Postal Redux is a slightly peculiar game. On the one hand, it’s a fairly simple shooter that uses an isometric perspective. You enter a level, there are a certain amount of enemies, you need to kill 96% of them. The game couldn’t be more straight forward. At the same time, it’s a game that goes out of it’s way to be edgy. Part of this is because the developers had hitherto been working on children’s games. So for them, Postal 1 was a way of letting off steam.

And to their credit, Postal 1 and it’s remaster Postal Redux are certainly as far away from a kid’s game as one can get. You play as the Postal dude, and you go postal across the course of 22 levels. You can shoot yourself, and indeed are encourage to shoot basically everything that moves. Animals, civilians, the police, clowns, it doesn’t matter. Now you can play through levels without killing civilians, but I think that’s missing the point really.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s fairly enjoyable if a little basic. You do get access to a whole host of different weapons, although ammo tends to be limited. You just run around shooting everything that moves. There are some health kits to pick up, and that’s about it. Every level is largely the same, at least in terms of objectives. The whole thing should only take you around 3 to 4 hours to complete. Once you’ve finished all 22 stages, the game is pretty much over. Fortunately you can play through every stage with a friend, if you know any sick puppies.

Regarding the rest of the game, there isn’t much to say. The soundtrack was extremely minimal even if the soundscape is appropriately mad. The graphics are decent and have certainly been touched up since the original release. The performance was alright considering this is an Unreal Engine 4 game. The plot barely exists. One thing to note is that the camera is a bit all over the place, with the perspective changing between levels. Also the train station level is weirdly hard. Oh and the AI bots (the clowns) are beyond useless.

And that’s about all I have to say about Postal Redux. I know it’s a short review, but this is a short game. It’s nothing special, but it is nice to see a remaster/remake that adds some new content for a relatively niche release. The gun-play is fine, nothing special but the weapon variety does help. I do wish that there was a bit more to do, that the bots were better and that the OST wasn’t so minimal. Otherwise what you see is what you get. Namely a isometric shooter for people who want society to EAT LEAD.

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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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Quick Note: Yes this is a remaster of a remaster, Microsoft really did pull that stunt. For what it’s worth, you can’t buy Age of Empires 2: HD any more and all of the DLC for that version of the game has been included in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition for free.

Oh Microsoft you cheeky swine, I’ve already bought 4 copies of Age of Empires 2 and yet here you are asking for me to buy it again. Were my purchases of the base game, the gold edition (with the expansions), the DS version and the initial HD remaster not enough for you? Evidently not, because here we are again and in spite of my better judgement I’ve gone and bought my 5th copy of this infernal game. Why did I do it? Well honestly because I waited years and then made a £4 impulse buy during the twitch event for the latest “hidden cup”. Which was fun to watch (except for the final) and so I felt like buying another version of the game for cheap wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean it has some new co-op maps, three new campaigns and uhhhh…. shiny graphics! Plus some Quality of Life (QoL) changes and some new civilizations. Oh and just under 300 CHEEVOS to gather, if you are so inclined. As it’s hard to review a remaster as opposed to the initial game, I’m just going to go through those points mentioned above one-by-one. If you haven’t played Age of Empires 2 for some reason, then just go grab when it’s on sale. Otherwise, read on!

To make things easy, let’s start off with the new campaigns which have been introduced for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. There are a grand total of three of them, with each campaign having 5 or 6 missions each. These missions are relatively varied and quite fun, although depending on your play-style they really can take a decent amount of time. Generally each campaign has sections where you have no villagers, and as such must make the most out of your modestly sized force. Alongside more traditional missions that let you play as per normal, albeit often with some restrictions. The most notable one is that in all of the campaigns, you aren’t allowed to just jump straight to the Imperial Age from mission one. Instead new tech and a larger population cap are gradually introduced over the length of each campaign. This is fine in principle, although in practice it means that you’ll often wrap up a campaign, start a new one and… oh we’re back to the Feudal Age with no villagers and a maximum population of 75. To be fair to these missions, you generally start with some units/structures already setup and often even some techs will have been researched (never had to research Loom for example). Regardless of the somewhat arbitrary limitations, the campaigns are all decently enjoyable and manage to feel varied enough that you’ll want to get through them all. Plus Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has also reworked a bunch of the earlier campaigns from previous releases, including some balancing tweaks and an increased population cap for most of those campaign missions. Although it must be said, that the inclusion of the base game campaigns, expansion pack campaigns and then the DLC campaigns from AoE2:HD really does make the campaign menu a bit overwhelming at first.

