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Turn-based strategy

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Turn-based strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Nov 2022 19:16

This guys absolutely nails it:

We are comparing it to Endless Legend, which shipped as a complete game in a way Humankind did not. Simply put, Humankind was anemic compared to Endless Legend's sublime initial release. DLC in that was purely optional. Point-by-point comparisons are irrelevant because the initial game was so rich that it didn't need stealth, for example. Humankind was an empty, shallow, sterile game that has only gotten more symmetrical over time because they released an unfinished game and want us to pay more for them to finish it.

Civ games are a sad former shell of their previous selves too, and it's bad enough that Firaxis has been relegated to an assembly line of overpriced retreads for strategy gaming midwits. But it's worse to see a company that was recently great sink to sub-Firaxis levels. Big thanks to the Businessoids at Amp and Sega.


Every single fake 4X game I have tried over the past few years has been essentially garbage compared to the old Civs. I’ve reviewed Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings and explained that they are 2X at best. I’ve played Age of Wonders: Planetfall (in large MP even) and said somewhere that it’s 2.5X at best. I played (and streamed) ONE session of Humankind—and not a long one either—and never touched it since, which is tragic for a 4X game since these games normally consume a month of my life with no breaks when a new one comes out. Imagine how bad it must be! It was next to unplayable—at least at release. All the while the latest Civs sound so far inferior to Civ4 and its predecessors (also Alpha Centauri) that I don’t even plan to try them out until I’ve run out of strategy games to play.

So when the guy says that modern strategy games are for midwits, he utterly fucking nails it. That said, he praises Endless Legend, and I haven’t tried that yet, so maybe I should. Also the Master of Magic remake is coming out in a few days, so that is definitely worth trying. Keep in mind with that that the original game had its issues even beyond the insane amount of bugs and wasn’t perfect either. It was however—and still is, unless Endless Legend is better—the best fantasy 4X, so it’s time after nearly 30 years that it was superseded. We’ll see, I might play the remake myself soon after release.


P.S. I am on my phone so it’s hard to provide links for the guy’s post (it is a comment on Humankind’s latest news update on Steam), or links to all my reviews and streams and comments mentioned above. I’ll try to remember to update this post with all that info later today.

P.P.S. I know Paradox isn’t turn-based but they are so slow they almost feel like it.
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icycalm
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Re: Turn-based strategy

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Nov 2022 19:20

I felt it was important to highlight this guy’s comment so people can see icycalm isn’t being cranky or snobbish when shitting on modern turn-based strategy games: the genre has retrogressed and the smart players know it.
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icycalm
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


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