Recent reviews by Baphomet

A fantastic fresh take on the RTS genre, real shame the early access hasn't gotten much attention like other early access games.

It's easy to pick up, a potato PC could run it, you are spoilt for choice on unit selection and blueprints, the versatility of different starting assets also can really change the pace and the way you play the game. The enemy AI actually tries to do things like circumvent defences, grouping up large clumps of units for rushes, building units suitable against your comp etc. Nothing but praise for this game.

The only thing that I can say is kind of missing so far is air and navel units (especially air, it is the future after all) and having an endless mode. I can only hope that eventually they will bring more into the game and will continue to bring more life into it. I can't wait to see more.

The good:

+Non-linear culture development
+Beautifully generated worlds
+Turn based combat that is more in depth in comparison like Civilization
+Customisation of leaders
+Fleshed out resource system

The Bad:

-Jank diplomacy interface
-Limited units/no form of customisation of units (something I would have expected from amplitude)
-Game pacing is very off (extremely slow, then fast, then slow etc.)
-Crappy AI
-Current limited amount of cultures in the game have you pigeonholed into certain playstyles on maps with more players.

This is a very hesitant thumbs up. The game is still very rough around the edges and could be an amazing game with some tuning.

The good:

-Great for an RTS player who is macro-centric in their playstyle.
-The game naturally balances itself out by choices by whats good and bad to choose through your faction development (However should be noted this needs to be kept in check in case some paths become undoubtedly better than any other path)
-Free to play that doesn't make you feel like you have the odds stacked against you
-Lot's of choice and potential playstyles to be had (and I imagine more when you have all the countries)
-An active playerbase (A very rare find for relatively unknown RTS games in this day and age that aren't SC2 or AOEII)

The bad:

-The visuals are very hard to look at and are not distinctive, i.e. its sometimes hard to tell the difference between units and even units to workers. THIS needs to be looked at and shouldn't be a matter of opinion.
-The wildlife feel like hero units on steroids, I don't think it should take literally 15 workers, micro'd at that to take down a boar, and god help you if you get raided by a mammoth, bear or alligator that take even a good amount of military units.
-CURRENTLY: A complete lack of skirmish mode against AI. If they want to pull in new players this ought to be a priority, because at the moment it's way down their list.
-This is just a matter of personal preference but the pace is incredibly slow, even in comparison to something like total annihilation or AoE2.

If you like RTS games I say go in with both feet since its F2P but curb your enthusiasm, could be an amazing game in the near future but at the moment there is a bit left to be desired.

I did enjoy myself, so why the no? I will first get some things straight and I'll try and keep it short.

First things first some people have complained about two things that I believe are deliberate design choices.

Lack of tutorial: They did make this clear at the beginning of the game that they won't help you a lot, the design philosophy around this game is I think being more about the ancestors than about the players. I think the developers attitude was "Your ancestors figured stuff out facing death everyday, so you can at the very least solve some stuff yourself".

Repetitive daily routine: Again, more about the ancestors than the player. They needed to grind with mundane tasks to survive such as eating and drinking.

With that out of the way I will make a few bullet points for good and bad

+Beautiful landscapes
+Attention to detail on evolutionary traits and historical accuracy
+Intuitive controls
+MONKE!

-lack of diversity of wildlife in regards to both character and number
-very poorly fleshed out combat system
-Evolution feats feels like achievement hunting towards the end
-Extremely anti-climatic ending
-Lack of replayability

The game I think is more focused on the journey rather than the destination. You feel the daily struggle your ancestors went through with facing the elements, constantly dealing with predators day in day out, even sometimes having a rude awakening to hyena attacks.

This is the rub, the ending felt like I got punched in the face. I finally got to be the human YES! YES! I can now do what I want! Oh.... I can't even play my final form... That actually sucked big time.

The combat system also feels like it's lazily done. All it is is Hold a button and let go at sound for both dodging and attacking, the animals can ONLY engage you to, I'm not kidding, that is the extent of the combat system. I really feel like it could have been a lot better, especially since they copy pasted a lot of the animal species in the game.

Another thing that doesn't feel right is that you change species by your evolutionary feats, not by your current lineage capacities and abilities, so in essence the games completion is dictated by eye-glazing tasks that are blanked out until completed. It felt fine in the beginning but towards the end it was really boring.

Now with all that said and done. I enjoyed the game merely because the game is more about your ancestors and is the only game on the market that will take you on a personal journey through the daily struggle of the monkeys long gone who fought literally tooth and nail for us to be here today. I would buy it if you are ok playing it once and being done with it. Otherwise I would steer away if you are looking for replayability.

10/10 would ruin my life again

Since the additional updates, the game is slowly improving and I am glad Microsoft have been quick about getting it fixed and released whenever they can. With the new graphical updates plus 5 new civs on top of new ranked mode it is worth the price. It is effectively an expansion pack.

I love XCOM but I seriously can't recommend the DLC as far as the single player campaign goes. Swarms of easy to kill zombies should not be a thing in a turn-based game, nor should some chosen come in and literally ruin most of the fun of a particular mission. I like the added depth of fleshing out factions and such but I really can't recommend this unless you like long boring snooze-fests of zombie killing and a focus-fire mania from random appearing chosen.

TL;DR Over-powered single units and overwhelming numbers of easy to kill units don't belong in a turn-based game, it needs a proper balance.

A huge let down, I enjoyed the first DoW so much. After coming from years of Starcraft II I was hoping for a fresh and exciting RTS experience. This comes far from it, a dumb cover system, battlefocus on Eldar make them near impossible to beat unless you surprise them, linear units, units are too ability reliant, overpowered elites across the board makes for some very dull and drawn out games since you can't engage Macka, Angelos or Weirdboy without being blown to bits even with overwhelming amounts of infantry.

Insult to injury they thought it was a good idea to have the game based around kill a core and 3 other structures to win a game. Sorry but I'm already sick of playing MOBA ebjectives, I don't need it in an RTS. The resource gathering system is utterly atrocious, never seen anything so flawed and so limiting than having to be restricted to playing tech heavy or infantry heavy simply due to a location of a power generator or requsition generator or just the mere quantity of said points

All in all this game fails on too many aspects on what make an RTS great. It's really sad since starcraft needs a competitor, it hasn't had one for 20 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ years, I'm tired of starcraft but is the only other RTS that actually get things right along with AoE II and the first dawn of war. Yet another title in the RTS genre to dig it's grave in the market.