Recent reviews by Simon

I really want to like this game but in reality I had a pretty awful time. This doesn't work without a healthy population and better servers.

Completely broken. Crashes consistently in under a minute.

I'm on 7900XT.

Doesn't work anymore

It's alright

It has the potential to be amazing. But right now I wouldn't buy it especially at this price (SGD 80). There's a lot of gameplay bugs and performance issues and the game feels empty. I played the beta, and unfortunately not much has improved since then, so I don't have high hopes that it'll improve going forward.

Some things are great:
- Large battles with siege and walls are amazing
- Sacred site victory works well
- Some of the civ-specific mechanics good
- The changes to relics are good
- Placing units on walls is cool

The game performs like hot garbage. But I don't mind lowering my settings a bit. Issue is - the low graphics settings are outright broken. If you don't set (and meet) a framerate cap, the game hitches so badly it is unplayable. If you lower the resolution scale, unit healthbars disappear somehow. Shadow acne on the entire terrain. Trees pop in as you pan the camera. Performance issues are especially bad on water maps.

But even the performance issues I can ignore. There are numerous gameplay bugs and missing essential features that make the game unplayable for me.

Some examples:
- Often, I accidentally discover enemy positions when I attempt to place a wall or building in the fog of war. It fails if there's an enemy there. You can absolutely cheat this way.
- Often, I see flickers of building in the fog of war, or hear sounds of units marching.
- A very large number of upgrades and abilities don't do what they say they do. e.g. Mongol move speed ability says +50%, but is actually +125%.
- In team games, you can rush a wonder unreasonably fast.
- No ranked matches. No penalty for leaving games. Many team games are ruined by leavers.
- The camera is too zoomed in. This is an issue that's been raised by literally everyone ever. A trebuchet has a range much larger than one screen height. Naval battles are often of a similar size.
- Basic unit movement commands are bad. It's sometimes unclear whether villagers are rallied onto a resource or not. There's no visible path for units with shift-queued moves. There's no patrol command.
- Wall building issues. You cannot queue a gate on an unfinished wall. You cannot join a wall to an allies wall. Walls require huge clearance around them.
- You can't ungarrison a single unit at a time. This is especially apparent as Delhi Sultanate, who will regularly want to ungarrison one scholar from the mosque. You can't see healthbars of garrisoned units. Units being attacked by archers will sometimes die after being garrisoned.
- The minimap is too small and crowded, you can't see anything in large games
- When you hotkey multiple types of production buildings, it combines the hotkey layout into one franken-layout with a mix of buttons from different buildings. It is incredibly stupid.
- Often, units will attack a building when there's an enemy military unit nearby. Sometimes they ignore focus-fire commands.
- Sometimes, units refuse to change back to the default formation. Sometimes, formations are stupid (e.g. warrior monks at the front)
- Ships owned by players who have surrendered can attack you, but you can't attack them unless you a-click the enemy ships. If you a-move, your ships will sail past and be killed.
- Often, the ingame chat censors non-swear words for no reason. e.g. "Mongol". It can't be turned off.

It's not everything I was hoping for but it's pretty solid. It could do with a couple more levels and more weapons.

I don't get the stuttering other reviewers are experiencing.

Excellent. A huge jump in quality over the first game.

The game seems like it'd be fun if:

* It didn't stutter
* The AI was decent

Much improved since earlier versions

As a fan of Hammerwatch, It's with a heavy heart that I say, I am not enjoying this.

It feels:

• Way too grindy
  
• Like every run is identical
  
• Like items and buffs don't affect my character in any significant way
  
• Like melee characters are broken and way underpowered