Recent reviews by hafuhafu

Severe balance problem, would recommend that you wait for EA graduation.

It's a deck building game, but cards are polarized; and you start with 10~12 worst cards in the game. Energy (for playing cards) is very limited (you will very likely be stuck with 3). Yet enemies are aggressive and seemingly badly scaled, often dealing more than 3-energy worth of damage, which makes a bad hand very punishing (you lose health, need rest thus cannot upgrade your cards). This naturally pushes players to thin the deck, and the META is defined around a few "engine" cards that draw more cards or restore energy to be (semi-) infinite after thinning, either permanently via events/shops, or temporarily in a battle via "Exhaust" cards.

This isn't fun to begin with.

To make the matters worse, the devs seemingly have made too much money to care about gameplay balance from the correct angle. In the upcoming BETA, devs attempt to punish the thin deck by the Door Maker change:

1st turn: Invincible, and removes all status
2nd turn: Exhaust every card you play, with damage (~2 energy worth)
3rd turn: No extra card draw, with damage (1~2 energy worth)
4th turn: Every card you play removes 1 energy, with damage (1~2 energy worth, actually can't remember that clearly)
5th turn: Seemingly repeats from 2nd turn

Now this is not fun at all. At least before there was a solution, albeit bad, the path to it was somewhat strategic; after this there is no strategy at all, just take every good card without a plan and pray you have a good hand every turn when seeing Door Maker. It's like forcing the game to go from controlled chaos to uncontrollable chaos, which seems to me like a suicide for deck building.

I wish one of my buddies that is socially dead currently due to his newborn can return to the field soon so we can finally finish this masterpiece.

We need better optimization!

Apart from the cool-down driven duels, this title has everything I expect to find in a game set in Hogwarts.

MORE!

Wait for a year then come back, guys!

On a more serious note, the economy system does give me a feeling of "unfinished project". I have got two main topics: Stockpiles and capitalists.

I know that v3 deliberately removed it because it was unpleasant to deal with in v2, and Paradox used the supply and demand to sorta compensate the removal. This comes with the advantage that you don't need to try too hard when balancing the supply and demand, but meanwhile it also means your economy is more fragile than it looks, as you lose stockpiles to absorb impacts, which will create spikes and valleys of prices. You might have seen this when switching production method on some high level buildings. I have yet triggered a crash via this, probably because there is a price cap for all the goods, but this artificial instability is not attractive to say the least.

How construction works amplifies this - now construction queues globally, and AFAICT there is not a good way to schedule things, like "building this Motor Factory and Railway around the same time". This happens a lot in reality especially when the goods at question are expensive and low in volume, like airplanes, high-end machines. Lack of ability to do so means you either have to endure an elevated demand by building consumer first, or deal with vaporizing goods (due to removal of stockpiles) by building producer first - either is a nuance. You can micro-manage the priorities to achieve that, but the experience is not pleasant at all.

How production method works worsens this even further, as the change applies to all levels of the building at question (almost) immediately. This is not how innovations productionize. Spikes and valleys will be incurred, again due to the removal of stockpiles. The phenomenon is quite visible in small and advanced economic entities, like Belgium. It would be better if we can make the transition slower to mitigate the issue, which is closer to reality anyways.

Focusing on trading might mask this issue, as foreign markets are huge and can help you soak the excessive and address insufficiency, but that does not seem to work well when you are just slightly advanced or when you don't have access to big markets (small and advanced). This might become more and more viable as you open more markets and as more and more nations catch up, but it's still a nuance that in my opinion, should not be allowed to happen.

Immersion-level speaking, it almost feels like there are other producers and consumers hidden from you, but unfortunately this contradicts with the second topic.

Or laissez-faire, or the dumb AIs that build factories. It seems that Paradox "fixes" the dumb AIs by driving them out of the game, but only for the human players. Now everyone is state capitalism, and the only difference I think is whether you have bunches of capitalists or bunches of bureaucratics. I guess they will eventually make some differences on how you reform your government, but it's kinda backwards.

