Recent reviews by Core

The game is truly one of the greatest and a wonderful sequel. I could spout all the greats, but there are innumerably many, so instead I will tackle the only not great.

Only critique is that one can only really play the builds for what the devs prepared for Early Access, or variations here off. (8-9 builds with 2-3 variations each) This is a staple of the genre, but not of PoE 1. So people complaining over this is valid, but this is because PoE 1 spoiled them. Just accept you will play one that the devs curated and let the flow lead you and have a wonderful time.

Nothing revolutionary here. Classic merchant experience similar to Campaign Mount and Blade, Frontier, Rise of Venice and ect. But here with an actual expanding gameplay-loop against other AIs that can challenge you.
Good execution and I would have expected this to cost about 5 to 10 euro.

The devs had the opportunity to make a game form scratch, with all they've learnt from starcraft in the knowhow. And then they make a game where cannonrushing is viable.
I'll leave comments on and please write when they nerf that ♥♥♥♥ into the ground. Then i will return and may change my review.

I like the expansion and free patch so far. Especially the new diplomatic options are phenominal! The use, allocation and gathering of favors are now something that is an active part of ones play where the player often interacts with it. With this system it now makes sense so activly pursue favors from ones allies and do more than bare minimum when helping them in their wars.
Also the place heir is a great option. Saves so much time and/or required luck in getting PUs over other empires. I hope it doesn't get nerfed depite being very strong.

Cons is that so far it has dropped a sync error once an hour while i played multiplayer. Takes a full minute to rehost the game. Not as unstable as reported, but not as stable as usual.
Also you need Cossacks to get the most out of this expansion.

The game has quite alot LESS than say the Anno series or Grand Ages Rome i terms of tech trees and product lines.
But Anno quickly gets boring because there are no tension or challenge. The only is issue in those games are the rate of growth because no matter what, you can't loose.

This is the first game, in this genre, that i have ever played where you loose. Alot.
It is actually hard and you need to figure out how the game ties together, how the mechanics work and what bottlenecks you in every case.
I would even go so far as to say: "DON'T look up guides." The greatest fun is in learning the game and figuring it out.

The world generation also provides alot of replayability because every world is a challenge. Pick a cold one and the issue is not freezing to death, a hot one and there are deserts everywhere and you need to live like ancient Egypt along the fertile floodplanes.

The AI is still on its way, but I don't care about that. This is a survival game, not a grand strategy game. The only things this game needs is quality of life changes... and maybe some Trade Company rebalanceing.
Fx: Quality of Life changes needed: When i press the 'prioritize build' on a Storage Field, it needs to go up ASAP! Heck i'd prefere if the game cheated a little and built it instantly. Say I want to build a new district, id build this field, once its done I'd direct the transportation of wood and stone to it, and then using those nearby goods the rest would be build quickly.

I really like this game. One of my greatest complains with other paradox games (cept HOI4) is that when one gets big enough it is a nightmare to micromanage every single army all the time. I have micro managed armies enough for a life time so I was so glad when I found out that I:R has Army stances where you give control of the army to the AI. This changes SO much!
Now I actually feel like I'm leading an Empire, sending my army at a target, allowing the 'generals' to come up with the stragety. Meanwhile if I'm small or fighting someone bigger I still get to use my micro skills on the front, as if I'm not the general in the front.

Best Feature In PDX!

So unless you truly hate 'mana' this is a great game. So if you are looking at this game, go "Do I care that I need to use arbitrary points to do specific governing actions?" If you don't mind, then I:R is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome. If you truly cannot stand the idea. Don't get I:R. It's that simple. And for all of the haters of the mana system. Stellaris didn't have mana but its launch version sucked way worse than I:R.

The newest 2.2 patch has made this the single greatest space 4X game ever, period. And I'm compairing it to titans like Starwars Empire at War, Endless Space (All of them), Aurora, Starcraft, Civ Beyond Earth. This newest patch has made Stallaris go from a decently good game, to the very best.
Note if you want the game I highly recommend buying it with Utopia upfront.
Megacorp has some more advanced features and not owning it when you first try the game is perfectly fine, same with many of the other expansions. They just grant the game more debth and events, and if you begin a game now and later buy the expansions it WILL be compatable with that savegame!

The gameplay is good, but not very competetive. My greatest issue with the game is the terrible support and the unstable build. Only usable guides are made by fans, extensive issues when even the slightest problem occues during setup phase. I cannot change the res outside of a battle and when I changed inside a battle it caused the game to blackscreen, an issue persisting after restarteing the entire game and trying to join a new battle. And when I tried to verify Game Integrity it lacked about 6000 files. Some of which it couldn't re-download due to not having the Privilage to gain missing files. And I re-instaled the game just ½ an hour ago.

TL-DR: Decent casual game, terrible build and stability.

I really like the new options when starting a game, especially since I can still play Ironman with achivements when I crank up the diseases and invasions. The true challenge mode is playing with all the diseases and epedimies on max while not being pagen. In Ironman. By far the 2nd best expansion! (Old Gods all the way!) Also many of the achivements in this patch are reasonable and achivable. (Looking at you Black Priest!)

This is a review about achivements. And for the first time they are good.
In the previous games are the achivements stupendously numerous and impossible. But in this you can get all the achivements by winning the game five times. (One time as each race on Very Hard) This I am very happy about since I enjoy achivementhunting, and now it's a manageble goal.
Using the carrot on a stick analogy; The previous games sticks was so long you couldn't even see the carrot. Now it's dangeling just outside of reach, but still takes time and skill to achive.
I'm a bit sad that the achivements that seem the hardest (after playing ~10'ish hours) are the winning on very hard difficulty. If I had to add anything it would be a few special super hard achivements, where you really have to go though ALOT of hoops, dedicate a full playthough to do it. Like "Let Chaos raze 2/3 of all provinces, and then drive them back to the Chaos lands."