Recent reviews by V

Easily one of the finest and well polished games to have come out in the last decade and certainly the best one this year. Took 200+ hours and it was epic all the way through. Seeing the credits roll after the first run had such a satisfying feeling but also so sad that it was all over.
Story, tactics, game play, music, animations, voice acting etc were all 10/10.
A couple of minor gripes that have followed on since Divinity 2 though like why can we still not label backpacks?! grrr... Frame rates in act 3 were also struggling to keep up on 2080Ti i7-9700k.
Some of the side quest missions like the hag were some of the best in any game ever! The companion quests were also brilliant although I wish some of their stories were fleshed out more at the end like for Gale, Lae'zel and Karlach. I didn't like Astarion's character at first but his ended up being one of the best redempion arcs and he became my best bro at the end.
I feel a small epilogue act would have been perfect, or atleast a longer wrap up of the choices you've made throughout the game instead of the abrupt end.
I would love Larian studios to now make a similar game in a different non-fantasy world.

Potentially the next "stardew valley". That is, if the developers show even half the labour of love that stardew got. Everything is well setup for it!
Currently in early access, it takes about 15 hours to finish all the main content, but I want sooooo much more!

I played through the whole thing on steam deck with zero issues. It feels like it's almost made for the deck!

The gameplay loop is so chill and addictive. Just one more run!
Dungeon crawling like fishing and then sell the fish in the restaurant in the evening. Repeat next day, as a very interesting story happens along the way. Boss fights are quite fun and you upgrade your weapons and equipment as you progress and loot more. The pacing is perfect.

There are a lot of surprising side stuff to do as well like mini games (rythm, racing, etc), a little food and fish farming.

Can't wait for the full release in June!

Why do Marvel's superheroes love to TALK SO MUCH!?? All the time yap yap yap yap yap. "Oh we have an apocalypse and the world is ending? Let's do book club night and talk about our feelings y'all"!!

Just be like Batman and get sh*t done *POW* *WHAM* *BAM* "I'm Batman"!
Done! Kids these days I swear.

Oh the game is really good. Just skip past all the "life sim" BS and get to the combat and deck building which is the good stuff and the meat and bones of the game. Also start the game without the 2K launcher, it will solve all the performance issues.

8/10 (early access review).
First of all, STOP LOOKING AT PICTURES/VIDEOS. Encountering those surprise "bosses" for the first time and having that "oh ♥♥♥♥" heart racing moments is one of the best parts of this game.

This game started developing quite long ago, but it is now an absolute gem of a base building RTS and feels so unique! I can't wait to see what else they add!
Very challenging (if you want it to be). But so satisfying when you complete the missions, only to be hit by an even greater boss and more terrifying creatures that make your spine tingle and skin crawl. However, you also get more options to hit them back with.

Very very strategic gameplay. There is always a way to win no matter how daunting the task may be if you are tactical about it. Reminds me of the good old RTS games of the 90s. I think this has the potential to be one of the all time great RTS if they keep adding more content. Get it!

It was fun to play through once.
The DLCs are definitely way more fun and well balanced than the base game.
Combat is extremely weak and not really challenging enough after the first 3 hours, even on hard and supernova setting (supernova is just hard mode with some QoL features removed to make it more irritating). So, it kinda felt like most of the the loot were a waste. I barely used any consumables except food and drink to satisfy the supernova requirements. The builds you make also doesn't really matter that much. So in that way, this "RPG" feels more like a narrative adventure version of Fallout in colorful space. But this is much better balanced and rewarding in the DLCs.
So, this is a 5/10 from me for the base game only, but along with the DLCs which you can get for cheap on a sale makes the whole package worth a 7/10.

Super immersive and really fun game. Sadly, it only works for me on solo mode and crashes all the time on co-op. And Co-op is what I really want to play this on. Very frustrating.

Started this game about a year ago, and slowly but surely... finally finished it! Epic RPG.
Had some strange difficulty spikes where it would either be too easy or ridiculously difficult like as if the AI would cheat.
Act 1 is a MASSIVE tutorial and probably the toughest part of the game. Acts 2 and 3 really opens up and were stunningly good. Act 4 and the final boss was kind of a meh for me. But overall this is prob the best CRPGs around!

Ave Legate!

Just completed the game clocking in at 110 hours on hard mode. Was really fun! This was another total surprise hidden gem that will go past a lot of people. Still early, but this will surely be a strong contender for game of the year for me, and I am really looking forward to the game that will beat it!


What can you expect?

