Recent reviews by killakanz

It's alright.
I like trains.

Disappointing.

Let's start with the positives. Game is pretty, graphics are good, it runs stable for me. Operating the various vehicles is fun.

Ok, on to the negatives. There is no open play, no openworld whatsoever. Most of the game is the management screens. You can't just wander around the port and watch things happening.
If you want to drive something, you have to pick a mission and you are severely railroaded in all of them. Take this container, put it over there. No, you can't choose where it goes, no you can't really explore much because roads are blocked. Just do as you're told. Repeat 2 or 3 times, mission done. There's no object permanence, so whatever you do in these missions don't affect anything else. Don't worry about damaging the containers, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever to the mission outcome and the customers really don't care.

Oh, we can repair vehicles? Great! ... It's a cheesy minigame, and only if a mission for it appears in the list... *sigh*...

Okay, TLDR: If you've played the demo, save your money because you've already experienced everything the game has to offer.
Which is a pity, operating the vehicles is fun... But activities and progression is entirely, strictly railroaded. You don't actually have any freedom of choice outside of the order processing screens, you aren't running the show.
Great concept, had potential, badly executed.

It wasn't bad as these shop template games go. But there's not much content and nothing new coming either according to the dev. You'll have everything the game offers in 4 to 6 hours. Wasted potential.

The game itself is brilliant. Can't fault it.

Well, I can, because it runs via Ubisoft Connect, an absolutely abysmal DRM that rarely works, can't update itself, doesn't know what DLCs you own, and most of the time just straight up refuses to allow you to run the game.
For the past month, the download link for Ubisoft Connect is broken on Ubisoft's own website, my currently installed version says it's too old to update itself (like wtf?). Nobody at Ubisoft cares, nobody has bothered to look into it, whenever you try to message anyone they just say "raise a support ticket"... Which nobody ever looks at.

So yeah. Anno, awesome game, awesome series. Ubisoft, incompetent support, if they even exist, terrible company, worst DRM software to ever exist. Sad to say, save your money, don't buy because at the moment you probably wont be allowed to play the game anyway.

There have been a lot of disappointing sequels recently... But this... This isn't one of them!

This is how you do a sequel for a beloved title. Well done Ironclad and Stardock, you guys blew this outta the park!
This isn't just a remaster, it isn't just Sins 1 but prettier. I mean, it is prettier, but also it adds new features and mechanics that perfectly compliment the game without forgetting or destroying that which made the original so great. Thanks for showing us that this can actually be achieved, where so many other series have failed.

If you loved Sins 1, get this game! If you're a newcomer to the series, get this game. If you like 4x RTS games with a space flavour, Sins 2 is a must have!

Refunded.

First attempt to play the game after buying the deluxe edition and installing it, it didn't even make it to main menu. Crashed.

Second attempt, it got to main menu but could not save changes to graphics settings. So attempted to start the tutorial. Crashed.

Third attempt, loaded to menu and attempted to go straight into tutorial without touching anything else. Crashed.

Also the PDX crash handler doesn't work, attempting to send crash reports also failed.

I can't even say anything about gameplay in this review because, try as I might, I couldn't even get that far. This is so badly broken, what a shocking mess...

So I've been a patreon supporter of this game for years, and it's been an absolute delight to see this game develop from a very barebones tank driving game which was the first demo I tried, to where it is now. It's seriously impressive how far the devs have come with this game, yet they'd insist it's still some way from finished.
Now we all expected that a lot of new players coming to this game post Steam early access release to be coming from a crowd linked to certain free to play competitive online deathmatch tank games. So let me be clear from the very outset: That is not what this game is! GHPC is not a PVP game. Remove all expectation of your tank having a fair and balanced equal on the opposing team. Also remove all expectations of crew levelings, consumables, invisible tanks, healthbars and enemy icons on minimaps... None of that fluff features here. An enemy tank may be sitting 4km away, but it'll still be rendered. If your real eyes are good enough to spot it, you can try and shoot it. My personal best so far was a kill at 6.5km. This is possible and the maps are certainly big enough for it, however most engagements happen at much closer ranges...
Since this game is leaning more towards a simulator, or a "sim-lite" as people are calling it, there is only a handful of vehicles at the moment, however each vehicle is individually simulated to be as true to their real counterparts as possible. There's no templating, so we're not getting a situation where dozens of vehicles feel exactly the same, like certain other games previously hinted at. And yet, despite each vehicle's individualism, they're all tied to a common, simplified control set. So while each vehicle feels different, they're all pretty easy to pick up and play while still requiring practice to master. It's quite an impressive achievement in a game. And while I mentioned earlier that there are only a handful of vehicles, there are already more on offer now than comparable games in the sim-lite genre offer you, with even more in development.
The audio is top notch, I love the boom of a distant exploding tank reverberating around the internal view, and the crew voices provide some excellent immersion as you can hear their stress and maybe even a little panic rising as the vehicle comes under fire, it really adds to the excitement as you duke it out exchanging shots with an enemy platoon.

GHPC is a great tank game already, and it's still early access. The developers are still very much active and very much invested in further developing this title. There is so much potential on top of what's already here!

Game is excellent! I guess with it being over 13 years old, it's a classic by now, but it's long been an excellent city-builder and if you're into the genre, how have you not played this yet! And for those longing for that nostalgia, this release works on Windows 10 and widescreen resolutions!
A word of warning though if you're buying this today, the game currently installs Uplay which is an issue because Ubisoft no longer supports Uplay so it gets stuck in a cycle of failing to update and wont let the game start. You have to go to the Ubisoft website and manually install Ubisoft Connect, then launch the game via Steam and Ubi Connect should see it and link it, then let you play it... It's a pain in the rear, but Ubisoft's DRM always has been a pain in the rear for paying customers, so no change there... But they definitely lose brownie points for abandoning their old DRM for a new one and then failing to ensure all their games start shipping with the new one...

This needs some serious balancing work.
Playing as a Megacorp, there's no way you should be struggling to keep your economy in the positive simply because you have 1 vassal.
I don't mind the idea of paying subsidies towards my vassals for being specialist, But it really shouldn't be a flat percentage of your overall production, and certainly not such high percentages. As they are, you can't change them. With a level 1 bulwark, you start off paying 20% of your EC, Minerals and Food production. This actually slowly increases as they gain XP to level up. Once they reach level 2 you're paying 35%... When they hit level 3 you're paying 50%!! Half of your basics production to ONE vassal!! How the heck are you meant to do this with multiple vassals?
And you cannot lower those settings, you cannot stop the vassal from leveling up. And it's a struggle to pay that *as a megacorp*! This is so imbalanced!
Since I turned my one and only vassal into a Bulwark, I've spent about 50 ingame years trying to bring my economy back into the positive, *as a megacorp*, made even more difficult because the dividends I'm paying are constantly rising as my vassal gains XP, and as I mine more and more resources, the more I have to pay out because it's a flat percentage of your overall production...

I can't begin to imagine how bad this probably is when you're not a megacorp. It's just not worth having specialist vassals because it's so poorly balanced and destroys your economy, which kinda defeats the entire point of the DLC...

Well, the game was very good, so far as I remember.

But I haven't played it for years, and when I try to now I just get a message telling me to verify an email address that no longer exists. There's no option to change it, and rockstar support is an absolute joke since you can't even contact them at all if you don't have a working account...

So what I actually have now is one very expensive (at the time I bought it) game that won't let me play. And absolutely nothing I can do about it.