Recent reviews by The Ultimate Potato

They've had 17 years to make this sequel, and I'm not impressed. If I had to boil it down into one sentence: "The entire game feels like one long tutorial".

You basically have the same mechanic explained to you... 16 times? TO UNLOCK GUARDS, KIDNAP A GUARD FROM THE WORLD MAP AND INTERROGATE HIM TO BE ABLE TO TRAIN GUARDS. This happened for guards, scientists, valets, technicians... and presumably for every other minion type. I don't know, I don't care, I won't stick around to find out. And it's always via convenient scripted events, while displaying a massive objective prompt and the tutorial voice bellows at you to do this.

The gameplay is very streamlined/dumbed down, yet extended with extremely long technology research times so you can't progress. There's problems with the base building controls, too. The "decor" tab and new unlocks are especially painful, but at least I can see this potentially getting patched.

I guess you also can't do humour in 2021. The Austin-Powers-style henchmen have of course been toned down. You're not allowed to have over-the-top stereotypes anymore. We get animations with less oomph behind them, and an androgynous art style. They also failed to capture the absurd mix of grit and slapstick from the original. I don't think Evil Genius works without at least some grit or creepyness mixed into the toilet humour.

One example that illustrates this I think would be the enemies. In EG1, if you were very naughty, you would get veterans sent to your base. They behaved exactly the national guard in Prison Architect. You knew something was wrong because in your silly game, serious men show up, hunched over, slowly sweeping your base. They'd open fire and instakill guards and civilians alike. They massacre your expensive diplomats and scientists as if it were Black Mesa. If they had line of sight to to the evil genius, you would die in seconds. They didn't talk, and they didn't miss.
But in EG2 you have a bunch of big dumb oafs sent to your base, straight out of Battlefield Heroes. Their uniforms are too small, and their helmets jiggle as they slowrun. But they have a trillion health points. Wow, threatening. All that's missing is for them to do a Fortnite dance while fighting.

I don't even bother reading the world map heists either. In EG1 you had for example "Secretly feed steroids to the bulls in the Pamplona bull run. Evil +10" or "Shrink the Eiffel Tower with a shrink ray and steal it (and then it becomes interactable furniture in your base)". In EG2 we get things like... "Golden Delicious: steal apples".

Also, "on-disc-DLC", and the ability to preorder a season pass... for an already expensive singleplayer-only game with little depth. No thanks.

It's a shame, but I don't know what I was expecting. At least they got that G-rating, I guess?

There's nothing actually sinister in this game besides the day one DLC. Unless your definition of evil is corporate, sanitised, focus-group-tested humour then this game just isn't... evil.

Easily one of the best expansion packs for a video game in the entire decade of 2010-2019. It really saves XCOM2 from mediocrity, and I can't imagine playing the game without it.

WOTC is not marketed right, because it adds so much more than just the alien assassin champions.

• You now have soldier bonding. Bondmates can train together in the training centre to level up their teamwork abilities. It's a useful force multiplier, but they're useless if they aren't together.
  
• You have to deal with soldiers' mental health now. They will accrue battle fatigue, and perhaps even PTSD if a mission goes badly. If your soldier gets knocked the ♥♥♥♥ out by a stun lancer, he may develop a phobia of stun lancers. You'll have to build an infirmary, and send him to the shrink's office.
  
• Three new neutral factions
  
• Covert operations with varying rewards, depending on how many resources and manpower you sink into them
  
• Monthly "special orders". You unlock orders as you improve each faction's influence, and you unlock more order slots in the same way. The orders can be anything, for example: +15% supplies this month, -20 hacking defence for all enemies, -50% rookie recruitment cost, or increased time limit on every mission. You can only have 1 order active at the start of the game, and can increase it via buildings and influence.
  
• The Chosen assassins are not as ridiculous as it may seem. They try to capture your soldiers alive. Rather than teleport and 1-shot everything, they usually try to cause bleedouts, or stuns, and to snatch the still living soldiers away for questioning. This is arguably worse than killing a soldier, because it progresses alien victory A LOT.
  
• A few new enemies, new mission types, scripted missions, maps, new cinematics etc.

