On October 04 2012 23:32 0x64 wrote: Binding of isaac is strange, not very good controls, not very deep gameplay, and stuff is badly balanced, but on the otherside art, world, music and humor is good. It is a game a like to play over better games if I'm not feeling like playing at all.
I would dispute your assertion that the gameplay is not deep, I have a buddy who has finished the game over a dozen times and is still trying to unlock the final ending.
If you just bought Rome TW you're going to want to go to www.twcenter.net and pick out a mod for it. Personally I use Roma Surrectum 2.5 because it's slightly easier (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=251). However I can't reccommend against Europa Barbarorum (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=31). Both are total overhaul mods that align the game closer to reality. Vanilla has some pretty wonky shit in it. Both are also extremely difficult at first but suck it up.
Breakdown of RSII: Hi, it's the second punic war. Hannibal is outside Arretium about to ambush Gaius Flaminus. You're about to die. After that it only gets harder. This is the easier of the two mods ^_^. EB is even more difficult. Both mods do an excellent job sticking to historical accuracy while maintaining really fun gameplay and both mods revitalize the decade old game. Check them out.
yeah i got shogun 2 during the sale and installed darth mod and increased turns per campaign halfway trough my first game.
Unmodded it feels way too arcadey with just building 1 or 2 big armies and steamrolling trough everything because of the very strict timelimit. I prefer to need more empire management and strategy. The realm divide seemed fine to me however, you can prepare for it and keep long standing allies during it. Simply a mechanic to make endgame more interesting.
With Shogun 2 the campaign map is pretty small compared to the predecessors. Medieval 2 has the Golden Horde. Rome in vanilla has a breaking point where you must fight the other factions of Rome to unify and form the imperial empire. In Empire there reaches a point where everyone just hates you so much for conquering territory that they'll declare war on you.
S2TW needed a mechanic like that and since the map is so small and has so many choke points it's somewhat fair that all the remaining clans opposite to your allegiance declare war on you. It'll never be as hard as fighting the Mongols Fuckin memories of being sieged at Acre by 10,000 horsemen and sallying forth each turn to expend arrows and whittle down their numbers before they attack..
On October 04 2012 23:32 0x64 wrote: Binding of isaac is strange, not very good controls, not very deep gameplay, and stuff is badly balanced, but on the otherside art, world, music and humor is good. It is a game a like to play over better games if I'm not feeling like playing at all.
I would dispute your assertion that the gameplay is not deep, I have a buddy who has finished the game over a dozen times and is still trying to unlock the final ending.
well i have played this game over 100 hours on steam and i have to say that the controls are fine once you get good at it, i was always a PC-gamer so using wasd and the arrow keys at the same time wasn't hard for me to do, but you can also use the mouse. At first it is very hard to predict hit boxes because it is in fake 3d (2.5d) but that is also something you can get used to after a few hours. In general i hate imbalanced games, i hated skyrim because i started out as a mage and i was sneaking and lock picking a lot. Therefore i hit a point where i couldn't kill shit on the easiest game mode because everyone outleveled me on the important skills, but playing an archer was oneshot everything on the hardest difficulty. Skyrim being imbalanced was a huge problem, because you want to keep your char for at least 100 hours. Being imbalanced in Isaac is different it is fun and refreshing after 20 horrible runs - getting really good stuff and just rush through the rooms is cool, for me it adds tons of replayability because you never know what weird combo you'll get the next time.
On October 04 2012 23:32 0x64 wrote: Binding of isaac is strange, not very good controls, not very deep gameplay, and stuff is badly balanced, but on the otherside art, world, music and humor is good. It is a game a like to play over better games if I'm not feeling like playing at all.
I would dispute your assertion that the gameplay is not deep, I have a buddy who has finished the game over a dozen times and is still trying to unlock the final ending.
The Binding of Isaac is second only to Skyrim in hours played for me, and it's actually pretty close.
Isaac is super fun. No run will be the same, and as a rogue-like it has a lot of longevity right there. Controls are fine, honestly what else would you want. Gameplay is fun, it doesn't have to be deep. The game itself is deep.
Would recommend to anyone, especially lovers of rogue-likes.
Company of Heroes complete pack (Company of Heroes, Opposing fronts, Tales of Valor); for $12.48; worth it? I've heard the game was good, though I don't really know anything about it--besides that's a strategy game.
On October 05 2012 04:51 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote: Company of Heroes complete pack (Company of Heroes, Opposing fronts, Tales of Valor); for $12.48; worth it? I've heard the game was good, though I don't really know anything about it--besides that's a strategy game.
It has been cheaper, but it's a really nice strategy game. The game itself is a squad based RTS akin to Dawn of War set in the WW2 timeframe. Still enough people playing online, but the game mechanics are a bit counter intuitive so it may be hard to get into. If you enjoy squad based RTS I would highly recommend the game. If you're into macro RTS like starcraft you probably won't care for it as much.
