Recent reviews by LeChevalier88

Paradox is still adding DLCs for this game to this day, 8 years after release, yay! Keep them coming.

Well, of course. Obviously, duh....Needs no explaining.

Every week there"s a free to try content packs (DLC), so you can play the DLC for free for the whole week. Most of the DLCs are in rotation of this weekly free to try content packs. I really appreciate the dev"s decision to offer this. You can use this occasion to help you decide which DLC you will buy in the future. You"ve got lots of options.

The base game is very cheap and you can take advantage of the weekly free contents.

I nominated this game for Steam"s Labor of Love award because new contents are still being released. The devs keep improving this game. Months ago they added challenges system to the game. Patches are also released regularly. They fix the game"s bugs and glitches.

Pay-to-win scheme BS, unlike their other TD games.

If you wanna restart a level because you"ve just made a mistake or trying other tactics, you"re limited to 5 tries for a period of about 30 min. in-game time each. If you wanna retry more, either you have to wait for that countdown to end or pay for more retries.

You can"t collect this collectible thing called Elixir in this game, that you can use to upgrade towers or something else, by playing another level of different difficulty. There"s no difficulty choice in this game. If you"re stuck at a level, you"re stuck. You have no other source of Elixir to better your chances to beat that level, other than paying them $99. It"s simply a pay-to-win!

Different tower specializations cost the same and some are useless, unlike in their other TD games.

I"d like to compare Civ VI to Civ V in this review. More people think that Civilization V is the better game compared to this game, in my observation. But I like this game better than its predecessor. I think this game is an improvement and that"s why I like it better, although I also love Civ V. Here are some things why:
* I like the visuals better, although I prefer realistic leader characters than a cartoonish ones like in this game. I also like the interface better.
* Food is now less important compared to Civ V. Hence, cities in desert, tundra can be better now thanks to districts.
* Growth is limited by Housing capacity. You can build districts, buildings, and improvements to increase Housing capacity in your cities.
* District is a complex new thing in this iteration. There is much to learn for new player about districts. Districts are very important in this game.
* City-States now have unique abilities that they offer to their suzerain. In Civ V the importance of city-states depend on their type, location and resources in their regions. Rather than using cash to gain favor with the city-states, now you have Envoys. This are limited depending on what diplomatic policy you have set in your government. You can also gain a free envoy by doing things like quests from city-state once for every era.
* The civic system is now similar to the tech tree. Many of these civics unlock policies upon research completion. Player has policy slots for their goverment of choice, which they can fill the slots with unlocked policies. This offers flexibility you don"t get in Civ V. Cost of these civics are not affected by the size of your empire like in previous game and I like big empires.
* There are unique boosts for technologies and civics. You can do specific action in your empire to boost a certain tech or civic. This gives you a chance to compete better with your rivals that possess stronger science or culture generation.
* Wonders now have unique placement requirement(s). A city with very high production capability or a leader ability that grants bonus to build wonders can"t just spam wonders anymore. Some wonders are unlocked with civics.
* Great People are now limited but have unique abilities. They"re grouped into their historic eras in real history.
* Culture is now used to gain Tourism. You win Cultural victory by accumulating Tourism points above everyone else.
* Tiles now have Appeal value, which have effects like on generating Tourism, yield from Seaside Resort improvement.
* More game modes added with expansions and updates. This offer more variety and challenge to your gaming experience.
* Now you have Builders, instead of Workers. Builders now have charges. Constructing improvement now done instantly and consume a charge. They"re gone once all charges have been spent. Compared to previous games, Workers can build how many improvements you want but that takes turns to finish.
* Pillaging improvement now changes the status of the improvement to be "pillaged", rather than destroyed, which you have to rebuild if you need it. Also buildings in the cities may be pillaged, as opposed to get destroyed on city capture.
* Roads are now automatically built by Trader unit assigned on a trade route. You can also order your Military Engineer to do that but that will cost a charge, which is expensive.
* The soundtracks are awesome, as always with this franchise. For each leader now you got 4 new themes: ancient, medieval, industrial, and atomic. In Civ V you"ve got war and peace themes and themes for cultural groups like Asia, America, etc.

On the opposing side, I prefer Civ V"s movement system. Now you need full 2 points to enter a hill or forest. Previously if you have a remaining 0.5 you can enter such tiles or cross the river.

I nominate this game for Labor of Love. Firaxis just released the new Leader Pass, just in time for Steam Awards nominations. Good timing, Firaxis! New content for a 6-year old game, for a game that already has so much replayability, adding even more replayability and more playstyle varieties, for a game that is already one of my all time favorite, is always greatly welcome. People are already talking about Civ VII. Some leaders from previous games return. Very nice!

This is a very highly recommended game for a board/card game lovers. The artworks and animations are beautiful. I like the style of the artist(s). The developer is an indie studio and seems to me a small one like most indie studios. It"s amazing that the devs keep updating this game with patches and new contents. They"re doing a good job keeping this game well alive for several years since this game was released. The recently released DLC is The Dragon Clan is a good one, a decent expansion. The multiplayer is alive as well, that you won"t be having difficulties finding other players to play with, most of the times. There"s sometimes freezes or No More Actions (NMA), especially in multiplayer where it matters more, but they"ve keeping it to low occurrence and when that happens, they compensate you with a free item drop.

Most of the item drops are dice, the others are character skins. You can get them daily. At least one for checking the Skeeve"s Shop and three more playing the multiplayer games to the finish. The artwork for the dices are good too. It makes me interested to start collecting the dices.

