Recent reviews by swiftdraw

Same crap game as Vermintide with even more crap microtransactions and grind than Vermintide 2. Peered pressured into getting it on sale, regret spending the $25. Oh, and Tencent is a producer of it, so even more reason to leave this one alone.

Mixed reviews are correct. There is a competently done sandbox game here, but there is note much compelling about it. There are game mechanics, like changes in off road performance and driving/flying while dragging a load, that are cool in theory but the execution in game leaves a lot to be desired. And the further you get in the game, the more the lack of polish become apparent, up to and including mission breaking bugs by late game.

Look, if you're a fan of any of the previous Saints Row and hoping for more, you're probably not going to be happy. If you're looking for a action sandbox game to kill time with and this is on discount, it's an decent game with some flaws.

Edit: OK, I will admit to enjoying the Dustmoot story and DLC. Those were pretty good.

Visually it's great, sound design is pretty good too. Pity it's quite buggy, particularly on multiplayer coop

A fun real time tactics games. M biggest problem is once you're done with the campaign and the couple of scenarios, there isn't any real repeatability. No single or multiplayer skirmish, no bug campaign, nothing but repeating the missions you've played. That said, the campaign and a few of those scenarios were really fun, with good sound and animation.

A simple top down shooter, but has enough enemy variety, game modes and unlocks to make it well worth the price. If you want a simple time killer, get this game!

Best co-op game out imo. Fun mechanics, great atmosphere, and pretty good memes.

This is a case of 'so close, yet so far.' The core game itself is very solid and offers something that lands between Stellaris and Sins of a Solar Empire. It has the scale of Stellaris while being a 'real time' like Sins and possibly having greater depth than both. It rather appealing to me, but the devil in the detail is what holds it back.

Because of the scale and pace of the game, you HAVE to rely on the AI to run aspects of your empire. For the big picture stuff, like managing your budget, it does a good job. Where its lacking is in the auto-generated ship design, ship deployment, and the building advisor. The ships it spits out tend to be ok, though the combat ships tend to be all over the place with weapons, defense and inefficient with the general modules. With civilian ships it does ok, though it tends to under-prioritize range and fuel economy on them. This, along with poor fuel calculations, leads to seeing a lot of stranded civilian ships taking years getting to their destination. Fuel Tankers are suppose to help prevent this, but they run in the same problem and run out of fuel before reaching their target. This would be less of an issue were it not for the fact there are dozens of your empire's ships crisscrossing the map, making it difficult to identify stranded ships and you have to menu dive to find a nearby tanker with enough fuel to respond. While you can create your own ships, the game tends to overwrite them when it come times to upgrade and you have to retire all the old variants and delete the design before the AI decides to stop suggesting to build the auto-generated design.

The other major AI issue is the advisor it tends to have very poor grasp of resource management, particularly early on. My first three games saw my empire stall out early because I did not have one critical resource or another in my system. Not knowing that, I blindly followed the AI's suggestions on what to build, only to run out of polymer, silicon, or even fuel before I could even leave the system. Later it will continually suggest colonizing new planets even though you do not have the resources to fully develop them and will tank your economy from the prolonged development exspenses.

The other major issue is the UI and lack of documentation of some aspects of the game. For instance, resource tracking. You have to go between 3 menus and a couple of hover-over tooltips to determine what you need, what it does, if you have it, and where to get it. However, unless its fuel, you're rarely told exactly why you need it outside of a nebulous 'used for some weapons' or 'colony development.' This makes it hard, even after going through the 'Galacticpedia' in game, to determine what it is you absoluetly need and why when you're first starting. Same is had with much of the ship build screen, which buries info in mouse over tooltips that only activate on a specific area of an item or stat and doesn't explain whats need for certain mechanics like refueling or mining. For example, my initial assumption was Fuel Tankers transfer fuel from their fuel tanks to another ship's tanks and the ship's class description seems to support that. What you really need is cargo holds to store that fuel, a device to mine, and a device to transfer fuel. Also, it appearantly cannot use fuel in it's holds to fuel itself either, because I've lost count of how many times I've seen a fuel tanker limping along, out of fuel limping with 1200 or more units of fuel in its hold.

Distant Worlds 2 is a game with great scope and depth, but is held back by some design choices and a lack of clarity when it comes to informing the player. With a bit more polish it could be a great game, but as is, its a good game for the genre that requires overcoming a very steep initial learning curve.

I cannot put my finger on it, but this game just isn't as fun as the previous two. The army balance and play feels off, you're often times put in frustrating situations due to the world map layout, and UI is very often a case of 'so close, yet so far.' Part of it may also be I'm used to a couple of mods from the first two and those mods aren't out yet as far as I can tell. Quiet a few crashes too, but that's not unusual early on in a Total War game.

Wait for Mortal Empires, optimizations, and mods.

I want my life back, thx -.-

TL:DR; Not much of an upgrade to the original JW:E and in some ways a downgrade. Wait for a sale.

The new story missions and challenges are nice and all, but aren't very different from the original game. You still unlock park locations via the challenges and there isn't a create-a-map feature I was hoping there would be. This kind of sucks as the new Aviary and Lagoon take up a ton of space and generally are a liability on smaller maps. If you could mix the exhibit types, like adding dinos to the aviary or having a 'costal' pen with the Lagoon and land pens, it'd be more useful.

My biggest gripe is they made Ranger Stations became less useful. Its capabilities from the original game split with the dino Medical station. Also you can only upgrade to get two jeeps now and the auto-taskings are reliant on tying a jeep to a lookout post, which have limited coverage. The path finding AI seems to have gotten worse, with the AI regularly getting stuck on terrain, dinosaurs and structures with the occasional physics glitch that'll send the jeep airborne.

On the positive end, you can make your own game rules in Sandbox mode now. You can give yourself unlimited funds, dinos don't need food or water, make it so generators and vehicles stations don't require fuel (something new they added to 2), and so on. It's nice to be able to pick what I want to deal with a la carte. The missions aren't bad, if a bit short and retread some of the same ground covers in the DLC from 1. The whole 'what if it didn't go wrong?' angle in the Chaos Theory section is pretty much an expanded version of Return to Jurrasic Park DLC from 1. But still, its not bad.

Edit: So you can get 3 jeeps in the challenges and sandbox. Also found further annoyances in that it appears you can't do research or expeditions in sandbox mode. You can only build what you've unlocked in the other modes, making some of the dino's and sickness cure a bit difficult to get in sandbox.