mysteriously can't.


That said, if rather than play a game you actually wanted to watch a non-interactive, 3D animated Anime, and just have to fiddle with the remote control every minute to make the animation continue, you can probably take this as a thumbs up. Because really that's what this is. Someone cut up a perfectly good anime into pieces and makes you play a little bit of game in between the pieces :p

This used to actually be a fun game, some years back. One in which I sunk a LOT of hours, because it was just that much fun, in spite of the grind and the occasional... ok, OFTEN... ok, REGULAR toxic players who sometimes spent a quarter of an hour being toxic in chat. (And BTW, I really mean a LOT of hours. I played a LOT more via the client from Wargaming's site than my hours on Steam show.)

Gradually, though, it's changed into just a more and more aggressive exercise in pushing lootboxes and otherwise trying to separate players from their RL money. Including the time-honoured tradition of creating a problem and then trying to sell you the solution for real money. (E.g., nerf all ships' AA, sell new premium ships in lootboxes that have non-nerfed AA. E.g., reduce radar range for all ships because apparently it's unfair to radar a ship from beyond the range it can see you, then introduce a new line of ships that can radar unseen anyway.)

Mind you, the game was always pretty blatantly pay to win. (Which actually means you can pay to get an advantage, not the guarantee that you'll win. No game just gives you a "Win The Game" button. Didn't think I'd have to spell it out, but I've seen idiots on YouTube and other places arguing literally, "It's not pay to win, because you only get an advantage over other players, not a guarantee that you'll win.")

Just... lately it's gotten out of proportion.

Add to that the fact that the company has been basically lying to players and community contributors lately, been breaking former promises left and right, and so on. Oh and lately started deleting posts and dropping community contributors if they dare criticize the company.

But here's the real kicker, and really all you need to know: when one guy went and checked the stats of every known Wargaming employee into a spreadsheet, including high profiles guys who appear in gaming streams and whatnot, it turns out that all of them COMBINED had played only a total of less than 300 games over the last one year period. (Which actually means a lot less than 100 hours. For all of them combined.) So yeah, no wonder they have no idea how to balance the game or what is fun and what isn't. But anyway, that's all you need to know: even they don't like playing their own game.

Oh, and here's how professional this company is, in case you were wondering: The guy who did the above statistic was called Turry. Not only did they drop him out of the community contributor program for criticizing the company, but then immediately released a code for the game, conspicuously containing the letters "FK U TURY".

What do you get when the French try to make a Japanese RPG? Well, in this case, actually they seem to have done a very competent job of it so far. You could slap a Square-Enix logo on it, and nobody would bat an eye. Or you could make a Shonen anime (i.e., anime for teenage boys, typically action-heavy) out of it, and it would fit right in on Funimation or Crunchyroll.

In fact, the main difference between this and an actual JRPG so far is that you can't set the voice to Japanese and the subtitles to English. Add that and it could probably pass a double-blind test as to whether it's actually a Japanese game or not :p

Well, that and it hasn't started to get preachy about the power of friendship and working together. The Japanese LOVE to do that. Nor does it make you spend 90% of your time bonding with team mates, a la Persona.

But then again, I'm fairly early in the game. The Japanese also tend to wait a few hours before starting to educate you about friendship and working together.

So, yeah, thumbs up. If you like JRPG and wanted to play one over the summer, this is pretty much it.

It seems like a decently competently done open-world tab-target MMO, with the main twist being the eponymous rifts. Plus being able to use the dungeon or raid finder even at a different level than yours, and it will adjust your level so you're at least competitive there. Which I suppose they had to do, given the low population these days.

Meaning, basically that if you know how to play WoW, FF14, LOTRO, SWTOR, Everquest 2, or any other classic tab-target MMO, you should pretty much know how to play this one.

This one also has talent trees that are, well, somewhat of a middle ground between TBC/WOW Classic and SWTOR. Which for me is a plus.

And it lets you mix and match 3 out of several talent trees for each class, so you can customize your exact class a lot. Want to be a healer with a pet? You can. Want to be a mage who can tank? You can. Etc.


And to address the elephant in the room: yes, it does try to sell you stuff for real money, and some of it seems to be actual advantages over non-paying people. Such as being able to have every single crafting and harvesting skill in the game at the same time on one character, if you reach for the credit card. I'm not thrilled about it to be honest, to put it very mildly, but at least it doesn't seem to be actually NEEDED for anything. It doesn´t go to the extremes other games go to, which create some unholy grind or some other problem that they can sell you a solution for.

Not saying it makes it ok, but it's not the worst, if that's any consolation.

In fact, some of the real money stuff seems to be rather pointless, if I'm to be honest. Like, sure, you can pay to be always stuffed full of XP boost potion... in a game where you can join higher level groups than you are anyway, and where levelling up is very fast anyway. Or, sure, you can buy the only blue-quality gear in the game for levels 1 to 9, but, just like in any other game at that level range, it's not like you're ever even in any actual danger without it.


In fact, I've been racking my brain to remember why I didn't play it more the first time around, since I still have the boxed CD on a shelf, bought on launch day a decade ago. Only thing I can remember is that it annoyed the crap out of me with insisting to send me a one-time code by email every single time I logged in. Every. Single. Time. I had a very sucky online email provider at the time, where I had to sit and refresh for many minutes to get the code by email, which wasn't fun when I was just trying to hop into the game.

These days the learned and toned it down to new logins on a new computer, like everyone else, but back then they made logging in positively not fun. Which is one way to condition new players to stop logging into your game.

Otherwise, to be honest, I might have been on this game all along instead of WoW and a few other games.

Another game I already had on DVD since waaay back, but since it was on sale massively discounted, wth, I can afford to blow a couple of Euro to not bother looking for the physical DVD every time. So what I'm trying to say is that I actually have several times the number of hours played shown on Steam.

The game is really a task-driven colony builder sim, with some combat if you choose to do the combat missions. You don't get a free form city builder like Cities Skylines, nor a RTS a la Command And Conquer. You build a colony to fit specific goals, like have enough upgraded houses and the resources to build a certain monument.

Depending on which side of the mission tree you go for, you can have missions which are purely about peacefully building your colony (with some random events like "6 houses set on fire" or "10 citizens and 10 slaves infected with the plague", to shake things up) or some which more military-focused. So for example in the economic missions you might trade with the barbarians and even bribe them into becoming your village, while in the military missions you will usually have to fight them, and possibly conquer them to make them your village. Or you can just get the most out of the money you paid for the game and play both kinds of missions.

And, given that it comes with every single expansion it ever had, there are LOT of such missions. You're really getting a lot of content for very little money, which is great.