Recent reviews by Alnaught

Picked it up on sale on a whim and due to Edgerunners.
Had the chance to play both before and after 2.0. Only real gripe with 2.0 is clothes are pretty useless now. Might as well go naturist for all it matters.
Aside from that some bugs are still hanging around, and 2.0 seems to be struggling to load in npc cars and people now when driving. May be my rig, but I don't remember that happening before 2.0.

All that being said, I'm having a lot of fun with this game and heartily reccomend it, even though its not perfect.

I'm enjoying it so far.
It's got the standard Paradox issue of being a rough initial product that'll probably need a few years before it matures.

Just emerged from another weekend long gaming coma. It's hard and incredibly frustrating at times, but by god is it addictive. Infinitely re-playable.

Buggy mess

Full disclosure, after 2 hours I was fed up with this game, had given it a negative review and was considering getting a refund.
There are still a lot of weakness' but it gets better and richer. The large scale battles are gripping although my rig does chug when I get in the thick of the scrum.
I don't know if I'd rave about people going out and buying it, but if you are interested, give it a few chances to get good.

Not perfect but certainly a lot of fun. Stuffs not always well explained but it hasn't stopped me playing. Just doing a lot of googling.
The story is engaging and I love the characters.

I'm revising this review up. As expected Paradox have done a lot of overhauls and now the game has more life to it. I felt a lot more invested in my faction and the development felt more organic than just dumping mana.
It felt a bit short. The game ended in what felt like 'mid game' to me. It did have the option to continue without achievments, but that seemed to break the point of going through iron man mode.
Over all it's still not the best, but definitly more replayable now.

### Original Review ###
Oh god I want to like this game. I was so psyched for it to come out. I pre-bought the Delux Edition. Put around 10 hours in so far and I've got to agree with most of the other reviews. It feels empty.
I'm a massive fan of Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, and compared to them there just doesn't feel like much to do. Fight war, win war, click assimilate button. Wait. Repeat until you have a big coloured blob. I don't feel like I'm giving my country personality.

I don't doubt that they will release DLC to make it better, but the base game should be enjoyable and then the DLC should be improvement. For the price (£35-45) it's just not worth it yet.

My relationship with this game goes as follows:
"Oh, should give it a try again"
Play for about an hour
Remember why I put it down in the first place.
Mechanics for things like ambushs and charges seem arbitrary, or rather, how they're applied seems to vary depending on if you're the AI or not.
Example: if you go into ambush the AI will find the one blindspot to charge you down. That or the game will bug out with your ambusher running on the spot. Then if you quit and reload....oh hey, AI does the same thing. Except this time NO AMBUSH and you get charged.
Ah and the whole thing is basically one big Iron man mode. So rage quitting is not really an option exeppt to put it downfor a few months till you forget why you stopped playing.
And so the cycle continues.

Seriously though I keep wanting to like it but it is infuriating.