Report #63

I very much enjoyed the previous HoMM V. Especially the Dwarves expansion was really enjoyable. But there were a couple of gameplay factors that I did not like, e.g. the way you recruit your troops from everywhere and the enemy constantly conquers your mines. Together with some other improvements these two points were vastly improved in the 6th Heroes. Overall, a lot of gameplay improvements were noticeable, some smaller, some bigger.

However, there were some downsides as well. It takes forever and some people don't have that much time. The difficulty varies too much between campaign scenarios for my taste. Some were incredibly hard, some were super easy. The biggest disappointment were the expansions though: I could not run them on my PC because I got an unsupported graphics card! Imagine that! You can run the main game (thankfully!) but not the expansions? The reason being that some specific graphics cards are not supported? A problem that's been known for years afaik but not remedied by Ubisoft?? I feel scammed!!

Conclusion: The basic gameplay is very enjoyable, but due to unacceptable technical problems I'm going to give this game a bad rating.

This game had the worst Steam ratings of all the unplayed games in my library, so naturally I was curious. And wow, those were deserved! It crashed about every 20 minutes (no autosave feature ofc), the UI was beyond terrible and the gameplay was boring as hell. Never ever get this game!

Shogun 2 features all the typical Total War gameplay elements, which makes it an overall enjoyable experience to me. I enjoy the mix of strategic and tactical gameplay. Shogun 2 is set in Japan and features several different phases of turmoil in the japanese history, ranging from the first matchlock guns to mid-19-century warfare.

The main drawback is that the factions feel almost identical due to the nature of the setting. I miss trying different playstyles depending on the unit roster of a faction. In my opinion this seriously hampers the replay value.

Another drawback are the achievements. Achievement hunters and completionists: Stay out of this one. The Singleplayer achievements are a bit grindy but fine. The MP however is awful. It's almost dead and the achievements are not only super grindy for the main part, but some are borderline impossible. One requires you to get the #1 spot in the MP ladder worldwide…which is…well… I've marked the game as beaten because I got all SP achievements by now. Any MP I can still get is a bonus and completion is more or less out of question.

All in all a decent game, but it has some flaws and I think it's my least favourite Total War game so far.