Recent reviews by Tweedlebum

I'll start this with the admission that Total War is genarally one of my favorite franchises ever since M2.

But at full price I can't really recommend the game.

They took some risks here, but I'm not sure they all paid off.

The Bad:
Combat -
Unit speed is in a really wierd place. I'm used to walking my troops, trying to conserve fatigue and tiredness, but right now it feels pointless. Add that to increased unit movement speed and it all just feels like the game is running about 50% too fast. I can only assume they increased infantry movement speed because it all felt too slow without cavalry.

Units often take forever to die. Even if completely surrounded by multiple units.

Chariots are alright, but with the increased movement speed of infantry they don't feel like they outrun units nearly enough. They kind of feel like a "win more" unit. They feel fun if you were already going to win the battle, and they might help you get there faster with less casualties, but they won't help you turn a battle.

Archers feel a bit pointless with the reduced range. By the time you start shooting, skirmisher is already triggering your men to flee. Your men are also obnoxiously slow to actually respond and generally just stand there to be charged. The firing arcs are also kind of wonky due to the short range. Your archers can't even really arc fire down onto the walls to support a siege, they just kind of laserbeam straight into the wall and hit nothing.

I ran into a wierd issue with reinforcing armies. An enemy was reinforcing a battle where I was doomed, but I could perhaps ambush their reinforcements to inflict some losses.
The reinforcements trickled in so slowly that their entire army walked over to mine and killed me off before their units finally finished arriving. I have only ever seen this issue one time, however.

The Campaign:
Court Actions are a huge gamble and I definitely applaud the attempt to do more interesting story building and politics. The problem is that its tedious. Every single turn you have to click what you want to do. There's no option to "Do this until further notice". A number of times I'm so eager to get to a big battle, that I've realized turns later that I ignored the reminder that I need to gossip twice every turn to some rival of mine. This could use some small Quality of Life changes to the system, but should not be thrown out.

Forts are incredibly annoying. They make every territory battle a slog, because I have to have extra armies to either siege the fort while I attack the settlement. The idea is interesting and I think the -50% upkeep is an interesting mechanic while raider waves are coming. But the AI builds so many of them that it isn't an interesting problem, just annoying. You also can't start a war by attacking one for some reason.

Glitches:
My Lord (Ramses III) has long ago earned the 3rd title slot, but I can't put more than 2 on him. Incredibly annoying.

The Good:
The game is pretty enough, though limited by the engine.

It's a total war without magic. That's kind of nice.

The limitations caused by the resource management make me wish that we weren't locked into the modern "Generals must lead armies" scheme. I wish I could independently trickle units to the front or transfer them as needed without hiring complete new generals to walk the entire length across my empire.

Summary:
Pharaoh isn't a bad game by any means, but it's definitely saga level content at full price.
I bought it because I was desperate for new Historical Total War, but maybe I should have just tried replaying 3 Kingdoms instead. I could have bought Baldur's Gate 3.

fantastic game. More like Minecraft than Rust.
I greatly enjoy the cooperative aspect of multiplayer compared to a focus on pvp.

It has a large number of missing pieces, mostly in the dialogue and long term strategic layers.

That said, the patch speed has been incredible and the core gameplay is fairly solid.
Highly recommend

A charming and adorable game about murder.

There's no blood and the rounds are quick.
The ability to jump/roll adds an aspect of mobility that keeps the game fresh and interesting.

It's a top down game and there are no vertical levels which limits the direction you can be attacked from, unlock 3d Royale games. A simple Top/Bottom/Left/Right call outs are enough for squad communication.

There's a free to play version as well. Players can't join groups through steam due to an issue with how steam handles demos, but they've added the ability for free players to join paid players through discord, so it's not really a big deal.

The team keeps adding great locations to the map and cosmetics at quick intervals.
The research/xp system was recently updated to make it far less of a grind. Useful, since there's so many skins and animals to unlock!

Since the major manufactory is not at your final base, it is entirely possible for your team to spend several hours before defeat without being able to manufacture the simplest items, or weapons.

I spent 90% of my 2 hour experience with only my pistol, as the enemy team refused to push until they teched to tanks.
Meanwhile, we struggled to push against single foxholes without losing a half dozen men.

I realize much of this game is logistics, but farming materials was pointless without even the ability to refine scrap into metal.

I refunded this game with a sigh of regret and have no desire to return.

Blackguards has a pretty standard premise, in that it is a save the world fantasy story. Unfortunately, the dialogue is stilted and often disjointed and the gameplay is dense and perhaps overly complicated. I can forgive the voice acting, and odd story easily, but it is the game mechanics themselves that perhaps need tweaking.

The dice rolls are punishing and heavily weighted towards failure. It is laughably common to miss 3 75% chances in a row and taking a risk on anything under a 50% chance is pretty much a guaranteed miss. It has been said on various forums that there are many mechanics that are affecting the probabilities that don't appear in the shown hit chance. That sounds to me like a User Interface failure and a pretty important one at that.

Perhaps the most glaring issue of this is the arena fights at the beginning of Chapter 2. When you have to pull off 6 hits in a row to kill the first enemy and then another 8 hits to kill the second. Unfortunately you A) will die in 3 hits, B) Will get poisoned if you take a single hit, and C) the NPCs don't have an issue with the weighted hit dice. Add to this the fact that you can't go back and level due to your captivity, can't buy potions (though the enemy gets 2 or 3) and lose all of your items means that you are pretty much screwed.

All in all I was pretty disappointed. It was exactly the kind of game I wanted. It just wasn't.