Micro-managing all the factories is probably not gonna be super fun, and the lack of delegation probably means you have to spend 90% of your time (at least early to mid game) switching between market and building tabs, doing things that AI should be doing. I understand that AI might be bad at investing, but remember, capitalists are bad all the same. The volume of bankruptcies is never really low. I only played small nations, and I for one cannot imagine how bad it might be for big blobs.

For anyone defending the current gamey, planned-economy-style implementation, you can easily skyrocket your economy and mark my words you will get bored very quickly. I tripled the GDP of Belgium in 10yrs in my first run, while maintaining relatively high literacy (60.2) and SoL (17.2), and I was not even trying. This is just ridiculous and gets boring very fast.

Immersion-level it's hilarious that capitalists invest into some pool that funnels money to the nation. It's also hilarious that the national treasury builds factories for capitalists to capitalize. I guess the latter is 100% accurate though.

Welp, I got a new mechanism to complain about. The implementation of trade seems to be a mistake. Firstly, it seems that you have very little control over who can sell to and buy from your market, except embargoing the nation at question completely, or going isolationism yourself completely, which is, sigh, not fun. Protectionism and mercantilism only allow you some options with tariffs to "discourage" or "encourage", but it does not seem to do anything.

Tariffs do not seem to work the way it is supposed to when trade deals are initiated by other nations. You can increase corresponding tariffs, and the tariffs amount in your trade center will change accordingly, but you will not get the money. Britain is importing 500+ coal and France is importing 900+ iron from me, but I cannot get a single dime from the tariffs whichever the option I take (mercantilism). I thought trade might be something that can be dealt with without some delegation (merchants like capitalists to factories), because foreign nations might be doing it for you, but apparently not. FML. So apparently I have trade agreements with Britain and France, and tariffs are thus eliminated. WHY CAN I STILL TOGGLE TARIFFS ON THOSE TRADE DEALS??? Please fix this stupid bug.

And, wtf is this trade center? I can understand that it's an abstraction of all trade activities in your nation, but it makes zero sense to bind 1k shopkeepers per level - you don't do retail for raw materials like coal and iron, do you? And you don't do retail either for military purchase, do you? Together with the tariffs bug it seems that I am purely donating all my coal and iron and still paying some "shopkeepers" who are supposed to sell my coal and iron to Britain and France. FML.

Immersion-level? Ehhh. This also incurs endless micro-management just like building factories.

v3 has better supply and demand mechanism than v2. In v2 demand reacts poorly towards supply IIRC, but here in v3 you can clearly feel it. The living standards are a welcomed feature that is likely a good model (pops are a bit too sensitive, though; I feel like blue pops in the US under Biden administration are way more tolerant), as it works with the supply and demand to make you actually feel the pain - poor balancing means more radicals, or less money, or maybe both.

I don't typically like the new CK3-like UI from the new engine, but it's kinda fine. I understand that Paradox wants to spread its success to more user base, like tablet gamers, but it feels less responsive.

As for warfare, well, we will get it next time! I think we all know there is gonna be an DLC, as the current warfare is so lacking. Also I have heard that German unification is another big boo as you don't need to re-take the route that was historically taken (Denmark for Schleswig-Holstein and a trap, Austria for hememony, France for nationalism); there is also the nice "Greater Germany" historical alternative in v2 but I am not sure whether it makes to v3.

To give you a serious epilogue - I kinda like this game, but I won't recommend this to others right now - instead I sincerely recommend that all you guys wait for 6mo or 1yr before grabbing this game; you will be able to observe and evaluate whether it is another dumbdown like CK3 with overpriced DLCs (seriously, friends and foes????), or things are actually being improved. If you are a micro-nerd like me, feel free to grab it now, you gotta do some charity per year anyways.

Over-representation of the "natural" disasters. Together with how stupid the repair mechanism is, this DLC is very unpleasant unless you aim for doom. Supernatural governor that negates environmental effects? Oh yeah, players must adore this, and it's called "reinforced materials" which you can get around 1XXX BC with the supernatural Liang, and you will never be able to research it to mass-apply.

