Recent reviews by Chris Cobas

Loved the fact it can turn your local map into a survival zone. I loved transforming the National Stadium into a fully fledged community, with farming, weapon manufacturing, etc. As for the gameplay itself, it's pretty straightforward, and there's a tutorial to put you through the basics. I'd still love for the next updates to include finer control of production buildings, like the ability to stop production under XXX quantity of raw material (or at least a stop/start production button). Currently the only way to stop production is to put in zero the workers, but that is not a permanent fix, since every morning the game checks for unemployed people and assigns them to open job positions.

The hordes have been so fun to play against. Waves and waves of hordes crashing against my fortified walls (after being overrun in five games prior.) You learn pretty fast that defenses are a priority, whether it be with more squads, or bigger walls. The scavenge mechanism is pretty simple, and the fact you can multiple select scavenging areas is great. Perhaps the only thing missing right now would be a "see enemies, back to base" stance for the squads. Having a squad searching at night is risky, especially since you have to manage your squads movements in case they see enemies. Once you survive enough, you get more events happening. I'm not spoiling them, but right now it seems like the whole "story" is meant to be played in about 4 hours. I'm sure devs will increase this with new updates. I'm also looking forward to the mod community to see what they can bring into the game once it's fully released.

Fun afternoon game: 8/10.

For an Early Access game, it's pretty good. There are still some wonky mechanics, but I believe in time the devs will iron them out.

As for the strategic part of the game, this is NOT an easy game. Also, there are some indications that through the tutorial, they tell you one thing, but in reality you can do another, like militia calling, you don't need ALL the soldiers to raise them but the tutorial makes it seem like you need a full unit to call them.

Also, it has a steep learning curve. It took me 5 restarts to get to know the system and start claiming territories fast. It seems you need to do things perfectly in this stage, otherwise the AI player will basically start claiming territories left and right. Trade is a bit wonky, with lots of goods still being balanced out.

Entering into battle mechanics, they work similarly to other "total war" style games. Click and drag, and you can change the configuration of your line. I would like a way to set up a formation (archers in the second line, melee as frontliners) but it doesn't seem to have this particular option. You can manually adjust each unit, and then make them travel together. But direction is another thing. If you took your time making a formation, once they need to change directions, you need to manually input the commands again. Also, archers right now are extremely unbalances. I haven't seen archers being able to slow down enemy units, or even taking our a few. I stopped bothering with them in restart 3.

Overall, it has a lot of potential for being an independent game. Even in its current state it can duke it out with other tripleA games toe to toe.

If you like city builders with a unit management combat system, this is the game for you.

-EDIT- 20 HOURS IN

So, I've been playing around with the battle mechanics. I've already been able to conquer two territories through battle, and let me tell you: if you're a battle hardened veteran from total war series, you will have a HUGE advantage while fighting seemingly superior forces to yours.

It seems the enemy battle AI is still a bit similar to other battle simulators in the genre: Heavy armored enemies will try to rush your spearmen, fast units will try to engage your archers in melee (and they WILL take them out) and archers will move away from your troops and shoot their arrows from afar. This can cause some issues while conquering, since you need to win the battle and trying to make your spearmen to catch up with enemy archers is almost impossible (even at double time). But here's where Total War tactics come into play. Flanking, using forests to cover your advance, and protect your troops from enemy arrows is key.

The AI is getting huge bonuses to number of units, but that balances out due to the poor management it does. I battled it out with a group twice my size and was able to come victorious (albeit with heavy losses, good ol' total war victories)

What pisses me off is the "out of map" enemy, which is a pain to deal with. Every now and then, when you try to take a territory, they will send a full army against you (two archer units, three men-at-arms and a FULL retinue of heavy armored soldiers). Wait too long to take them out,and they will send a SECOND full army to deal with your claiming. At that moment, your claim is down the drain (although, with some clever strategies, you can win that one too).

Overall an amazing game, and it seems it will be extremely great once it is released fully!

-EDIT- 40 HOURS IN

So I was able to finish the "Restoring the Peace" Scenario. It took a little while, but it was pretty fun. Once you get the city building aspects, you can get to medium village in one season. I haven't had this much fun with a medieval game since Mount & Blade: Bannerlords. It's fun, it's just complex enough that it can keep you on your toes and I'm all in to see where this game goes after this. I think maybe a "become king" campaign or something, where you need to develop areas and defeat other lords gunning for the throne.

