Recent reviews by Ronik

For roughly two hours, I tried to join a server with my friends that I was told was Low population. It consistently, simply, did not work and did not join. No queue was offered, and it kept telling me it was low pop. I never saw the actual gameplay of this game because of how badly server joining was handled. Real blegh game experience, as I only saw the menu while continually joining a friend's low-pop server without any option to join a queue or ANYTHING.

Just a sign of fundamentally bad player design that sucks to get into, revealing how the developers handle things. So be skeptical that this game is worth putting any real time into when it's so hard to just play with friends.

One of the most ambitious games I've ever seen. A huge world, with tons of asymmetrical gameplay and design choices within. All the races have their own niche in style, art, units, and lore.

Seeing a horde of ratmen raging across a battle, nearly covering the ground with their sheer numbers, to dark elves sacrificing of themselves (and their slaves) to produce deadly magicks, to dwarven grudges with their fortresses and powerful technology (gyrocopters and flamethrowers), to sandstorms uncovering vast sphinxes that you see loping towards you and your army... All of these just build a vibrant world the likes of which I don't think I've seen before.

That said, on the slightly more troublesome side of things, the game can be very demanding of your focus, as you try to constantly outflank your enemies or keep an eye out that your enemy isn't getting assassins into your fragile back-line of Artillery and mages. I've found the mental strain makes it difficult to go through whole campaigns as you have to deal with larger and larger battles. They look wonderful, but trying to control units in, for example, a 40 vs 40 unit battle is very brain-draining.

Even with that .. caveat, and the cost of all the DLC etc, this game is simply inspiring and breathtaking in what it does.

Play leading hundreds of historical nations. This game has a lot of depth to back up the choice it gives you as well. Control such things as the faith of your people, development of land, and try to play nice when bordered by hungry world powers that want everything you have. Build alliances against colossal threats, trading empires, or just survive the inevitable loss of your leaders as they die far too fast for the stability of your nation.

Learn about historical europe and a lot of how the nations and cultures were affected by history as you try to scrabble for ground in what can be a rather cutthroat game. This game taught me such things as how the French were truly a force to be reckoned with, despite jokes and memes. It taught me the threat that Christian Europe faced from the Ottoman Empire, let alone what it even was. It even taught me some of the reasons why Catalonia today is trying to be independent from Spain over the last year or two.

So yeah, play this game if you have an interest in learning about history, while you often attempt to change it in one of the deepest strategic games around. Just when you thought the Civilization series "one more turn" was bad...