Recent reviews by Perdles

Fun little game that mixes real-time strategy with a roguelike campaign. The core gameplay loop is quite simple, but very addictive. A nice mixture of management, real time strategy, and roguelike campaign progression that is easy to pick up, quick to play, and overall very satisfying in how they mesh together. It isn't the most mechanically deep in any of its elements, but is somewhat of a 'jack of all trades' that offers enough in each area to be satisfying, without being overly complex or slow. This works well with the roguelike nature of the campaigns, since losing (or ending up in an unwinnable position and needing to restart) never feels too punishing, allowing you to trial and error your way through what works. This is great, since you can really experiment with the number of options available in unit types, upgrades, and officer traits to create an army that never quite feels the same as any other you have tried.

The game offers a tough challenge on harder difficulties (or perhaps I am just an extremely mediocre commander), and in my case at least took me a few attempts to figure out how to play well. The game rarely feels unfair on the standard difficulty, and with the hugely customisable difficulty you can tailor your experience to exactly what you want. If you want an easy ride, you can have it (the game even recommends it for your first few campaigns). If you want brutal difficulty that will require you to play well in all elements, and still will struggle, you can do that too.


The campaign side of things relies on you moving your army around an 'overworld', visiting towns (to buy supplies , equipment, and recruiting units/officers, as well as selling unneeded goods and plundered valuables) and points of interest which each have a variety of possibilities - both bad and good. Some will be a simple trade off, costing one resource in return for a reward. Others are wholly positive or negative. Most will have choices that allow you to make decisions that suit your current position, with some being locked or unlocked depending on the traits you have obtained for your army.


The battles themselves (and, to some extant, the army organisation) feel somewhat like Ultimate General: Civil War, in that they are quite simple to control, and rely a lot on good unit positioning and movement rather than micromanagement. You win battles here through planning ahead, seizing good ground, and matching the enemies units and positions with your own, not through high-APM manoeuvres. It can feel a little clunky at times, especially when you first start, but overall feels satisfying to use and fits the sense of weight that trying to move 1400 strong blocks of men would have.

The army organisation is also similar to that game, in that you prepare your forces pre-battle, though there is a lot more customisability available. The units are divided into infantry, cavalry, and artillery, but each of these types have numerous sub-types that your units can upgrade to as they gain experience. You must also choose which weapon to use, with various choices of rifle/carbine/sword/cannon respectively having different strengths, weaknesses, and costs. Aside from this, you can also apply 'equipment' to each unit individually, changing their stats and granting abilities solely for that unit. This means you can specialise your units to a high degree if you desire, and gives a great deal of customisability to your forces.

While it offers no bonus other than cosmetic, you can even change each unit's colours/flags and uniforms individually, with a good number of options available. Whether you want to try and match historical uniforms, colour code your units by type for convenience, or create a glorious power ranger army of neon greens, yellows, and purples, the game allows you to do so with ease. Likewise, you can name your units whatever you want (I like to give basic units boring, realistic names such as '1st Regiment of Foot' until they upgrade to a high tier unit, at which point they get a cool nickname).

This customisability adds a surprisingly personal touch to your armies - if you have played X-Com and connected to your soldiers in some way, this game allows you to have a similar sensation, albeit with units instead of individuals. It can lead to some pretty fun emergent storytelling, based entirely on your own experience and engagement, especially on ironman, where you have to live with the consequences of your choices.

To give an example, in one campaign I had a regiment of hussars whom had served since turn 1, being upgraded from tier 1 cavalry to elite veterans across 2 theatres. They ended up being wiped out near to a man after charging (and killing off) some artillery that was devastating my lines and costing me the battle, sacrificing themselves to bring about victory. Its the type of thing that you can imagine reading about on some memorial, or in a book, or hearing a sabaton song about. A more successful 'charge of the light brigade' in the hills of Silesia.

Afterwards, it genuinely felt like I had made a tough decision, and maybe the wrong one. Don't get me wrong - it was hardly the most emotionally devastating moment in video gaming, but it was definitely a feeling I haven't felt from a strategy game very often. In most strategy games you can lose a unit and, other than the practical issues of not having that unit any more, you don't care too much. With this game, though, it definitely feels like you have lost a 'part' of your army if one of your veteran units gets destroyed, and I think that is genuinely very cool.

Overall, Master of Command is a very creative take on the Real Time Strategy Genre. The feeling of commanding a singular army (as opposed to several groups, an 'empire'/realm in most strategy games) is a nice change of pace to most strategy games, and you really start to connect with your army almost like a character as you play.

All of the elements within the gameplay loop work and complement each other well, and while they aren't the most complex, in combination they make the game extremely replayable. It offers enough challenge to be fun, yet never feels too tough to get into. Bonus points for the criminally underused 7 Years War setting.

On top of this, the devs seem active so far in delivering fixes, and have a great looking roadmap that I hope they can deliver on. That said, I wouldn't recommend the game if it wasn't already a complete package, which it is. Anything that comes in future is an added bonus on top of what is already present.