On October 05 2012 00:38 Probe1 wrote: With Shogun 2 the campaign map is pretty small compared to the predecessors. Medieval 2 has the Golden Horde. Rome in vanilla has a breaking point where you must fight the other factions of Rome to unify and form the imperial empire. In Empire there reaches a point where everyone just hates you so much for conquering territory that they'll declare war on you.
S2TW needed a mechanic like that and since the map is so small and has so many choke points it's somewhat fair that all the remaining clans opposite to your allegiance declare war on you. It'll never be as hard as fighting the Mongols Fuckin memories of being sieged at Acre by 10,000 horsemen and sallying forth each turn to expend arrows and whittle down their numbers before they attack..
I actually really disliked Shogun 2...
1: No rebel settlements, every village belonged to a faction. Conquering land meant constantly declaring war (and fucking up any diplomacy, if there was any to begin with) and also at harder difficulties, every neighboring faction had a 20-stack of units so you literally couldn't conquer anything (economy can only support 1 full-stack, not 6 of them to defend attacks from all sides).
2: Really limited unit diversity. Yeah old Japan didn't have huge diversity of fighting styles, but they could have at least made something better than 1 unique unit per faction that wasn't really different from the rest anyway.
3: Realm divide. Well in all TW games it always ends up as me against the world, but it's more particularly retarded in this one. Now you have factions that you've never seen before sailing a bunch of boats into the heart of your territory and unloading 3 full stacks of units. Can't even use a strong navy to deflect attacks, because they'll somehow "retreat" further into your territory.
4: Retarded diplomacy, really a feature of all TW games.
I've never reconciled with Creative Assemblys slant towards arcade style. But I have grown to accept that it's Bethesda syndrome. You just can't play the games and expect to have a great experience without mods. I'm not saying that CA or Bethesda are incapable of making great games on their own but with mods it goes from a B+ to a perfect score.
Radious adds like 47 new units to Shogun 2 and both expansion packs. I can't apologize for Realm Divide I hate it too. I don't even play the Sengoku Jidai vanilla campaign anymore. After FotS came out I completely abandoned it. The diplomacy is also inexcusably bad. Darth Mod has finally, after 3 freaking years of tinkering, made diplomacy semi sane in Empire TW. I doubt S2TW will ever have diplomacy I would brag about. Finally, yeah, no rebel settlements sucks major ass and it's a symptom of a much bigger problem: Feudal/pre-modern Japan is too small. When you have all of Europe and India in the rest of the series to play with sucks. If they had included Korea and China it would have been really great and worthwhile .
So yeah, I can't say any of your points are wrong at all. Radious has added A LOT of new units and it's great but if FotS had never come out I would have completely lost faith in Creative Assembly. Recently however, they have released proper modding tools (which is why S2TW was on sale) and in a year or less we'll start to see real overhaul mods instead of just unofficial patchfixes like Darthmod.
I can't say that you're wrong at all. I can't even say that I'm 100% committed to buying Rome 2 when it comes out. I guess it will come down to how much they support the modding community because, like Bethesda games, they're neat for 10-20 hours and then you're dependent on the community to fix it into a proper game.
I've never reconciled with Creative Assemblys slant towards arcade style. But I have grown to accept that it's Bethesda syndrome. You just can't play the games and expect to have a great experience without mods. I'm not saying that CA or Bethesda are incapable of making great games on their own but with mods it goes from a B+ to a perfect score.
Radious adds like 47 new units to Shogun 2 and both expansion packs. I can't apologize for Realm Divide I hate it too. I don't even play the Sengoku Jidai vanilla campaign anymore. After FotS came out I completely abandoned it. The diplomacy is also inexcusably bad. Darth Mod has finally, after 3 freaking years of tinkering, made diplomacy semi sane in Empire TW. I doubt S2TW will ever have diplomacy I would brag about. Finally, yeah, no rebel settlements sucks major ass and it's a symptom of a much bigger problem: Feudal/pre-modern Japan is too small. When you have all of Europe and India in the rest of the series to play with sucks. If they had included Korea and China it would have been really great and worthwhile .
So yeah, I can't say any of your points are wrong at all. Radious has added A LOT of new units and it's great but if FotS had never come out I would have completely lost faith in Creative Assembly. Recently however, they have released proper modding tools (which is why S2TW was on sale) and in a year or less we'll start to see real overhaul mods instead of just unofficial patchfixes like Darthmod.
I can't say that you're wrong at all. I can't even say that I'm 100% committed to buying Rome 2 when it comes out. I guess it will come down to how much they support the modding community because, like Bethesda games, they're neat for 10-20 hours and then you're dependent on the community to fix it into a proper game.
