Recent reviews by Vazzaroth

I might LIKE this game but I have a hard time heartily recommending it. I can't say it's bad, so it doesn't get a no.

I feel like Going Medieval is just fading into the woodwork of the emerging Rimworld-like, Dwarf Fortress 2.0 attempters that no one has really been able to truely nail yet. I found this game fun to run through and learn, but I struggle to think of wanting to play it over and over again like Rimworld lends itself to so well. It's a bit of a linear progression track, a limitation of the medieval commitment I'm afraid. The raiders show up decently often and sometimes your guys bite the dust. But nothing truely interesting or super differently challenging seems to show up.

Rimworld vanilla at least has very oddball events and games take winding narrative paths. Living in different biomes here may present some moderate challenges or boons, but it's still a peasant's story: Sow plants, Harvest wood, build shacks, try to survive the winter. Fend off upstart bandits and lordlets, loot their stuff, try not to be stabbed. Eventually you build out of stone instead of wood.

Rimworld, with it's gonzo tech levels of prairie indegenous people, wild post apocolyptic maniacs, noble emmisaries from an advanced empire, and normal everyday western townsfolk just offers SO much more. If this game had easy and extensive mod support, it might be a LOT better. But right now, it's launched from Early Access and i feel like I'm playing a version 0.90 rather than a 1.0. It's just a bit light.

What's there is entertaining for the genre but it's like a genre fiction book: Only really for the fans who find the rest of the good stuff boring at this point, and it'll only tide you over until the next big thing comes out, barring any large updates from the devs. (And again, it's already 1.0!!!)

VERY strange game... not really one I think I'll come back to. It's a decent little experimental game where you are kind of competing with other little 2D hand-drawn guys on a rando map to do a task and you are kind of at war but kind of not all the time... This reminds me of the couple attempts to make a Populous-like game over the years and like GODUS (lol...) sorta.

Nothing about this is actively bad but almost every single part of it is very, very strange. It could charm the right person but it felt like a very hands-off rimworld and that kind of just frustrated me a little. I feel like Stacklands does exactly what this design doc set out to do but WAY more to my own taste.

Successfully convinced me a soviet model bureaucracy is indeed a nightmare to run, nightmare to live in, and nightmare to understand. So one one hand an artistic experience, try it out. As a game... I'm good dude. And I play Paradox Grand Strategy but it was STILL just, like, WAY too much.

I like the idea that I know every single vehicle that comes into my tiny sad little state and made me crave middle managers to figure all this crap out themselves, haha. Guess I'm a capitalist now because I could not care less if people want to build a public swimming pool or not, even as I've spent hundreds of hours managing my citizens consumption of olive oil in Caesar III.

Im glad this exists. Don't play it.

Good Good Good GOOD! I was ADDICTED to the demo and this launch, Early Access, is exactly what I expected.

Am I early? Yes. So I'm not commenting on balance or overall design in that way. But the experience is excellent. You start with virtually zero in this full version and work your way up from bad rifles to smgs and missile launchers. The demo gave you a walker and 2 vehicles, you get one janky old APC here.

Overall the game does feel like Imperial Guard simulator except without needing to fight giant mutated freaks of nature all the time, so the guard is actually an elite fighting force. Maybe Space Navy Seal simulator or similar. Something about this style of gameplay is just so compelling to me, who used to play Men of War but only on 0.5 or 0.25 speed because the chaos was too beautiful to just let wash over me unnoticed.

The turn based nature means you are making decisions like: Shoot at this squad to suppress, then shoot at this other to finish them off. Your other squad is unpinned now so you make a run for cover. Your vehicle launches smoke to cover them, and you hope the pirate turret half-way across the AO misses... IT DOES! YES! Now your rocket team can finally come up around the hill and next turn will be in position. Then CRAP THE RATS HAVE AN APC I REPEAT THE PIRATES HAVE AN APC! Redirect that rocket launcher STAT! *End Turn*

The exact level, or mix, of strategy and tactics is *Patcha Meme* PERFECT. The battle brother geniuses did it again. I can't wait to see how this improves from an excellent base game in Early Access and the wait was entirely worth it. There's a full, complete game here now on day 1 of EA, and I expect to play many campaigns of this as it goes.

Mods are going to be life changing later too.

I mean around 3 hours of decent entertainment, partial attention, and a couple megs... sure why not!

It's very "alright."