In short, it's an easy recommend for any strategy fans.

yeh its sick

Crappy, crappy RNG. In battles it would be tolerable, but RNG for improving stats is just awful.

Interesting concept but every campaign becomes inevitably frustrating through the harsh RNG.

Extremely good value for money. The DLC adds a new start date, set before the main game, in which you can play not only as the new factions but several of those present in the normal start date as well. This alone would be worth the price, but on top of that are some great new factions with unique and entertaining playstyles and a host of new units to go along with them.

Creative Assembly really went all out on this one, and it is incredibly good value for its price.

I feel bad giving this a 'do not reccomend' reaction since I have played it for a very long time and I do genuinely like it in many ways, but of the two options steam gives me the more 'negative' one fits better. I'd still say the game is worth picking up if you like action-RPGs, but I have too many problems with it to say it is really a good game. If there was a 'mixed' option, I'd select it. I'm saying 'do not reccomend' because it best fits the tone of my review, which is largely negative, and the two options steam give are pretty dumb. With that in mind, take the 'do not reccomend' more as a general 'negative' response than a literal lack of reccomendation.

The Good:

The game looks nice, in my opinion. Its not photorealistic, but it has a nice stylistic approach that really fits the retro-futiristic design. There's a few visual bugs or murky graphics, but overall its pretty nice.

The Comanion system is very nice, and really makes the companions feel like real characters who actually pay attention to your actions. Its a better system than the infamously buggy New Vegas companion system, and means that you can never miss out on companion quests by accidentally going too far forwards.

The power armour is fantastic, a massive improvement over Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Rather than an item of clothing, its an enitrely seperate mechanic and it feels amazing.

The gunplay/combat is also a general improvement over previous fallout games, and feels pretty nice. Still kinda clunky, but much better than 3/NV.

Building is meh. Some people may like it, I thought it was kinda fun but too buggy and frustrating to be truly enjoyable.

The Bad:

RPG Mechanics:

By far the worst element of Fallout 4 is its stripping down of the RPG mechanics that made New Vegas so good. Your character is already heavily railroaded before you can even play them. Before even creating your character, their backstory, relationships and everything else that goes into creating a character are already written out. Its really a terrible choice, and I never felt like I was playing 'my' character.

Compounding this problem are the changes to dialogue. Rather than the list of dialogue options, written out in full with what your character will say, you have a wheel with 4 options ala Mass Effect. Worse, these options are very vague in their description, and totally lack consistency. Sometimes 'Sarcastic' will be a light-hearted joke and sometimes it will be a fairly mean spirited put-down. The only way to find out is to select that option, which kinda sucks.

One particularly unwelcome return from Fallout 3 is the chance-based Speech checks. Seriously, these are just stupid. It doesn't reward the player much for taking speech/charisma options since its just luck-based. You can go heavy in Charisma and miss an important check, or go nothing into Charisma and get lucky. Its an incredibly dumb way to have a speech mechanic, and absolutely pales compared to New Vegas' skill based dialogue options.

The second major dialogue problem is that they are spoken outloud by your character. While the voice acting for both a Male and Female courier is actually pretty good across the board, its still a bad addition. It, along with the 'railroaded' character design process mean that Fallout 4 feels like a game where you play Bethesda's character, not yours.

Skills being removed and the rework to perks are both bad. I can appreciate them trying something new, but it didn't really work out and means every character largely feels the same. Rather than older fallouts, where you would get better at certain skills as you level up, forcing you to ration out your points and prioritise what is most important. In Fallout 4, its just waiting till you are a high enough level to take perks, with the only governing stats being your SPECIAL scores (which you can also increase from levelling up).

Story, Writing and Worldbuilding:

The other major problem with Fallout 4 (tying into the lack of 'rpg' mechanics is the world it inhabits and the stories it gives to you. Much like Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4 offers you 4 major endings to the game. Unlike Fallout New Vegas, there are no minor factions of any importance whatsoever.

In F:NV, many factions were tied in with how you played the game; finishing the game in one ending would have drastically different actions for minor factions than with the others even if you followed the same path. These factions are all extremely memerable, they all impact the major factions and even each other. Fallout 4 has none like this. Literally 0 minor factions of note. The few discernable 'factions' have no real bearing on the world, no real impact

Ultimately, the problem with Fallout 4 is that the world just feels empty. Sure, its filled with pretty locations, and in parts it can be fantastic. There is some brilliant environmental storytelling that you have to find on your own, and at moments like that Fallout 4 felt like a truly brilliant fallout game. But for most of the game, the world was bland; pretty locations inhabited by boring, generic people. No faction other than the main 4 ever have a major impact on the story, or the world of Fallout 4.

Because of this, despite the fun I often had exploring and playing, I can't say I think Fallout 4 is a very good game in its genre. Its not a terrible game, but its definitely a step back in many ways from Fallout New Vegas, and removes many of the things from Fallout that make it good.

Well written, engaging and extremely broad. Sadly it ends a little too early for my liking and the ending can feel a little rushed. Regardless, its still a good read and worth picking up if you enjoy text based RPGs.

You can insult the pope.

10/10