November menu update

Appetizers

• The Uncertain: Episode 1 - The Last Quiet Day
  

  6 hours playtime

  31 of 32 achievements

• The 39 Steps
  

  5 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

• Dracula's Legacy
  

  4 hours playtime

  16 of 16 achievements

Time to update you on some of the games I’ve played! First a few short games as appetizers. The Uncertain was a SG win. Pretty good one as well! It’s a point & click game, but no hard puzzles. It’s mostly about the story and there’s tons of references to other games, movies etc. etc. in there. I thought it was a really nice game, so can’t wait for episode 2. It’s in completed because at the time of finishing the game I had 100% of the achievements but they decided to add a new one which you can’t get yet, so I’ll get it back to 100% soon-ish ;-)

Then two games for the monthly theme: The 39 Steps and Dracula’s Legacy (SG win). The 39 Steps was a pretty interesting read. I didn’t expect much from it, but I really enjoyed it. It’s pretty much just a novel you read through, but then on your screen, and the whole setting was done very well. I’d recommend “playing” this game if you like reading! Dracula’s Legacy was a pretty generic HOG/P&C game.. I played it less than 2 weeks ago and I can’t remember much of it.. that should say enough I think ;-)

Main course

Sid Meier's Civilization VI

Long games (> 30 hours)
80 of 100 achievements (80%)

Then for the main course: Civilization VI. At the time of my last update I was just into my first game so I couldn’t say much about it at the time but I promised you some more once I got the time to play some more. Well, as you can see from my playtime and number of achievements I did have time to play it some more ;-) TLDR: it does have its flaws, but I personally feel it’s better than Civ V, especially at launch!

The biggest downside at the beginning was the AI. It’s just stupid. Like small civilizations declaring war on you over and over, even though they have no chance of winning. Like a civ which you’re fighting a space race with but isn’t sabotaging your rocketry projects… Like Gandhi asking you for a joint war on Cleopatra and then denouncing you for being a warmonger the next turn… Yeah, those kind of things happened a lot ;-) Fortunately they put out a patch last week, which features a bunch of AI tweaks. I’ve only played half a game since then, but it does look a lot better!

Apart from the AI, I think the game is really polished at launch. The much feared “cartoony” graphics are not so bad after all, and they really work for the game. There are not many bugs and the game runs very smoothly (apart from a Windows Defender hiccup in the first week). They really put a lot of the game mechanics from the Civ V expansions in the base game, which is just awesome. No more waiting for expansions for religions, spies and/or tourism. The only thing to complain about in that regard is that there’s not really a point in using all these mechanics and it’s best to focus just on one to get a victory (going for a religious victory, then go full force for faith/religion, if not, well you can just ignore it).. So while they’re fun to play with, I guess most of the hardcore Civ players will just turn off everything but Domination Victory ;-) Oh and if you plan on going for Domination Victory make sure to actually turn off the Culture Victory, since I triggered that by mistake while conquering the other Civs

The main new things in Civ VI are districts and the way government/civics work. I really like the districts! Basically you can build a district at every X population in a city and you can only build specific buildings if you have a specific district in your city. So no more “just build everything in your cities”, you actually have to think! Wanna build a university? Tough luck if you don’t have a science district and your city isn’t growing… It really makes you think ahead which goals you have for your cities!

The civic/government system is also pretty nice. It’s basically another tech tree, but then for civics and you “research” with culture. The civics can be government types like monarchy, democracy etc. or policy cards. Every government type has room for a specific number of policy cards. So for instance in a merchant republic you have room for 3 economy policy cards. An economy policy card is for instance “+1 production in all cities” or “+50% production towards settlers”. As said, you earn these cards by “researching” them and get many more than you can actually use so another thing that makes you think! They’re not too overpowered but can still help you out a lot.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the game, but after 74 hours in also kind of burned out on it.. some of the achievements are a real pain in the butt and I’m not going to resort to save game cheating.. I guess I’m taking a little break to give 2k the time to patch it up a bit more and then go for the 100%! :-)

Dessert

Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered

Long games (> 30 hours) Monthly Theme Won on SteamGifts
72 of 79 achievements (91%)

And for dessert we have Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf.. Usually dessert is sweet and easy to eat, but not Lone Wolf, no.. The game can be really hard, especially in the beginning when you have no clue what your’re doing… It looks like the combat is turn based but it only looks that way cause the enemies can just attack you in your “turn”! So my first game on normal was a real challenging experience. I understand now why the game has achievements for “not switching to easy” ;-) Fortunately, the story is really good. It’s like you’re reading a book, getting to make decisions yourself and then fight enemies, which is a nice combination (though the combat does get a bit repetitive).. your decisions actually do matter cause they can give you an advantage or disadvantage in the combat. Especially who gets the initiative can be super decisive in tough fights!

My first playthrough took me about 17 hours on normal and last evening I finished my second playthrough (on easy to experience some of the other decisions) in about 7 hours. Now for the remaining achievements I’m planning on doing a playthrough on hard, but that’ll probably see me rage quitting the game a few times because of RNG screwing me over in combat… we’ll see if I can do it ;-) It was a SG win for me and counts for the monthly so that’s very nice :-)

PS: Sorry for the wall of text.. I’m bad at screenshots, but perhaps I should add some to make it more readable next time :-P