Recent reviews by alghero

Great game, looking forward to the next expansions in particular in the massive all-in campaign.

Really nice game, addictive and perfectly working despite being an Early Access game.
I like to play games when they are finished, but supported these developers and wanted to try the game to see if it was well spent money and so far I like the direction the game is going. It's already enjoyable enough and the developers are great at communicating their roadmap.

The graphics cannot compare to modern games or the more colourful Civilizations.
The UI is clunky, moving units can be non intuitive, giving orders can be problematic.
The game is simple in its core.
Say what you want about this game, but is an immortal classic and as soon as I turned on I was way past midnight caught in the "just one last turn".
At the end may not compare to the new games, but does it matter if you can't stop playing it?
Thumbs up forever!

Exceptional, not much else to say!
I personally don't like how many skill checks I end up losing, but that's the game

I had to stop because it was too addictive... As simple as it looks but extremely funny.
If you are a completionist this game will have you hooked for a long time!!! Personally I was not interested in the Multiplayer side, I came here for the Solo experience and I'm fully enjoying it.

First review based on completing the first mission. The game is at a good start, you can see the Fallout-type of vibe, however for now is a bit clunky and in dire of need of more content.
Pros:
- Interesting setting
- Variety of weapons and attacks available, swapping between them to see hitting chances and costs is free
- No game-breaking bug in the first hour of play

Cons:
- No apparent consequence in the conversation options
- Certain stances and defensive positions are not implemented yet
- Inventory can do with some more love (only main character can access it and things like ammo have to be "equipped" to recharge, then not appearing any more in your main inventory.
- Not possible to use attacks to ambush enemies or healing abilities outside of combat

Will update once completed more missions, but would recommend it for now, although be prepared for a long ride before getting a more polished product.

As fun as the old Theme Hospital, with updated graphics and easy to understand interface. Highly recommended if you are feeling that nostalgia from those times! Or just if removing pans stuck to people's heads with a magnet sounds lots of fun!

TL;DR:
Lovely game! Played all of them and loved them. Have to say this one gets a bit more grinding than the past ones and I would a loved a bit of Easter eggs here and there but in general it's a really nice Point & Click game.

The game follows the adventure of a soon-to-be hero while he accomplishes initially menial tasks. While the plot evolves new areas are uncovered, each with new resources available. By repeating a task multiple times, it increases the skill for that task and allows also to gather more difficult resources. For example: you start being able to hunt only rabbits, then you learn to hunt foxes, boars and so on. Most skills present a bubble that shows what are the requirements before completing it.
Unfortunately, this is not true for the campfire skills where you can see what you need only when you finished at least one ingredient.
Another aspect would have been nice would be the ability to decide how many times to complete a certain task at once, for example produce 5 healing potions at once, etc. Also keyboard shortcuts to allow to buy batches at once instead of clicking multiple times would have been great. Money becomes infinite quite soon in the game, but to obtain it it’s extremely tedious and involves going back and forward two places clicking multiple times to buy each product one by one and then selling them one by one.
Combat works as every other skill, many monsters have a difficulty that needs to be reached before progressing forward and killing them can provide some resources. There’s no injury or death, you either can kill an enemy or you cannot and have to improve your skill with easier monsters in other areas. While this avoids reaching certain areas before the plot evolved enough, it also means that to make it a bit punishing you may lose your weapons after a fight (like your shield or sword may break). By the end of the game I was basically producing a silver sword every 2/3 fights and that can become tedious quite soon.
All in all, even with few flaws that I hope will be improved in the next game, it’s a valid game for few hours of play. And for who loves grinding, obtaining all achievements will surely push the threshold over the 10 hours of playtime.