The game itself is fun although I have to point out that Deity is just dumb design. The sheer ridiculous buff to AI forces the player to play mechanically, which is not fun, and AI does not play mechanically itself to stop you, which is dumb. Most of the time AI won't even get into a coalition against you on your way to a domination as long as you do some stupid "diplomacy". Classical designs to appease toxic player base - who want artificial challenges that are just beatable by squeezing the mechanisms, exploits or not, turning every game into a spreadsheet, and taking all these as an achievement - and I don't like it.

This game has its potentials, but unfortunately I think it's ruined by the pack of small issues everywhere in the game. Seems to be a beginner project where devs tried to create a fusion of Commandos 2 and XCOM, but failed to deliver to either of the audience.

• When saving, the game auto-screenshots for you, and pops up on the bottom right, which covers some UI buttons and is very annoying.
  
• Firefight is terrible. I don't like RNG based fight while some enemies have long health bars so they can tank some shots. I can't imagine people playing on highest (I played on normal) while managing to stay sane. You can apparently 100%-accurately throw a deadly knife, but you cannot aim an rifle even if it's within knife range. And apparently you can 100%-accurately shoot a dog, but not a soldier.
  
• Alert system together with the firefight is not fun. So you give me rifles, and you give me explosives, and when I started firefight (in mission "Hunter" at the very beginning), it seemed that the whole map reinforced. Apparently you can shout farther than rifle can shoot accurately.
  
• Alert-related missions and achievements suck. I don't mind going stealth - this is my style - but with all those bs it's not very enjoyable. My patience only lasted until I missed one of those achievements while going completely stealth in mission "First Aid".
  
• The control is a bit clunky. I do like waypoints which Commandos, Desperado, and Shadow Tactics do not have, but overall the characters are much less responsive compared to the RTT mentioned.
  
• The game tries to integrate too many functionality into mouse clicks only- pick up knifes, pick up corpses, shelter in cover, pick up loots, shoot, and this causes lots of minor problems like you will find it hard to pick up something near a cover, you are sometimes not able to pick up your knifes (as Zorin), etc.
  
• You can't double click when choosing to use an utility - you must single click it otherwise your second click will cancel the usage.
  
• You can't highlight enemies (Alt) when choosing to use an utility or skill - if cancels the usage and you will be surprised that you shoot the rifle instead of throwing a knife.
  
• High rank officer GPS-locating lower rank officers. It seems that high rank officer (titled an Golden Eagle) will randomly try to chat with lower rank officers, and if you happen to have killed one, it might start a search (which will invalidate some of the "without being found" achievements, I think, that seems to be how I missed the achievement during "First Aid" as I stealth-killed everyone), or the high rank officer might walk straight to the corpse wherever you hide it. STUPID. STUPID. VERY STUPID. I simply lost my patience after this.
  
• Some of the camp projects are just better than others, what's the point of those inferior ones? Just wasting my resources that can be used to improve the RNG?
  
• Skill tree requires you to put exactly 3 points in every row to unlock the next row; problem is, some of the perks have pre-requisites in previous rows, which forces you to pick up some unwanted useless skills if you want to advance to the final row.

There are many minor issues like those, and are really damaging the gameplay. If you don't mind all kinds of stupid bugs, and like XCOM-like RNG-based firefights, you might want to try this when there is a discount.

Project Orange.

Seriously, I would give this game 9/10 for everything but boss fight. The level design of the final boss fight is like a disaster, the sky is orange, the land is almost orange (for some reason), boss' gun shells are orange, boss' missiles are orange, boss' railgun traces are orange, boss' hyper duper death balls are orange, and your missile-lock icon is freaking orange, and the freaking missile-lock alerts are orange. EVERYTHING IS FREAKING ORANGE. I felt like I was blinded for several minutes after the boss fight. Also, the boss is probably the biggest baby on earth which cannot stop talking. A truly disgusting character.

Everything else is just great. Actually I would recommend that you clear all missions and just throw the boss fight away for the sake of your eyes.