About the gameplay, this game has a very high factor of luck involved, compared to similar games. The RNG Gods rule supreme. It can be annoying in single player, when you have a bad luck string. But in multiplayer, at least it"s a consolation that it can happen to anyone. The player has a wide option for gameplay style. The characters" unique characteristics make for different approaches to play, but you aren"t limited to play a certain character in just one or two ways. You can play it differently if you want. For example, if you play a fighter like Thane, you don"t have to play aggresive to other players, or you can play spellcaster like those of Bear Clan aggresively or cooperatively. Diplomacy can play significantly in the game, played in the ways like in Monopoly. It can greatly affect the outcome of your strategy and your experiences playing the game, in multiplayer games, not with AI.

The game is relatively short, at least compared to most other games I play. Roughly it"s about an hour to finish. It can finish shorter if you or someone else decide to go for a quick victory. It can also finish longer (several more turns) if the King receives additional health points. But it"s still an hour more or less to complete. There"s a multiplayer game mode Fury Friday (every Friday) is a slightly shorter if you prefer shorter games. And there"s another multiplayer game mode every Wednesday with modified rules if you"re interested a bit variation of rules.

You get to choose an amulet and a ring for your selected hero that give a bonus stat or other benefits that may synchronize with your strategy. Some of those are unlockables as you play the game with different heroes, some others come with some DLCs, and the rest is available for default.

I highly recommend this game for those who are interested in the strategy, specifically turn-based and fantasy. It"s one of the best in the market. I like this game much better than the older Age of Wonders games, which are themselves great. None of them in the series is a bad game. That"s another reason to like the franchise, the developer"s work. This is a well-made game, polished enough. No noticeable crashes or bugs. The classes and races are pretty much balanced. You"ve got plenty of choices to play the game according to your preferred style. You can try different strategies combined with different races, class, skills.

Each class has its own unique units. You can combine the characteristics of this units with the owner"s classes, for example you can train Human Engineer or High-Elf Engineer, depends on the city of what race that produces them. The units are classified into 4 tiers, Tier I to Tier IV. These tiers determine the level of their strength and the costs. There are units that are produced in cities, cost gold to maintain and summoned units that require mana upkeep. There are basic units, the units produced in cities regardless of the class which the leader belongs to. Some leader"s classes grant bonuses to this standard city-produced units, other classes offers bonuses for summoned units. When playing scenarios and random maps, there"s an option to create a customized leader yourself, in addition to a couple dozens of existing leaders to choose from. You can pick your leader"s class, skills, race, appearances to your liking.

You learn new spells in addition to your starting spells by conducting research. Other than spells, you can choose to research empire upgrades, which availability depends on your leader"s class and your leader"s skills. Class-based units require research to unlock before you can produce them in your cities. The spells are divided into two types, combat spells, which can only cast during combat and global spells which are cast outside combat. Among the global spells there are one-time spells and there are spells that gives continued effects.

Research is a type of resource generated from cities and certain other sites. Other main resources are gold, mana, and production. Gold and mana are produced in the same way as research points. Production is only used in cities, determines how many turns it takes to finish a building or a unit. You can setup a queue for the city production. Unfortunately there is no overflowing production concept like in Civilization games. If your city has the production capability to finish an item in one term, you can only get that one item that turn, nothing else. A single city cannot finish more than one item each turn.

The soundtrack is great. I love it as it"s a kind of music I enjoy. I also like it better than previous game in the series. The composer is Michiel van den Bos, who also composed for Deus Ex and Unreal games.

A single game can be long, taking hours, depends on map size and number of players, and your style of play. For achievement hunters, campaign can be completed reasonably long, but not very long hours of playtime. There"s no crazy grinding here like killing hundreds of thousands of creatures. For scoring, this is not a game that requires you to finish it as soon as you can. There"s no scoring based on how many turns you"ve spent to complete the objectives, so you don"t have to rush, which is not my style.

When first starting this game I just felt like I wanted to kiss it. You know I"m automatically attracted to beautiful games like this. It’s like a magnet. I just kissed it. I didn’t even wait. And when you’re a covfefe, the game lets you do it. Grab it by the p***y. You can do anything.

This is one of the games that keeps me coming back to play it over the years. Released on Steam long after Medieval II, this game has better medieval immersion than its sequel. This is because of small things like unique historical provincial title (Count of Anjou, Prince of Antioch, etc), Roman numerals after reigning monarch"s name (Pope Urban II, King Henry V), the granting offices of Marshal, Constable, etc to the monarch"s vassals. They disappear in Medieval II.

You"ll rarely find yourself have nobody to grant the governorship of a province of yours to. You can appoint any unit commander to become one. In Medieval II, only generals and adult male royal family members who can and they"re often numbered less than the province you own. There are random appearance of general available for adoption to your family if you have more provinces than your generals. This is by chance and you can"t have a governor for every province you own anytime you want.

This game is also more challenging than M2TW. One of the reasons is the unit control in battle. Controlling is better in M2TW. If you manually control a missile unit engaging enemy unit in skirmish, constantly double clicking to run away when enemy getting closes, your unit would eventually rout and won"t be recoverable. The game consider that unit commander is a coward. You can"t rely on the game"s skirmish mode at certain situations. This is true for both MTW and M2TW.

Classic FPS. Don"t call yourself a fan of FPS genre if you haven"t tried this game.