Recent reviews by Soul Cheryl

Warhammer 40,000 Gladius is actually what got me interested in Warhammer the most, with Mechanicus being my introduction to the IP. Having played a ton of Civilization 5, and little to nothing of Civilization 6, I can confidently say that this game improves dramatically in the formula of 4X, Hex based gameplay, by making it really fun and addicting. It is definitely worth a try, sink 50 hours learning it, and then have some fun blasting xenos or heretics or whatever xenophobic term your faction utilizes against the others. It is 100% worth it on discount.

The base game, as it is, I found it to be too... little. It can be further expanded by purchasing DLC's, most of them not worth the full cost, all of them worth in 50%+ discount. 90% of the meat of the game comes from Battle Units, which some DLC add to factions you already own, and well, the titular Factions. In my honest opinion, making 2 more factions, (probably the easy ones, like Adepta Sororitas and T'au) base game would've been a significantly better. It's not "incomplete", but if you calculate: you take about 15 hours to learn and master a faction, so those 4 factions give you 60 hours at max of the joy of learning to play them effectively, and, a strategy game is mostly about the satisfaction of planning and seeing your plans come into fruition or failing miserably because an unit that you thought was strong turns out to be garbo and now you're stuck with 30 units that do 0.3 damage and get onetapped by a Kroot Hound. Anyways...

The game is really, really good, in my honest opinion. I think it far surpasses Civilization in gameplay terms, by being significantly simplified in most aspects: in fact, some factions like Tyranids are so simplified that they have like... 3 resources: Biomass, Influence and Research, (Loyalty and Population not being really resources...), mashing together Food, Electricity and Ore into one.

The stand out points are: the combat is fast, and once you have a mod, very understandable. Civilization struggles with combat so much: in fact, I say that funnily, most 4X games struggle greatly with combat, which is kinda bonkers since without it, it's back to Sim City, yet it is a pervailing issue across all the genre. I wouldn't say Gladius is a perfect combat game, but it's easier to understand: there's not a strict rock paper scissors type of gameplay, but that doesn't mean that all units are equally matched: I'd say there is a very loosey goosey rock paper scissors.

- Melee units are the strongest and tankiest, but they usually struggle against terrain, and they are useless against flying units. They usually come in 3 styles: Tanky good damage slow, High damage/Low damage infiltration units with Low Health (if damage high) or High Health (If damage low), and then Meat Fodder: cheap, make the enemy waste actions killing them, versatile good damage but incompetent against factions since they're too weak.

- Flying units usually don't usually have the firepower to take down tanky Melee units, but they are good at taking down regular units, scouting, and are usually hard to kill: either by moving too fast, running away from combat, by being actually tanky against ranged damage, or having other features that make them unique, like the Chaff grenades, teleportation, etc.

- Ranged units are the versatile bunch: Some of them are specialized in damage: Those usually have the Heavy penalty assigned to them, making them do less damage if they move, some of them have Move Through Cover, which allows them to quickly move through forests as normal tiles, so they fight better there, and some have Ignore Ranged Damage reduction, a trait that disregards forests protective nature vs projectiles.

Those are the bare bones, the absolute basics, of combat. You have the more "Siege" ranged units, you have the "Mega" units, the "Swarmy" units, the "Sniper" units, but overall, you'll see and fight most of these common archetypes, whether through faction or Wildlife encounters.

A lot of crucial things are obscured in the game, only unlocked with the Golden Tooltips mod (how... is this not even base game...), or what actually some Faction traits mean, like:

- "Doctrina Imperatives: Override Skitarii subroutines to amplify some combat aspects while reducing others". This just mean: Unlocked via research, press a button to buff a stat and debuff a stat on some units: the debuff can be ignored because the hero has a power that does that. You wouldn't know any of this until jumping into a game, getting a Skitarii unit, getting the Hero (optional), and researching a Doctrina Imperative which, by the way, you might completely skip, and even win without using it. So... the faction trait... kinda never existed for you, on that match (which might be your first match, and then you'll completely disregard this crucial mechanic of the faction, like I did).

- Bonding Knife Ritual: Sacrifice individual gain to restore unit morale for the betterment of the empire as a whole.

What?