Oh, and be sure to play with mods. The modding community has done an exceptional job as far as QoL and enemy AI improvements.

With the quarantine/lockdown thing going on, this is by far one of the best investments you can make on steam.

(I don't have a many hours here because I mainly play on a different account)

This is XCOM for kids.

It was still fun, though. Albeit not for the entire duration of the playthrough. At times like this I wish STEAM had a "neutral review" option. Buy it if you're maxed out on XCOM1 and XCOM2, and you're starved for turn based strategy. Or if you want to buy a turn based strategy for a child. I wouldn't otherwise recommend it.

While a big fan of Paradox studios grand strategy, I'm not a fan of this one. I really don't understand who this game is for. The AI is unbearably stupid, the game itself is rife with ridiculous exploits, and the combat mechanics don't make any sense. The division designer boils down to maintaining a combat width divisible by 20 (plains, mountains, desert... all terrain has the same combat width), and doing stupid gamey things like adding one single tank to a division of 19 infantry spam, because the 1 tank magically transfers its' armour value to all 19 of the toy soldiers. One of the most prominent strategies seems to be creating teeny tiny paradropper units, not bother even giving them equipment, and just dropping them behind enemy lines to change the colour of the map. It doesn't matter whether you use a dozen battalions, or use a guy in a wheelchair at 1hp - they both capture massive provinces instantly. And don't get me started on aerial/naval combat

Don't bother with this game. I like many of the individual mechanics regarding production & logistics, planning, entrenchment etc. It offers some very interesting scripted alternate history. For example: you can try pulling strings to make Trotsky the commander in chief of Mexico, and help him take revenge on Koba. But the entire rest of the game is just silly. If for some reason you enjoy exploiting paradox games to give you infinite manpower, so you can steamroll an already braindead AI - go ahead. But I'd recommend staying away from HOI4. Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings are much better.

I didn't realise how much I appreciate this game until that dumpster fire Rock of Ages 3 came out. Definitely check out #2 when you get the chance.

First of all, let me just say that I am horrified by what they've done to the soundtrack. What was memorable & unique about the first two games in the trilogy was the Patricio Meneses soundtrack. Fun, kid-friendly renditions of classical music from different periods that beautifully supplemented the graphics, which also changed with time period!

This has been reduced to "medievalist rock n roll kitsch". Imagine Monty Python, but with electric guitars. Yeah........ Did they fail to get Patricio Meneses onboard this time? Presumably his name would've otherwise been plastered all over this title - which it isn't. And I can only guess because there is no information online, and the credits can only be reached by beating the campaign.

PLEASE LET ME OPT OUT OF THE ELECTRIC GUITAR CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE OPTIONS. IT'S UNBEARABLE


The credits are not the only thing missing from the menu, though. Minimalistic is an understatement.

The game is a bit buggy right now, which is to be expected when playing on release day. This wasn't the case with RoA2, though. And as far as I can tell, RoA3 is just an expansion pack. Same engine, same UI, same graphics, most of the game is made up of one hundred percent recycled assets. They hadn't changed a thing. We get the "meh" mapmaking tool (main selling point of the game, apparently), some prebuilt maps, and some new units (though most of them recycled).

What I'm upset about the most, apart from the soundtrack, is that they charge full price for this abortion, as though it were flirting with AAA title status. This being a 33% price increase over RoA2... for an expansion pack which recycles old material, doesn't fix the old problems, introduces new ones, and releases in a messy, buggy state, lacking the various art styles of previous installations, with soulless, unfunny cutscenes, and with a way weaker soundtrack.

This is difficult for me since many people will tell you that I have been a very big fan of RoA titles so far. But not this one. I actively regret the purchase. Buy RoA 1 or 2 instead.

I recommend you buy Mordhau sooner rather than later. Right now is the most fun the game will ever be, because people have not yet figured out the meta.

The game itself is superb, and it would be good practice to support indie game devs. Keep in mind the high system requirements, though.

How to take a box of stock footage & surplus parts, and turn it into something unique. An interesting example.


That being said, it's a troll game designed to make you want to kill yourself. Certainly not for everyone.

Possibly one of the ugliest cash grabs I've ever seen.

Worst part is that there might've actually been a decent product behind the pay 2 win.