Recent reviews by Madmartigan

The absolute worst part is the lag. In a PVP focused game lag is unacceptable. It isn't a constant lag, if this was a PVE game, perhaps I wouldn't make this a negative review over it. But in PVP those 0.5 sec lag spikes every 20 seconds can make or break your fight.
Next is the PVP loot. When you kill (or die) a lot of the gear is irrecoverably destroyed. Therefore, deaths feels worse than a victory feels great; In death, you lose everything, but in victory you get like 40% of the stuff. It's a necessary evil of Albion's economy but it's still a bummer.

I started as Rome and spent most of my time fast-forwarding the game to allow my aggressive expansion to decay with the Blessing for it too. Too easy. No need for diplomacy, just smash the enemy, fast forward to lower AE, repeat.
I play EU4 so, after the first 20 hours and a totally completed Rome playthrough, I gave it another shot trying the "Hard" Phygria. I was HOPING that the Rome start was Easy and that's why all I had to do was stomp people and not give two hoots about the families.

Well, Phygria was only slightly "harder". Mainly because I didn't have Rome's bonuses. Same concept though. Smash the enemy, recover AE, repeat.

Better than Skyrim. The quests are engaging and mesh well with the overall storyline. You never forget what your overall "goal" is and the actions you make a clear and logical progression towards that goal.

You can tell more time was spent on nearly every aspect of design than the makers of skyrim had the budget for. The voice actors were surprisingly good. There were definitely some bad ones but the sheer number of VOs used was impressive.

The mods included do patch over some of the bugs from Skyrim but you will, of course, still encounter bugs. Nothing that has prevented me from completing quests though.

Overall, I am extremely impressed with this game.

This is an amazing game. Strategy on a grand scale with endless replayability. The learning curve isn't too steep but, like most of Paradox's games, you can't jump in cold and fully utilize/appreciate the mechanics of the game. Some mechanics are so convoluted with little to no in-game explanation you must be prepared to use google.

Many people knock it for DLC but I think people are being cheap skates.

I have paid $78 throughout my life on the game and some DLCs while taking advantage of sales. Only $78 bucks for 500 hours of game time. That's like $0.16 per hour of entertainment. Pretty cheap.

The content packs, music, and aesthetic upgrades aren't worth it. Just buy DLC when they are on sale.

Great idea and looks like Warcraft III. Still needs a lot more TLC. You will probably get a few hours of fun out of it in its current state.

Currently, with no campaign and victory conditions so easily attained that I simply watch netflix while I wait for my culture points (or whatever this game calls them) to climb to max. not worth the money. I could easily see it improving though.

Way too easy to raid. Just get a carno and you can destroy anything but metal.

Disappointing as hell. Same game as when I bought it in Alpha; You walk around, collect random pieces, bring them back to the pillar.

Horrible. Bad FPS mechanics, boring randomly generated terrain, lackluster crafting, simplistic "survival" mechanics, and poor AI.