Again, this is
/only a researcheable thing, and it only affects select Infantry units.
/it doesn't restore unit morale, it FULLY heals it. that is a MASSIVE understatement on the test.
/for the betterment of the.. what? This means literally nothing besides "I guess... you become stronger by having and using this trait???" LIKE 99.99% OF FACTION TRAITS? AND I ALSO DIDNT PICK THIS UP BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS LIKE THE COMMISARS ABILITY TO KILL UNITS TO RESTORE MORALE BUT THIS IS LITERALLY JUST A FREE ACTION TO RESTORE YOUR MORALE? AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- Holy Trinity of Weapons: Based on the Holy Trinity of bolter, flamethrower and melta, the sisters are known throught the Imperium as the scourge of traitors, mutants and sorcerers. I... honestly do not know what this mean. You have weapons!. That is the trait? All factions have a "Flame-y" weapon that does AoE damage, a "Shooty" Weapon that is versatile, and a "Armor Pen" weapon. This make it seems like it's any different? or like you only have those? The best hero in the game, Saint Celestine, does not use any of those three, it just uses a Sword (I guess it's on fire?). And the Arco Flagellants use whips. Paragon Knights do use a bit of Bolter weapons, but main damage comes from melee, too.

Oh! What it actually means is that you can research and then use Sacred Rites, an Influence for Power up, that buffs those weapons! That is so clear by the description of it! And your best hero unit (and partially, your walker unit) is not affected by it! Awesome! But that's balance talk that will be discussed later.

I appreciate the lore fidelity and the richness of the description, but not if it would lead you to believe one thing, or leave a mechanic unexplained. By the way, it gets worse: the faction trait, if it refers to that, it fails to mention the utility of 3 other better Sacred Rites: Those that increase your production on Combat units, and the one that gives you a % Resource buff to your most important resource (and it's a large percentage, too!). This would've been way better to put in the faction description, imho.

Attacks are also, very weird. Some units have multiple weapons. Well, that means I'll use the best one, no? Well, no. You attack with ALL of your weapons IF you can use them. You will notice a ton of inconsistency on your damage, by virtue of some unit's weapons ignoring Line of Sight, some having Range, some doing less damage after you move, etc etc etc. Also, you can't see the damage that other unit will do to you if that unit is not in range to attack you. So you will never know if your Ranged units will get oneshotted by Melee units, since it won't let you estimate their damage. A lot of times you don't know how much in danger your units are until an Umbra onetaps your only Flame unit, and now you're set 30 turns behind because of it. Just... why... ALSO STEAM DOESNT ALLOW M;EM TO KEEP TYPIGNG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Don't know if my pc is weak or it's not properly optimized, but I got a i5 and 8 gb of ram and the game runs... pretty damn bad, not reaching 10 fps with everything in low and the lowest resolution.

I get 70fps in Deep Rock Galactic, 40fps in Dead by Daylight, but I can't run it. Either needs an update on the system requirements or maybe I got unlucky or smth.

It's free. Try it.

Got this game day one, didn't stop playing until I beat it. I think it's very solid game, easy 100 hours if you play level-headed, specially with the update that makes base building even better. I'm not the most creative brain in the planet, and even then, I had a ton of fun messing around with it. Recommended 100%, full price and all.

I was skeptical about this game.
But it is pretty good.
Okay, not the best game ever created by humanity, but it's kinda close?
The sounds are 8/10
The soundtrack is a 69/10
The combat is 10/10
The voice acting is 9/10
This game has some sweet skins
You can play as a Nazi
If you look for a shooter game, that is accurate to WW2, this is the closest it gets, my opinion.
It's immersive, it's team based. You need to cooperate to win, make a decent strategy, switch to clases accordingly to the team composition which causes the game to avoid stacking flamethrowers (thank god)
But there's some little things that can make this game, already better than it is.
-Better german subtitles. The game allows for subtitles (you only gonna need 'em on the Wehrmacht officer, really)
If they implement the normal text for germans, plus the English translation, and make the subtitles text box a little better (make it look similar to the L4D2 subtitles text box) and you got a masterpiece in audio.
-Flamethrower bug? I don't know if it is a feature, but flamethrowers don't deal any damage until 0,4 seconds. Which is fine, It's the best thing in the world when you got a rushing flamethrower guy that ends up killing itself, and one-shotting everything in both of the teams. But sometimes, when you have a little bit of ping, the delay feels. A lot. So, I can't play as a decent flamethrower guy, because lag issues.
-No south american servers? No south american servers.
-The semiautomatic rifle, should be available in more classes. The sniper, maybe not. But the engineer, the rifleman in the Wehrmacht, maybe?
-A history mode. Or something like that, to make it feel more immersive, like, you're in the pants of a Axis soldier, or an American soldier, etc.
And that's about it. It needs more player, but this game, it's the best shooter I have played in 12 years of shooters.
Should you buy it? You must have it if you call yourself a history nerd / old-school-shooter gamer.
Like I wrote, I think this is the best simulation game that is available in the market for WW2, soo...
Buy it.
pls