Overall AN AMAZING FEAT for just one person. Keep on keeping on Slavic Magic!

TL:DR: It's fun, 6.5/10, looking forward to the final product

So far, what I've seen is good. For an Early Access game, pricing seems ok (in my region it was USD 26). I've played other games from Shiro Unlimited, and it seems they are trying to follow up on their RPG experience. This games feels an plays like a ttrpg, gathering adventurers and going on adventures. I'll break down the review into three parts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. (19 hours at the time of this review).

The Good (Things made correctly):

- Plenty of customization options for classes, depending on the skills and weapons you use.

- Beautiful world, nice little details and overall very well done.

- Beautiful HUD, everything is very intuitive and easy to find.

- Combat placement and movements: Combat feels very similar to other games of the genre, such as Wasteland 2 and 3.

- Valor Points: The system of points for "special" abilities feels good, and of course it makes you really think your strategy in order to maximize your damage output per turn. Also, maximizing your valor point earning helps out so much in battles.

- Mini-games: The fishing, lockpicking and blacksmithing minigames feel great. They are easy to learn (especially if you've played other rpg games such as the bethesda games). Haven't encountered any other mini-games (apothecary doesn't have one, though it feels like it should, same with cooking and tinkering, because they say "no bonus" when finishing. Haven't tried stealing yet).

The Bad (Things that are either missing and/or have big issues):

- No place to stash your stuff. This is one of the things I really need in these kind of games, especially when you can get some exclusive weapons and don't want to use them until your characters are a certain level or you want to mix and match between fights. As of now, the only way to maintain stuff is carrying it around, which can become quite pricey once you start buying horses, since they also eat food, therefore, more horses, more food, more gold spent in this, less adventuring days.

- Horses seem to count towards your adventuring party (for scaling purposes) therefore, you cannot expect to maintain your four person merchant band and have for example four horses, since for fighting purposes, your party will account for 8 people, but horses don't fight. I think they are intended to fight in ambushes in the future, because they do have levels and can increase their stats.

- Merchant path: It seems you can become a merchant of sorts, but I didn't feel it was fleshed out. Would be great for a more "pacifist" gameplay.

- Bounties start to feel repetitive: I noticed this on the first three hours of gameplay, but bounties basically start to feel quite repetitive. "Go, hunt a party of robbers/deserters/rats/insert your favorite evil group and get paid". Apart from your "Hero" bounty, most bounty fights go more or less the same.

- Dungeons? It feels like this game will be a low fantasy medieval game, since you do have for example rat infestations (with a massive broodmother) and ghost wolves and boars, though there are no "dungeons" or mines to explore. Would love to have a bit more diversity in that sense, since there are mines in the world. Perhaps a mission to infiltrate a castle or something similar.

The Ugly (things that can do with tweaks and changes):

- Scaling: This is honestly one of the major points in this game. It scales fast at upper difficulty levels. And unless you got some lucky drops from enemies, you can have a really hard time (knowledge points are shared between skills, which can leave you with very few options later in the game if you decided to spend your knowledge points in world knowledge instead of those armor and weapon recipes, for example). Don't get me wrong, I love scaling games, but in my first playthrough, I got a lucky +43 heavy armor drop that made one of my swordmen a very tanky character, but on my second time I never had those drops, which made it extremely difficult when fighting with LVL 4 and 5 enemy groups at first (they seem to drop better armors later on, but it becomes quite the drag to get there).

- Salary: Paying your mercs every three days can become quite the steep price. Bounty payments don't seem to scale up as the costs for maintaining your Mercs. Of course, you can get a negotiation perk later on, but the most I was able to negotiate, after spending quite some influence, was around 550 gold for a bandit head quarters clearing. Of course, going there, fighting a couple of fights, and then coming back was already three days, and my merc band was 7 people and 3 horses strong, which made the wages around 150 gold. Now, it may seem like this is not so bad, since I earned for that mission those 550 gold, but when considering the repair tools, medicine and other stuff, you may end up spending well above 300 gold for that same mission. And if you're lucky you'll get extra drops from fights, though it is not always the case. Also, the base payment for that mission was about 270 gold.

