Recent reviews by The Holy Ghost - Its Fight Night

The original was good, this isn't. Go buy/play the original. Even if Cities Skylines 2 was cheaper than the original, I would still recommend the original over it.

I could talk about the bugs, crashes, predatory sales practices and how everyone hates the DLC. But none of that matters to me.

The real problem is its a bad game. It just isn't fun. Comparing it to the original, the simulation is more annoying and buggy, the progression feels meaningless, and whether your goal is to design a good looking or well functioning city, it just feels like a chore.

Some of this is just the fact the game was clearly rushed, and is clearly unfinished. But a lot of it is just bad game design.

A perfect example of this is the progression system. Which feels arbitrary, meaningless and annoying. It is so much worse than the previous games progression system its nuts. What you do it build certain buildings like roundabouts to get XP, and at each progress mark you get some unlocks and a bunch of money. Why is this bad? Its uncoupled from actual city progress, and so badly done that if feels like sandbox to people who don't want sandbox, and is WAY too restrictive for anyone that wants sandbox. In the previous game you got unlocks for the city reaching a certain size, or certain special buildings based on city achievements relating to game mechanics like crime, education, etc. They should bring that back.

Digital Premium Edition owners need a massive apology for this travesty of a DLC. Honestly its a $5 DLC, and feels like it was released just to screw over the people who paid THE MOST already.

What do you get in this DLC?
Well, if like me you only play Brits and DAK multiplayer, you get NOTHING! I have never felt so ripped off in all my life. Chris Roberts salutes you.

I want to love this game. I have many many thousands of hours in coh2, and enjoyed coh 1 before that. This game does have some improvements over the previous titles, but they are massively overshadowed by the issues. Especially poor UI, missing features and bugs.

However... there are some serious issues. I'll list a few of the worst issues, and then a few of the things that are actually good after that.

UI issue - The "notifications" thing is entirely pointless, annoying, pops up over stuff you are looking at, provides no vale, and is ugly. Everyone I have spoken to hates it and thinks it should be deleted.
UI issue - You can't tell who is who. You can no longer see their name when selecting their units or buildings.
UI issue - the unique player colours have been made worse than coh 2. Lets say you play 3 games in a row. Games 1 and 2 you might be Orange. Game 3 Orange is the player next to you instead so you keep clicking on the wrong units. Player colour should be consistent!
UI BUG - When you set unit iconts to "top right", they show in the bottom left still in multiplayer. Really annoying.
UI issue - when changing key bindings, the grid is very confusing, only a coh1/2 player would figure it out, even then it is not obvious, and worst of all, there is no UI to tell you what those buttons might do! They should give hints like this box is for retreat, this box for reinforce, etc.
UI Issue - hovering over things does not bring up tool tips. They are missing from both menus and in match options. This is a serious downgrade from the previous games.
Faction Design issue - The British faction is regrettably horrible. It feels confused. For example, it has abilities from the germans in coh 2, like rifle and bundle grenades. Plays slow right of the bat, but doesn't have strong or specialised early game units to make up for it. The devs say they wanted to make the faction feel more aggressive, but managed to encourage a more defensive play style instead by making it slow and giving MG's and mortars while making mobile units kinda rubbish except the grenades. The army lacks good anti-tank. The tanks are all outclassed, the 17 pounder comes too late and is far too easily countered with a little arty. The 6 pounder is too weak, the tanks all have 2 pounders and come too late, the boys rifles are OK, but cause you to drop a LOT of anti infantry capability for some very meagre AT. Even the AT nades don't snare like they used to so you can't punish dives.
CRASH ISSUE - they still haven't fixed the bugsplat from COH2. Crashes can and will happen. Especially if you alt-tab. Even if you just alt-tab in the menu screen for a minute or 2.
- Breaching is boring and pointless. It is poorly implemented, and doesn't do anything a grenade or flamethrower or mortar or tank shell couldn't do.
- The lobby host controlling your screen is HORRIBLE. You can't look at post game stats and things and it just feels bad. Plus it is a huge downgrade from coh2 where YOU were in control of your own damn screen , and you could even re-open the previous games stats after leaving the lobby.
- You no longer have access to see players build orders in post game summary or anything like that.
- There is no replay feature at launch.
- The game feels less than half finished. It is like player a VERY early beta build. Which explains why the Public Alpha tests were so close to launch to be honest. A LOT of work needs doing before this game can be recommended.
- Path finding is still terrible. It does not seem improved. Though I will say that having most things on the map (even trenches) be drivable, means vehicles get caught on less stuff.

I could go on for hours but you get the point, and those are some solid example of issues this game has before you even consider gameplay.

