Recent reviews by SkeeBopShadoobie

Seemed like a promising game, but as I'm trying to navigate the early game and figure out what the hell is going on, I'm getting ads for DLC. Bruh, I've only been and one fight and this is my experience of exploring and learning the game? Refunded, thanks. I might've bought the DLC if i played more of the game and enjoyed it, but that ruined it.

Don't let the marketing guy trash your product.

(Here is what ChatGPT thinks of that mechanic)

Why it tends to backfire --

Breaks immersion at the worst time:
Early towns are where players build their mental model of the game. Turning a location into a storefront makes the world feel less coherent.

Punishes curiosity:
In a low-direction game, players should click things to learn. If exploration leads to a sales screen, they’ll start second-guessing everything.

Feels misleading rather than informative:
It’s not just “here’s DLC”—it’s “this looks like content but isn’t.” That distinction matters a lot psychologically.

Creates friction before attachment:
DLC prompts work better once players are already invested. Early-game interruptions can push people away before they care enough to buy anything.


What works better instead --

Clear labeling upfront:
Something like “Derelict Tavern (DLC)” avoids the bait-and-switch feeling.

Dedicated menu or notice:
A clean “Additional Content” tab or a one-time tooltip is much less intrusive.
Diegetic but honest integration. If it must be in the world, make it obvious it’s unavailable—e.g., a boarded-up tavern with a tooltip: “Requires Tavern DLC.

Timing it later:
Surface DLC after a few hours, when the player actually understands what they’d be getting.

Even if the intent is just to inform, the execution makes it feel like the game is tricking you. In a systems-heavy, player-driven game, that’s the exact opposite of what you want.

I will probably change my recommendation eventually, but there are a lot of issues at the moment:

(Edit: I went ahead and changed it to recommended because it's still good despite its problems, but there are a lot of problems at the moment,)

-The UI is atrocious, especially when it comes to buildings. (I don't understand why they wouldn't just use something like V3's buildings UI, which is incontrovertibly the best game of all time.) The building menu doesn't show the building limit or other relevant information specific for each building.

-Lack of mission trees from eu4 is disappointing; Events like "rise of the ottomans" which kind of replaced it, only exist for a few nations at specific times and are unpredictable and make it hard to do strategic planning (e.g. should i fabricate claims on this country, or will the event eventually allow me to insta-vassalize them?).

-The American situation at the start is barren compared to eu4. There are 7-8 playable "countries" in North America grouped in two places.

-Confusing casus belli systems provide no explanation for why as Castille (for example), you can use a spy network to fabricate on a country like Aragon, but not one on Navarre.

-Want to know why you can't build something in your country? Just hover over the "requirements" tooltip and you'll see helpful info like "never." (sometimes -- other times it works correctly)

-The icons for goods are small and hard to distinguish.

-The food system is confusing, and I haven't found a good interface for understanding how it all works together or whether I should be building granaries, irrigation, or RGOs to get more food, etc... (edit: I have a better understanding now, but that's despite the UI)

-Overall, bad UI for something so deep and ambitious.

-And Multiplayer games are crashing repeatedly.

It does have a lot of potential though, so I'm excited to see how it's improved and changed.

It has a lot of the same problem from previous iterations re VC, but it is the best 2k in a long time. Gamplay is very good.

Good Game, but buggy as hell, and the multiplayer between Steam and Xbox Game Pass doesn't work most of the time.

An example, one of my favorite parts of the game, is when I start a legend and then go individually through all 80+ of my vassals asking them to promote it, and then the game crashes and I get to do it ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!!!!! Yipee!

I recommend because it was fun to go through the campaign, and that was good for 50 hours of gameplay (although a lot of that time might be idle). The free play isn't as good in my opinion because there is no logic to determine where factories spawn relative to the raw resources and so it feels silly to setup transportation in THAT situation. I've heard there are mods that can allow you to manually place factories, but that seems time consuming and may disable achievements (I'm not sure); I wish the vanilla experience with the randomly generated map just made more sense.

Should include the ability to unwrap the sandwich

Really fun, but kind of short. I am hoping for more content. One of the best games ever

Best CRPG maybe ever

Only able to move backwards, but pretty good other than that small problem

-Still has the problem of not being able to have fun with MyCareer without spending an extra $100 or more. I bought $20 of VC and have played about 70 hours of Franchise mode, and have only gotten my "MyCareer" player to 76 overall, which isn't good enough to have fun online. That's absurd.

-Still animation-based, so it's hard to know what to expect and is trash at least once per game