I will try to review this game with the good things and the bad things, but I'll tell you. Don't buy this for full price, I got it free. Catch it if in discount, or maybe, don't.
This game failed to engage a story like Amnesia The Dark Descent. It suffers from:
-Poor or non-existencial mechanics. You can play this in a Atari controller, just press m1, W and shift. You don't have to hide, you just run from the monster, because you are faster most of the times. If they catch you, doesn't matter, you take a LOT of hits to go down. Damage mechanic is broken, stealth mechanic is useless, peeking mechanic is there because they forgot to remove it.
-Straightforward. All the maps are simple as a straight path, excluding the beginning, where you can kinda of roam around the mansion.
-Not scary. Horror game and it lacks horror. Amnesia DD was excellent at providing suspense and then, a sensation of fear. This game doesn't. No chase music, no scary monster, not running for your life. No hiding in the dark. Nothing.
-Lack of difficulty. It feels like simple-easy all the time.
-Lack of danger. At least, let me feel the danger. Nope. You can't die from falls, from electricity, you can take a damn atom bomb with your mouth open, and recieve no more than a red screen. I don't know why you have Deadpool-like regenerative health in a horror game. The only way to die, is to take 10 hits from a monster, and they are slooow, IA defficient.
-Didn't motivate me to keep playing. The lore of the game, the only story that the game gives to you, it's boring.
-Short. I just finished in 3 hours, maybe less, because I let the game running while I was doing other things.
-No-brainer puzzles. Push a botton. Good, you completed 1% of the game with 1 click. Pull this lever. Very nice, you just completed 2% of the game. Push this object. Perfect, blablabla, so on and so on.
-No sense of exploring. There's NOTHING to look to. The documents are kinda of "lemme look for this only for the achievement". There's infinite source of light, age 1899 and you have infinite energy at the palm of your hand. The items are laying in eyesight, even in the dark, you can easily spot them.
-No inventory. The game lets you interact only with chairs and object that you'll need for puzzles. They're not hard to find, but easy to lose of sight, and WAY easier than you think to just clip them out of the map. And you got yourself a softlock.
-Have textures, sounds, doors, chairs, that are repetitive, and you will found them countless time while you play. Nothing to say about this.
-Weak story. Afraid to say this, but I didn't like it a bit.
-This point is controversial. It seems like people with high tier of graphics cards, like, WAY beyond the recommended (3,7 ghz, 8 gb ram) are suffering to the FPS cap, which is like 40 fps?, and laggy parts of the game. I can kinda say that the game didn't run to a solid 40 fps to me, even in minimun, and I play games like Fornite at 60 fps, so... Yeah. Bad optimization? Console optimization? I don't know.
---Anyways, here comes the good part, I guess :
-Decent graphics, similar to dark descent. Same engine, not big changes.
-Good new sounds. The machinery sounds were nice, the pigs sounds were okay.
-Music. Soundtrack was awesome. It has a high place in: my favorite soundtrack from videogames.
-Voice acting. Pretty good, I really enjoy the talk part of the game (oh wait, that's the WHOLE GAME).
And that's about it. I played a lot of terror games, and I expected something complete mindblowing from Frictional Games, but the real developer: the Chinese Room (because Frictional just gifted the engine, and published the game), didn't created a experience worth of the name Amnesia.
This game is not horrible, it just doesn't have that much of good things if you compare it with older terror games, Penumbra, even Cry of fear. And that's a problem, this game launched 2013.