If you played They are Billions, you will have uncanny valley effect playing this. I'm being very uncharitable, but I can't help but see this as some guys playing TAB, going "Hey... i could do better!", then failing to actually do better. They just kinda remixed some stuff around that might make it more palatable for certain types of players, but BETTER? No. TAB has severe issues, yes... I have rage-uninstalled that game more than once. But this has different issues from decisions made by the devs. it all washes out to be decent... but since they have basically made this abandonware at this point, it's hard to suggest. With some extra polish this might be great, but right now, only get this if you want to expiriment with what the same game designed by 2 different groups is like on a severe sale like I did.

Am I glad that the houses breaking don't create an unwinnable cascade? yes. Is the light management better than the electricity 'territory gain' gameplay of TAB? Not at all. Am I glad that the units are more interesting and the WC3 mod style heroes are welcome variety? Yes! But am I happy that the game is sloppily balanced around those units and heroes... not IMBALANACED just not very tight like TAB, where you know that 2 shots from a marine = dead zed, 3 from an archer, and the speed between zeds and units is tightly intertwined... no, that's a straight downgrade. I like pikemen that attack behind walls, I like being able to ignite walls to damage zeds, I like the unit types... but I also dislike the cramped world gen and building size that seems to force a playstyle that isn't very interesting, the economy is pretty also sloppy, and why did they add random mobile game mechanics like clicking fish to get gold or your stockpile just kind of randomly generating gold on it's own, rather than actually being a resource management aid????

Overall, it suffers from 80% of the same issues Billions does, fixes a few critical issues and then introduces 10 other minor ones.

Maybe you could call this progress, but it feels more like when an american studio tries an entry in a Japanese franchise... it's more visually impressive and flashy, more tempting with options and variety, but it's all hollow calories and they removed the soul of the experience to offer those things.

At first I said: Wow, this isn't Crusader Kings at ALL! Ecomomony in my war and greed simulator? But then it kept going and I said Wow... I can be a capitalist or a communist. It really is the modern world. Then I learned what beurocracy and authority do, that I hate russia (as Sweden), that I want Finland and that greedy ♥♥♥♥♥♥ won't loosen his iron grip, and now my people have these crazy ideas about VOTING or osmething in their heads and, hey, look at that. Britain wants to be my friend! Wait, not my friend, they want me in their empire... hmm ok. But now the Prussian people in my country don't like that, well that's too bad because the UK has like a million ships.

20 hours later and it's 1am and I just... need to... tweak this one little thingy... one little tariff, just one more government organization building... come on GDP, I know you want to stay positive, just come on... OH WHO WAS SENDING FUNDS TO ABU DABI?! Cancel that... invite Denmark to my own little empire, go glare and spit in Russia's direction because they STILL won't give up Finland...

Holy cow, I'm roleplaying as an 1890's paper pushing beurocrat having an argument with my screen about whether the labor movement or the land owners have a better point here. 1800s RP achieved. I never thought it would happen after being SO into a simpler time where power projection = finding a big hill, tossing a thousand golden disks into it and waiting 2 lifespans for a big stone house to pop up.

The simulation is astounding in this one. Intimidating, yes, but astounding. It REALLY took a good 250 years in-game time to finally make clear sense, insofar as I know of SOME of the buttons I can press now and LOOSLY what it is they do after 5 years. I can't believe managing unemployment is just about MORE compelling than managing my macemen in the dark ages.

Now if you'll excuse me, the price of engines in my early industrial revolution economy is too damn high and I have to figure out if it's steel, iron, cloth, or warships causing the problem. In the end, we already know it's Russia's fault somehow.

Took a bunch of tweaking but once I got this game running smooth it's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

Different experience than CoD or even 2042, it's very heavy, in a nice way. You really feel like you are just A GUY with TWO FEET and TWO ARMS holding a hunk of metal that spews slightly sharpened metal at other, similar guys. I love that breakthrough, a rush and conquest hybrid, is the premier mode. It's my favorite by far.

Check out the CPU fix if you have strange stuttering and look at enabling XMP for your motherboard if you have packet loss. Yes, for your RAM. For network issues. For some freakin reason. That solved my problems so I can't argue.

I tried to play DoW again the other day and quit. But now I don't have to launch different versions to play different campaigns and can zoom out to reasonable levels. It's excellent!

I was about 30 gameplay hours in and then this mofo had the audacity to pop up the following achievement: "Made 5% game progress"