Recent reviews by kezthezek

It's great !

GET IT !!!

A very good mix of different genres. Only early game so far but already infatuated with it, there's ton of mechanics.

new: fixed, get it, it's really good

old: While the game got better in 1.7 for sure, I'm getting constant crashes which I didn't get before. Fix it please.

Ok, lets break this down. I'm an avid strategy player so I know my stuff. I'll do a bullet point comparison with other grand strategy games, hopefully a fair one.

Combat vs EU4: here it's much more in depth, you have per-unit modifiers and traits, you have buildings that affect the combat on title and unit performance based on terrain type, each unit has it's own cost depending on many factors, you have "special units" per province, you have multiple types of units (levy, mercenaries, standing - frontlione, archers, skirmishers). Similar to this is combat width, generals and general approach to combat.

Economy vs Victoria 3: You have more buildings that in Victoria 3. You can move props to generate money (similar to MOO2). I would say it's on par with Vic3.

Economy vs EU4: EU4 is very basic here, FGK clearly wins

Trade vs Victoria3: FGK loses here, but not by much. You can micromanage to hell what region generates what resource in order to maximize profits, if you're into that king of thing.

Trade vs EU4: EU4 wins here on the strategy layer, there are pivotal regions to capture in EU4 in order to trade better. FGK doesn't really have that.

Diplomacy vs EU4: FGK loses here big time. While imho FGK is the better game, the diplomacy in EU4 is so good that makes it kinda even.

UX vs any other game post 2010: I think the UI (graphics/sounds) are the worst offenders here. They are at best, not offending or not in your way.

Empire management vs EU4: EU4 has more modifiers, so it has more stuff to click and to consider. They are pretty similar here, but FGK wins on the anti-snowball mechanics, up to a point. EU4 late game is potentially better.

Dynasty/characters management vs CK3: it's a loss here, obviously. But you have to consider stuff like loyalty and traits. But overall it's a basic feature that doesn't feel lacking or insulting.

Ok, so unique features to FGK:

- regional/province management is tops, you have lots of buildings, lots of props, lots of metrics to manage per region, very good
- the kingdom progression system, while not unique in itself (it's also present in all EU4/CK3/Vic3) the way it's implemented here is quite different (revolving around the authority system which is definitely a limited "mana", but quite good)

tl;dr if you like Victoria3/EU4/Shadow Empire get this; if you want something like CK3/Civ you might want to do further research.

Great game, even if you're not a fan of the Alien franchise I still think you will enjoy this quite a bit.

Buy this if on sale and if you like the T movies.

But the game is 40e over here and about 10-12h length, I can't really recommend it though.

I mean this genre is super tedious but the game is fun.

If you're looking for something like Sanctum be aware, it's not even near that.

The gameplay loop is this:
- 30 minutes of a very bad, low fps and clunky FPS
- 5 minutes of incredibly bad dialogue/voice acting
- 5-10 minutes of "tower defense" where you actually just wait for the entire thing to be over

In the promo videos they showcase mostly the base defense part, but that's actually less than 10% of the actual gameplay.

Ok, I finished the campaign and these are my thoughts:
- the game is a bit on the easy side
- too much damn text in the "cutscenes", I mean holly hell I was clicking to skip for minutes in some occasions. Wouldn't be a problem if the story was interesting, but alas I didn't find it too good
- the presentation is good (graphics, sounds)
- the gameplay is mostly just waiting around, I didn't feel like I had to optimize much

Overall for the price I think it's an OK game, maybe wait for a sale.

Prepare for the smurfs.

Game is fun, well made and all that but the matchmaking is crap.