Well yeah... shogun 2 blows chunks. I bought it during the autumn sale 1 year ago (I even asked my friend and he said it was good... guess not -_-).. bought it with all those DLC because I didn't know what I was getting into.. Open the game.. lo and behold like what, 10 factions? (after DLC) Rome and M2 had like 17 and 21 (can't remember which way it was) and I completed the game on very hard for ALL races (ok cataphracts were a bit broken in Rome).. And what's the point of playing a second one when all of them were like.. identical? I played at least 300 hours on Rome and M2, but only 24 on S2..
The pack I bought has ROTS (even shittier than vanilla)... decided not to waste my money on FOTS.
I guess modding is the only saving grace for the game... SS mod for medieval was sooooooo freaking good. But ya no amount of modding will save S2..
Oh I forgot to rant about the skill tree. Good idea, except for the fact you're forced to start with the economy tree. And teching takes sooo fucking long. So I'm playing most of the game with ashigaru units.. that's a lot of diversity right there.
Damnit, if I saw your rant post before I bought the game, I might have saved myself a tidy sum of money, and no bad experiences with CA.
Haha yeah, RotS was an abomination. Did you like Empire? Because I promise, the real saving grace from CA was FotS. It's basically what Empire should have been. I'm not saying buy it right now or even during a 'good' sale. During Christmas if it's under $10 I'd recommend getting it. Shogun 2 may be pretty weak but goddamn, FotS is so good.
On October 05 2012 09:57 Probe1 wrote: Haha yeah, RotS was an abomination. Did you like Empire? Because I promise, the real saving grace from CA was FotS. It's basically what Empire should have been. I'm not saying buy it right now or even during a 'good' sale. During Christmas if it's under $10 I'd recommend getting it. Shogun 2 may be pretty weak but goddamn, FotS is so good.
Hmm... ok I'll take your word for it. If I see a good offer for it, I'll buy it. $30 original price is downright retarded.
Well for now I bought Rome for $1 lol. If I get sick of Dota2 and Diablo 3, I have another game to fall back upon.
Oh ya I didn't play Empire.. when it was released my laptop couldn't run it...
Just as well. For the first six months the game was a joke. End turn? CTD. Fight battle? CTD. Turn on game? CTD. It was like a mod release. I mean granted they had built an entirely new engine and it was new territory after 4 games based on melee combat but.. it was silly stupid. Lol for the first year the AI couldn't do naval invasions.. which made a colonial based TW game stupid. Yeah, $30, no fucking way. $10 is the right price.
I will openly admit FotS is the first TW game that I've felt is "cinematic". Before then I felt like watching the battles was what scrubs did because there's always something somewhere that you can micromanage better and battles are hardly difficult when you play Starcraft. But fucking hell, it looks too good not to watch sometimes.
That's medium-low settings btw. It looks pretty nice maxed out. There's just something viscerally appealing about ordering a naval bombardment and seeing 30 guys propel in every direction when a cannonball lands in the middle of an infantry unit.
Edit: Actually, waiting a year or 18 months for a TW game after it comes out should be standard practice at this point. Their releases are always bad but after a year the game is polished enough to be very nice.
I completely agree though, not worth $30. The expansion pack is a game in itself and priced accordingly.. but still. When it's super cheap then it'll be worth it. After all the buggy releases and long waits for what I expected I'm not CAs biggest fan. In the end though, having a 40 unit army is something fresh to the series.
On October 05 2012 11:00 Probe1 wrote: I completely agree though, not worth $30. The expansion pack is a game in itself and priced accordingly.. but still. When it's super cheap then it'll be worth it. After all the buggy releases and long waits for what I expected I'm not CAs biggest fan. In the end though, having a 40 unit army is something fresh to the series.
You just reminded me of 1 pretty broken bug in Rome: Retrain a stack that has 1 unit. While the retrain command is queued, take another stack and transfer units into this stack that is undergoing retraining. On your next turn, the retrain command will double (minus 1) the stack size, by adding retrained units on top of the full stack.
Fun things that could be done: 299 peasant mobs are scary O.o Desert cavalry units are special as they're the only cavalry with stack sizes of 80. So if each stack has 159 units and you have 20 stacks, 3180 cavalry units are a scary sight to behold. Or just mass cataphract trampling over everything.
On October 05 2012 00:25 r.Evo wrote: ^-Perfect post right there, I just installed exactly those mods for Rome & Medieval 2 and I'm having lots of fun with them. <3
BL2, TL2, Dota2, CSGO. Steam you truly do wonders and unlike another company I never regret any of my purchases. All of the above are HIGHLY recommended for ANYONE.
EPT
Fuckin memories of being sieged at Acre by 10,000 horsemen and sallying forth each turn to expend arrows and whittle down their numbers before they attack..
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