Recent reviews by Talilover

My current 11 hours is a result of a few failed attempts to get into the game over the 2 or so years I've had it and my most recent and somewhat successfull attempt to get into it, because as I general rule I'm vehemently against doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ homework before playing a game and Paradox games in general don't meld with that idea. I only have extensive playtime on stellaris, which I found fairly intuitive, and will be what a compare this to.

Paradox gameplay can be summarized as looking at a bunch of spreadsheets and making your colored blob bigger than others, and these spreadsheets be spreading and these blobs be blobbing so I guess nothing to complain about on that front. There's a bit more character management here than stellaris but not to degree of crusader kings, I basically just juggle government offices around in a mix of what's actually the best fits and which family is throwing a wahwahboohoo ♥♥♥♥♥♥ fit.

The tutorial, in typical paradox fashion as well, is total dogwater and you're best off just doing a normal game and fumbling about...it'll make some sense at some point (swearsies). Usually you're best off just paying mind to any pop up banners telling you what needs to be done but one thing the game seemingly wants to hide from you is the missions, of which are insanely important for early game expansion and eases the also typical to paradox game mechanic of sitting on some street corner saying "please sir, just a crumb of political influence"

Now similar to another strategy game I play, total war: Rome 2, there is a very loud portion of the playerbase that will swear up and down you NEED to mod this game to make it good and just wanna warn anybody from being strong armed into it. The game is just fine as is and if you are thinking about watching guides to ease into it the invictus mod is going to throw those all out the window, imo just for the sake of being different or having more (not necessarily worthwhile). If you want to play some nobody faction or a faction who was a footnote in somebody else's history than by all means get invictus, if you came to Imperator:Rome to play ROME you'll be fine

It's a paradox game about what is the most beloved ancient empire (and other people, I guess) which is paradoxically also one of the most underutilized themes for games (There's a reason people still play Total War: Rome 2 despite it lowkey being kind of ass afterall). It would have to do a lot to keep me from recommending it

Still really just dipping me feet in but this is honestly just Monster Train, but better.

Probably the least powerful and least essential of the three thrones of decay dlcs but by no means bad, it's just that you can't point at Elspeth and say "better than Franz/ Gelt" like you can do with Malakai or Tamurkhan and their respective other options.

Her faction mechanic is pretty much Ikit's workshop, but Ikit's workshop was a pretty good mechanic so meh. She also teleports around a little bit because CA is more and more addicted to letting factions teleport around the map. The units she adds are...there (handguns but tougher/ handguns but with scopes/steam tanks but wooden/ steam tank but with multiple barrels) and honestly the cav unit that felt tacked on and had nothing to do with the whole Nuln thing of guns and explosions is the big stand out, they absolutly slaughter chaff infantry and can hold a flank way better than a cav should be able to.

The new lord and hero type are great to have, because yet another engineer type hero that powercreeps and dunks on the original vampire coast version is nice, and feels like a great addition to a faction that (usually) prioritizes firing lines and arty bombards, little bit of argument to be made that the lord makes the other lord types irrelevant now tho imo because they just get a steam tank.

Same as the others, good quality with a jacked up price. Get it, but wait for a sale

Allow me to go down a list of things that must contribute to this campaign being "really challenging", as the community may lead you to believe

-An unbreakable lord who buffs some of the strongest units (Arty, flying units, slayers) to an insane degree, just with his skill tree, and can shoot people for about 1.6k damage
-A faction mechanic that boosts those same units even more, with things increased range, recruit rank, xp gain, lots of more specific and powerful bonuses yada yada
-Same faction mechanic that sprinkles you with tens of thousands of gold early on and plenty of oathgold to quickly gain access to powerful items to craft (because you also start in a region teeming with resources)
-Same faction mechanic, again, that instantly gives you access to said insanely buffed units that would otherwise take a developed city and multiple turns to recruit
-A start location that has you primed to easily clear one of the "legendary grudges", rapidly catapulting you through the age of reckoning system and gaining you confederations with the other lords
-Immediate access to 2 legendary heroes, who are incredibly potent on the battlefield
-A ship building system that allows your main army to enter encampment stance whenever it wants, effectivly ignoring things like ambushes or attrition (Y'know, on top of the other benefits to having horde buildings...the ability to summon a thunderbarge wherever during a battle from turn one chief among them)

In short, this is a fun campaign and the dlc adds some nice power to the dwarf roster but people who act like it's anything but easy mode are either trying to trick themselves into feeling they achieved something beating the campaign or are just genuinely awful at the game

Relaxing game about cleaning up trash around a city and braining would be litterbugs with a metal bat

Think there's also something about making drugs and stuff but idk, I'm not a criminal

I got this dlc because I honestly can't stand Nurgle campaigns and figured the least painful way to get through one would be to just get the laughably powercrept/ OP dlc factions CA likes to do

This dlc certainly delivers on that regard, tho I always recommend only getting CA Products on sale because they are still wild asking 9 bucks for just a third of a dlc (Also wild that the community was outraged at the price point of shadows of change but when CA just drops the next dlc at the same total price but cut it in 3 it's all hearts and googly eyes, but what can you do?)

Transformative as the tomb kings but unlike the tomb kings laughably OP (why yes, why shouldn't a faction essentially get access to multiple Ikit claw nukes just for having a building in their major settlement?)

Waited a few years to get it half off, because kick a rock for asking 25 bucks for it, and recommend the same

You're only here because you watched 300 and thought it was dope, not because you actually think this DLC is worth getting

Up to you if that's reason enough, but either way wait for a sale

This and the normal Greek city state culture packs are the only two I have and I've played most of the factions added by them, Colchis being the only exception

If you asked me how any of them are notably different from one another, or even the successor kingdoms in the base game, I'd probably give you one of those one eye at a time blinks before sputtering out "uhh, Pergemon can kinda build their cities up faster" or something like a mouth breathing trog

Point being you don't really need this one, certainly not at full price

Loved playing this game back in the day on my xbox one so got it for 2 dollars, still not worth it because I'm not jumping through any hoops to figure out why their backwater anticheat keeps kicking me from games for no reason. Here's hoping my refund request goes through for my sweet 2 dollars back