- Enemy groups: At first you start fighting your average 4-5 sized groups, but as soon as you hire your first Merc, these groups increase in numbers up to 6-8 and after your second merc, you'll consistently fight groups of 10 boars or 12 wolves for example. Even though they are easy to fell, your armor repair costs will become quite high fighting these enemies.

- Regional story affected by your choices: Your choices seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. Even though it seems like the consequences of these choices are still not included in the game, I think it might give it a lot more flavor and replayability value. I'd love to see how towns and potential settlements change in few months, and how the opinion of people change depending on your actions (a mayor might choose to not let you enter their town, for example)

Result:
Overall I give this game a 6.5 out of 10. It is a fun Early Access as it is, and I'm hopeful for its future.

TLDR: Overall a great game, improving on what TF1 did well.

Transport Fever 2 takes what was good in TF and improves it a lot more. The new system of town needs actually makes you choose better where you spend your money, in order to fulfill the towns commercial or industrial needs. Also, the graphic improvements are a welcome sight. The new map maker system is also a great addition, since now we can see the map to be created by the seed we input.

Station construction is amazing, giving you the chance to make realistic machine yards, several platforms for cargo and passengers, and also a central rail for high speed express trains. I loved this the most.

I didn't see the industries I saw on the tutorials (like coffee, for example) so here's wishful thinking for that in the future. Also, raw resources like grain, crude oil or similar do not evolve over time, they just reach the cap and that's it, which means you have to supply a processing industry (like a bakery or an oil refinery) with resources from more than one production field. Maybe mods will tweak this in the future.

Amazing game, probably one of the best transport tycoon style games out there. If you're a fan of Transport Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, or any other similar games, YOU HAVE TO GET THIS ONE. And also, it's a good way to train up for TF2 coming up this year.

Company of Heroes is a brilliant game in its genre. Allowing for base building, troop enhancement and troop field promotions, offmap help and micro and macro management, it is one of the best strategy games the second world war could ask for. Each mission you are given is accompanied by a deep story, which tells you a tale of unsung heroes.

Talking about the RTS genre, I can say it's pretty much the best RTS there is out there. And that's a lot to say about a game that was launched in 2006. Its mechanics of NO resource-gathering,and its importance on strategy is what makes this game a jewel in any RTS fan's library. The brilliance of this game is not particularly on the size of your army (which indeed helps, but it's not definitive), but more on what you can DO with it. A single squad of soldiers can very well take down a light tank if the player decides to equip them with Panzerfausts found on the field, or can become a great suppressive unit if equipped with MG-50 Cal. machine guns. The flexibility given to the units in this game helps the player to field a style of game. Want to have tank-killer squads? Done. Want to field only heavy units like tanks and troop carriers? Done. Under heavy barrage of tanks and have only light riflemen squads? Make them take command of that AT gun and blast the enemies off. And that's without even touching the cover and morale systems.

Yes, your troops take cover, fight back, are suppressed (and if further suppressed, are pinned down), can lay down suppression fire, so many tactics, so many options. In most RTS games, you send your troops down a valley with heavy guns across from it, and they will take damage until arriving to the gun and attacking it. Do that in CoH, and you'll watch how a perfectly good squad[ breaks down, suffers morale penalties, runs away in fear and in general, suffers all the consequences of ordering them into a suicidal mission. Cover becomes a key element to succeed in any given map, which in turn transforms the whole experience into one that truly places you in the Field Commanding Officer position, usually weighing in the benefits of sending that one squad to draw fire covering behind a high wall, to send that smaller 4 men squad to flank that heavy machine gun with grenades. Each and every single engagement in the game is a complex, fluid and alive battle, usually demanding on-the-fly decision-making abilities and complex strategies to reach a victorious outcome.

The best of it all? It is not decided on "how fast can I click to beat this map" like other RTS games in the genre, but more of "I'm being attacked in several fronts, which one of them do I focus more so the enemy doesn't break my line of defense?" Each decision in the game is based on how well you use the aforementioned mechanics.

All this is crowned by amazing sound effects, which gives you the impression that "large guns are not to be engaged with light troops" unless you have a really good strategy to deal with them. The artillery shots, the main cannons on the tanks, airplane runs, everything is done to make you feel like you're right there, caring for the troops under your command.

So far, we've yet to see a game topple this masterpiece from the top of the RTS genre. 10/10.