So firstly, the MAIN focus of this game is built around the tactical turn based combat encounters, quite similar to x-com but in a Rome legionnaire setting with swords, shields, bows, daggers and pikes. Do not go in expecting a Divinity Original Sin with pickpocketing, complex side quests, RPG mechanics or a large world or something like that. This is not a typical CRPG. But built around this solid foundation of turn based tactical combat, there are several things:

• A good story based on some historical characters and settings with great voice acting. Companion characters you will really care about or villains you really really hate. Some very basic romance options. Be careful with that Cleopatra though. She's got a sharp tongue (But what a very pretty nose!).
  
  
• There will be several major decisions you need to take, and they really affect the story and who will end up helping you or not even much further in the game. The final cutscenes of the game are very long and give you various repercussions of your entire journey and all the various decisions you made like who you helped overthrow or who you let live or killed etc and all the resulting outcomes of those. Not every decision you think is good, leads to a good outcome.
  
  
• A lot of the conversations and the way people talk to you even changes based on whether you are male or female. Being a female in the Roman army has more resistances to overcome and you would be more driven to prove yourself.
  
  
• For those who love the Asterix and Obelix comics, keep a watch out for some really cool easter eggs and even missions based on those stories in the Act 3 in Gaul ;-) There are also some name drops from the Spartacus TV show.
  
  
• There is an army that you need to build up to conquer various towns and resources on the map. This is just a fairly simple card view battle system, and you will also encounter many random story events that affects your characters along the paths on the map. With these resources, you can further develop your main base and get loot.
  
  
• You get loot (Weapons, armor, consumables, resources) through defeating encounters or by a decent crafting system once you have upgraded your home base.
  
  
• You level up your companions and yourself through 3 trees which can play very differently. There is no respec. So choose wisely. But you can hire or dismiss many characters in the game to have several options, though you would need to level them up all up individually. Speaking of which, xp is gained for the whole team, and not based on who gets the most kills. This imo is very good since it then does not limit you to playing only a certain way.

Bugs

Didn't have any game breaking bugs. But this game really does not like alt-tabbing out. The game crashed many times if I tried to switch to another window. There were also rarely some small bugs especially in act 3 where the battle overlay UI would not appear, or I could not open some chests even though I got the prompt for it. A quick reload solved these issues. I would not recommend Ironman mode until they fix this. Save often. Otherwise, performance is really good!


Improvements

Not a lot honestly. The one thing I really wish existed was a simple QoL UI improvement. Whenever you start an encounter - you have to select 6 people. This particular menu doesn't really show what weapons they are carrying or armor etc. You are supposed to just "remember" what they have equipped. To find out, you would need to quit out and go back to the character screens. A simple equipped inventory summary would have been nice in the selection screen itself.

Oh, the game could also use a lot more character portraits. They also don't look a lot like the in-game models and that kind of grinds my gears a little.


Lastly, I'd recommend playing this on hard difficulty or above.
Normal or below would just be too boring in my opinion. This is really a strategy game, and the fun in this game is in making builds, trying out different strategies, positions, team balance and moves. None of this will matter if you just go around one shotting everyone. Don't give up. There is always a solution and is very satisfying when you pull it off :-)

Vale!

It's a very chill "city builder". But this is not like Cities Skylines where you will work on your one city for 100s of hours and marvel at its glory. You will get screwed here and will have to start over after about 10-15 hours every run to fix your previous mistakes unless you are very experienced.

This is one of those games where after about 10 hours of relaxed expansion and growth, you'll run into bottlenecks like population growth or you'd be running out of a specific resource like Electronics... but it's very hard to solve that because you are very restricted in your current infrastructure and run into a catch 22 situation. Which means your run is ruined...
Try again from start and fix your last mistakes by planning better! Ah but in the next run, something else screws you over! Eventually after many runs, you will learn and get further and further.
If that sounds like fun to you, then this game is worth getting.
This game is reasonably quite deep in the things you can do, and the research options you get are random every run.

I read in many places that this game is really slow at first and starts to get good later on. I'm about 16 hours in right now, and it's really really slow and repetitive. And from what I see, it's going to be another 20 hours at least until it starts to "get good". And I don't think I can grind more. Perhaps another day. The characters so far including the main one you play are just a bore fest, and there really isn't any carrot for your to chase.

Graphics are quite decent though, and I had no issues with performance.

So unless you are someone who is really really into Ubisoft styled open world repetitive games or are willing to put in 30+ hours of a boring grind to get to the meat, I wouldn't really recommend this.