Recent reviews by Crycable

More than any other hyped roguelikesque game I've played, this game revolves so heavily around the aspect of luck and randomness, that it becomes either frustrating or boring to play. Whether you win or lose doesn't really matter, it just feels unsatisfying once it's over. Every single action in itself is a dice roll, often cascading into an exponential spiral of dice rolls that can go any way, especially rendering boss fights a complete uncontrollable mess. I'm not against randomness as a factor, but It's difficult and boring to strategize around complete uncertainty and volatility. On top of this core problem the game suffers from various other kinks, such as an unintuitive UI, numerous pauses with slow dragged out transitions, and a fundamental game design where you are endlessly rewarded for grinding regardless of how poor your perfomance is (much like your average mobile game).

I might add that I absolutely loved DD1.

First of all, a game that is supposed to take place in the 1800s America, littered with Eastern European voice actors attemping to sound American, is very cringy and ruins a lot of the atmosphere. They really couldn't afford native voice actors?

That nuisance aside, the game is overall quite underwhelming. I'll just make a list:
- Decent but dated graphics that make the map feel quite uninspiring
- Dull opponents that deliver a limited set of lines to you in broken English, showing up as still images in the corner of the screen
- A rather messy UI that makes train management (especially staff management) quite a chore once your train count reaches double digits
- Bland cities that are just flat squares composed of a perfect grid of streets and generic housing
- All in all the map, or world, just feels very dead and barren - a lonely experience

All that aside, the rail system is very pleasing to work with, and setting up optimal routes is always a fun challenge. Overall an initially fun experience that quickly gets very messy and convoluted, as well as repetitive.

Do you enjoy watching the same 10 second long cutscene a billion times? Then this is the game for you.

I should start off by mentioning that I'm a long time MK fan, dating all the way back to the original game on my neighbor's SNES. I should also mention that I am by no means a great player, so my voice speaks for the mediocre. With that said, MK 11 is a game with huge potential, that does a couple of things too wrong to deserve a recommendation from me.

Now, I was never a fan of X-ray moves from the previous games; "moves" that take little skill to correctly time and pull off, resulting in a cutscene that looks neat the first time you see it but quickly becomes a repetitive disruption to the flow of the game. The good thing about them, however, was that they required you to build and save up meter, making them a reasonably rare sight if players knew how to expend meter elsewhere. Now with MK 11 they've taken X-ray moves, renamed them Fatal Blows, and changed the trigger requirement from meter to low health, meaning at least one player will be attempting to pull one off every single game. They're blockable, sure, but a decent player will just activate them mid-juggle and there you go, 10 seconds of watching the same cutscene for the 542nd time. The fights in MK 11 are so smooth and satisfying, up until the point where one of these things are activated, and you just put down your controller, roll your eyes, sigh, and wait for the cinematic to end. In a game that's so momentum driven, these moves are so disruptive and boring that they alone inspired me to bother writing a review. Furthermore, the traditional Fatalities are an extension to this problem, with more obnoxious cutscenes added to each match to make sure you waste even more time before getting back into an actual game. The fact that you're also forced to grind Fatal Blows, Fatalities, etc. to unlock various things in the Krypt certainly doesn't make things better.

Too bad.

The Good:
- Free, with all gameplay content available through enough grinding (unless you want to pay up).
- Terrific visuals and sound. A high quality experience.
- Plenty of content, with modes offering games against both the AI and other players.
- Smart solution to even out the advantage of getting to go first.
- Large collection of cards that keeps growing.

The Bad:
- Very high luck factor; apart from the core luck factor of the draw that comes with all card games, the game relies greatly on the "random" keyword, where one single card can make a random decision ranging from gifting you the worst card in the game to gifting you the best card in the game, effectively deciding the outcome of many matches.
- Rather unbalanced deck types. Expect to see the same types of deck played 90 % of the games.
- Lackluster AI that relies on manipulating its draws to be competitive.
- Occasionally abysmal voice acting and storytelling in the Story Mode.

A game out of the ordinary that unfortunately is not worth such a hefty price tag.

Good
- Innovative and different gameplay that brings something new to the table
- Simple but slick visuals
- Good controls

Bad
- Over in less than two hours, with bonus challenges just being more of the same repeated
- No real story, no personality, no soundtrack; quite empty really
- Some parts of the game are eye ache inducing
- Very repetitive
- Extremely overpriced

(Recommended if you intend to play multiplayer)

Pros
- Better than its predecessor in most ways
- District and wonder placement makes cities a bit more interesting
- Leaders feel less unpredictable and illogical this time around
- Decent visuals with great animations
- Fun multiplayer

Cons
- Abysmal AI; harder AI levels won't give you smarter opponents, just opponents with unfair advantages; you won't have any problem taking out an AI army 3-4 times the size of yours, as it is somehow less capable of waging war than the AI in Civ 5 (which was already terrible)
- Not too many changes from the previous iteration
- Religion feels mostly like a chore
- Fair amount of bugs, although mostly minor
- No "Hall of Fame"

An outstanding 4X game that competes with the the best in the genre.

The good
- Unique and interesting factions to choose from
- Epic quests for each faction and tons of side quests to find through exploration
- Beautiful worlds presented in a distinct style
- Tactical "Age of Wonders" style combat
- Well implemented RPG elements such as skill trees, character attributes, equipment and treasures
- Interesting diplomacy system

The bad
- The user interface can be quite a mess for inexperienced players
- Tends to suffer from rendering issues on massive maps
- The AI is a little too easily manipulated in diplomacy
- Huge kingdoms can become quite dull to manage (typical 4X problem)

EDIT: Game's dead.

EDIT: Changed to recommended after this game's received various updates. Still suffers from some massive shortcomings that have been around since day one, specifically lack of communication and team-play.

The good
- Free-to-play without being overly pay-to-win
- Essentially Magic the Gathering
- Large library of Magic cards that keeps growing
- Decent in-game currency rewards = not too much grinding if you don't want to pay real money
- Good deck building tools

The really bad
- No way to communicate in multiplayer makes games less personal and makes team-play with random people next to impossible.
- You only get coin rewards in 2v2 if you play with a random teammate, which makes teaming up with a friend completely pointless.
- Boring and sometimes broken AI that only plays one type of deck with one type of strategy every time a new set is added to the game.

This game is basically a spreadsheet with a not that pretty graphical overlay. Gameplay wise it is very similar to Civilization V as far as the 4X formula goes, and the interface is pretty much the same. However, it lacks all of the personality and atmosphere that is present in the standard Civilization games, with its utterly dull leaders, poorly textured landscapes and constant popups asking what numerical modifiers to apply to the growing spreadsheet that essentially is your current game. The depressing graphics and emotionless leaders make you feel very lonely in the world / spreadsheet, and make the game feel pretty pointless. All-in-all this is a pretty tame mod with a hefty price tag, clearly made to squeeze an extra buck out of the franchise.

If you really want a space themed 4X game, take a look at Pandora. It doesn't really do anything better than Beyond Earth, but it's at least reasonably priced. If you're up for any theme, I highly recommend Endless Legend, which is simply outstanding!