I have been playing this game for a quite a while and maybe, only maybe, I'm starting to understand how it works right now (~200h). It is not a game for everyone and it's true: waiting times are everywhere. In theory, you can pay to reduce them but, apart becoming incredibly expensive pretty soon, removes part of the fun of the game and not all can be removed. This game is not one you sit and play for hours consecutively. You plan in advance. Even 8-24h before. What do you want to do? Where do you want to be? And when you gathered what you need and updated your main skills, it's time for a good ol' fight and go into a dungeon and try to get some more coins or rare materials.
Skills are increased by doing certain activities, for example woodcutting is raised by felling logs or transforming logs in planks. Every action has a level of difficulty (some time the activity has also a terrain level of difficulty). You must overcome them, to be able to do the action, with your base skill plus companions/tools/jewellery/etc. Doing those actions increases your skills (only when your base skill without the bonus is lower). So, when an action is mastered you have to move to the next action that still improves your skills. All over the world NPCs will give you quests, usual fetch or craft quests, but this gives you a direction of what next tasks you have to practice for.
Dungeons are different as you move on a board and every action can trigger a random fight. In this fight, each turn you can attack the enemy, defend or cover one character. Maximum 5 companions including the avatar can participate in a single fight. Each successful hit reduces one of the health bars (2 for companions and enemies, 6 for the avatar) chosen at random. Once one of the bars is depleted that character is out of the fight. If the avatar is eliminated you can’t fight any more and you must rest. If this happens in a dungeon you are automatically evicted. There is no perma-death, after resting enough all companions are back to normal.
My personal opinion is that this game is a little gem. Some waiting times are ridiculously high and they could improve on it. For example, every time you move on a dungeon you have to wait 5 second… why? Half of the world has not been finished yet, but the half that has been finished it’s already pretty intense. Took me 2 months playing solo to raise in my main trade skills to be able to produce something it’s actually worth selling. But I slowly started to understand that solo is not the correct way. The community is amazing, they helped me a lot, lending materials, under-selling products I needed or just with hints. There are plenty of guides and materials in Internet and even complex calculations already solved for you.
It’s not a game for everyone, but for who is searching a light-hearted RPG where you do what YOU want, WHEN YOU want it and is prepared to wait some time while planning his next move, then I would definitely recommend this game.

As you can see from my playtime, I plaid this game for quite a fair amount of time, but I always had that syndrome of "just another turn” that prevented me from actually writing a review.
I had this game for years and I return back from time to time to try to tackle some new achievements. Most of them are either too easy or extremely hard if not impossible, especially without exploits. The achievements are possible only in ironman mode, basically preventing save spamming. That means the game is extremely unforgiven. If you are a completionist like me, this is not the game for you. Without cheats would most likely take your entire life to get 100%, considering also that Paradox adds new achievements regularly.
Why am I introducing this topic? Well to start with, there are plenty of reviews already, so the game has been discussed in length. It’s the best strategic game in this genre. Period. No discussions on this topic.
Most negative reviews are based on the price model. Now, here we go back to the completionist problem. Buying everything today will cost you a fortune. I bought almost everything in 3 years and honestly didn’t feel the weight at all, guess it was less than 5£ a month, that is anyway less than one lunch in Central London. But I understand today it can be overwhelming. If you are not interested in the achievements then you can play really stable and entertaining beta versions of the game before any DLC (or just those you don’t own) ever came out, if the thing bothers you. Another advantage to avoid achievements is that you can then ignore ironman and use mods that make the game even easier or more suited to your own playstyle. I honestly don’t know other games with such number of beta versions, but one of the reasons they exist is that save games are usually incompatible between major versions. The thing that really bothers me of the DLC is that I have the Digital Edition but it does not tick it off from my list of owned DLC because I bought the individual items years ago. And that’s just my OCD speaking…
So to resume: I would recommend the base game to anyone interested in this genre. The game is often on sales (even the DLC can get as much as 60% off). If you have a lot of spare time you can learn the game and after a while you will master it. After 600h I feel like I still have to learn a lot and I do many mistakes. If you are interested in the DLC, the expansions add more content, the music and the unit/portraits packs can be easily avoided. All DLCs are, by absolutely no mean, mandatory. You can play any beta version you prefer if having a “disadvantage” against the UI bothers you and still enjoy the game.
One last comment: would I prefer more DLC for a game I own or a new game that would necessarily lack the same depth (EU 5)? I’m usually more for DLCs because it kinda feels like progression. But maybe now it’s time to work on a new game and leave EU4 to its place in the Olympus that it deserves.