Here are a few of the things done well:
- towing is a nice feature. Could work better, but its very nice to have and was heavily requested in the previous game.
- its nice that the lobby host chooses if the lobby is allies or axis, and it force switched everyone.
- the concept for the campaign is an improvement. Its not worth buying the game if you are nly interested in singleplayer, but at least the singleplayer has been improved compared to coh1 and coh2.
- the voice lines are great as always.
- building destruction is better looking and has a greater effect on gameplay.

Maybe I will add more to this review as I play more. But you get the idea. The game has lots more new issues than improvements. It clearly is not finished (feels like a beta build at least 8-12 months before it would be finished enough to release..). COH fans like me will buy it anyway, and play this piece of rubbish just because we have been playing coh2 for 10 years already and want something newer. But you should not buy this game. By the time the game is actually finished being developed, and most issues have been fixed, they will give the game away for free. Just like they did with the last game. Don't pay to be a beta tester.

I really want to like this game. And it does have some potential. Unfortunately, at this time. The game is so underdeveloped. It cannot be recommended.

Pro's
- cute graphics
- 3D rimworld like. Or at least intends to be.
- the building system kind of works. Nothing special but its nice to have.

Con's
- some of the worst AI seen in any game.
- lack of research
- lack of story
- slow development pace
- developers more intent on pushing a political ideology than actually developing a good game
- zero characters normal people can identify with
- bugs. Lots of bugs
- Most of the promised game content is currently missing. Multi generational families and stories for example
- The game originally promised to be about telling stories. Like rimworld. However it absolutely is not. The mechanics around this are mostly non-existant. And terrible where they do exist.
- Lack of character/party customisation
- lack of quests/goals/etc
- The dialogue is of terrible quality, occurs way too much, and can't be quickly skipped past. You will spend A LOT of the game reading this garbage.
- VERY few settings. No settings around pawns/characters. Little in the way of graphics settings. Very little in the way of game settings.

Let me start by stating this:
- I did not play the original games, so my review comes untainted by fandom both possitive and negative.

OVERVIEW:
At this time the game is best enjoyed single player. The campaign in HW1 Remastered is amazing and I expect HW2R's to be great as well. The story, cinematics, music and atmosphere all get 10/10

CONTROLS:
Some players have a little trouble getting used to the controls and while this is in part due to the fully 3d nature of the game I also feel it is in part down to the developers descision to keep the old control system rather than improving upon it. That said, everything works nicely and I found everythign easy to get used to. 8/10

GRAPHICS:
The game is simply stunning close up, ships are well detailed, docking ships looks awesome, the enviroments and FX are great. Could they be better.. Probably.. Are they good enough, definitly. 9/10

MULTIPLAYER:
PvP is still in beta, so it is hard to judge, but so far things seem real good. There are objectives and that is something I find very interesting as it is unheard of in other PvP games I play. AI is skilled enough for skirmish games and will give you a real run for your money, Changing tactics from game to game and really testing you. Only real issue is possibly balancing still needs to be done on some units. But hey, this is something completely new to the franchise so it was always going to take time. There is however no co-op campaign.. Something I find sorely lacking as it is my prefered game mode ussually. 7/10

OVERALL:
An exellent game, I highly recommed it to anyone who loves, RTS, sci-fi, or who is just looking to try something new or find a great story to be immersed in. 9/10

Abysmally bad game for these reasons:
1.Camera bugs that break the game by changing the angle to an unplayable one and sticking so it can't be fixed.
2.Have to completely uninstall and reinstall every time you want to play the game. Verifying the integrity of the game cash does find missing files but does not fix the problem.
3.Almost no actual gameplay, no goals to ahieve, not much land to explore.
4.Missleading videos - on max graphics settings the game doesnt have the FX you see in the video, for example your skii's don't actually kick up any snow as you ride down the mountain. And they spend most of the time unterneath the terrain so you cant even see your skii's!!!
5. Updates are far and few between. Add almost no content and fail to address any of the game breaking issues I encounter every time I try to play.

In sumarry. This game is plagued with game breaking bugs, has almost no content, has been stuck in early access for ages with no significant updates and feels like it will be stuck in an unplayable, early access state forever. Dont throw your money away.

Great game for the price. Loving every minit of it

THE best survival game currently on the market. Far better than DayZ & Rust. I cannot recommend this game enough.
Great devs,
Great game,
Great Community.

Mechanically one of the best RTS/RTT games ever made. Unfortuantely the devs don't fully support it any more, instead they have a terrible "community balance team" that clearly has no idea what they are doing. Still fun though, and definitly still worth picking up in a sale.