Fortunately even if the campaign selection screen can be a bit overwhelming, the actual game isn’t. As mentioned before we now have SHINY NEW GRAPHICS (wow!!!), but honestly they are pretty shiny. Not only do we have new 4K resolution options, but there’s been a bunch of work done to make everything look more visually impressive even at 1080p. New building destruction animations, better zoom control functionality, new objects and effects for some buildings/units and the like are all included. As for the UI, it’s also been improved with the ability to see all faction traits alongside a real-time tracker which shows global production/research and also how many villagers are on each resource. There are also some relatively small gameplay tweaks like automatically re-seeding farms, the ability to rotate gates manually alongside a substantial improvement to the AI. Finally the soundtrack has been remastered, and some of the campaigns from Age of Empires 2: HD now have voice acting. Sure you don’t need much voice-acting, but it’s a nice little bonus and brings everything up to the same standard. Finally there are some more granular options in the menus, that let experienced players further control how the game operates. It’s basically a pretty extensive under-the-hood upgrade to the game, and it all adds up to make Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition the best way to play the game.

As for the multiplayer mode, aside from a new server hosting infrastructure and cross-play between Steam/Microsoft Store versions of the game, there’s some new content here too. First of all, there are now a batch of co-op scenario maps based on historic battles – just like those in Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition. While these don’t add a huge amount of content, it’s a nice addition and hopefully more are added in the future. There are also 4 new civilizations in the base game (Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Cumans and the Tartars) which can be played in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. These new civilizations are a nice bonus and all have decent cavalry units, as would be expected for their history. The multiplayer mode also received a new game mode in the form of Empire Wars. This mode is quite similar to a normal game, but players now start in the Feudal Age and have a selection of pre-built units and buildings including around 27 villagers. It’s therefore a nice way to skip the initial Dark Ages slog and go straight to combat, although obviously this can be a headache for newer players or civilizations who benefit from a stronger economy in the very early game.

And that’s about “all” that’s been changed for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. I guess it goes without saying that as it’s the new version of Age of Empires 2, there are also a bunch of new DLC updates that have added a bunch of extra civilizations/campaigns. But I don’t own them, so I can only judge the remaster on it’s own merits. Which honestly is enough for me to give it a recommendation. The gameplay changes to the campaigns are modest but appreciated. The new soundtrack is genuinely great and makes the game feel much more enjoyable to play. The new graphics likewise look great, and the myriad small tweaks do a solid job of making the game feel more modern. The new campaigns are fun, and generally this is just a great little remaster. If you have an older version of the game, there’s plenty of new content here to enjoy. If you’ve never played it, then be sure to give it a go!

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Quick Note: I played the remake as evidenced by the title, but haven’t played the original. So don’t expect any comparisons between the two versions

Panzer Dragoon Remake is a great little arcade game at a reasonable price. While the original game has remained largely constrained to the ill-fated Sega Saturn (and the PS2… kind of). Those who haven’t played it before can now play it on multiple new platforms. In my case, I chose the PC release from GoG with only a faint idea of what the series was about. As dedicated readers of this blog – who don’t exist – will be aware, I’m a sucker for a bargain. At £1, I can safely say that Panzer Dragoon really was a bargain. Not only is it a solid rail-shooter that manages to slightly embarrass Starfox 64 (my previous favourite) with it’s gameplay. But thanks to this remake it looks and sounds great too. Even if it’s a very short experience, it has a couple of tricks up it’s sleeve that combine to form a compelling gameplay experience.

First things first. The Panzer Dragoon remake may only have one weapon that you can use, but there’s an interesting give-and-take at the centre of the gameplay as this weapon has two firing modes. You can just spam shots, as much as you’d like and in a way that’s par-for-the-course for shoot em ups. Where things get a bit more interesting is that you’re able to hold down the fire button for a lock-on effect. With this lock-on being able to stack shots so long as you keep the enemy in your crosshairs. This makes it useful for enemies who are hard to hit, but there’s a catch. You see while enemy projectiles can be dodged, it’s quite difficult to do so. After all, you are moving on rails as it’s a rail-shooter. Fortunately you can shoot down the majority of these enemy projectiles, but only while shooting “normally”. This forces you to shoot your (locked-on) shot, so that you can now shoot down the incoming projectiles. While this might not sound like much, during frantic parts of the game you really have to constantly think about whether it’s worth sacrificing the ability to easily damage multiple enemies that are darting around, so that you can make it easier to avoid taking damage. The game is therefore able to produce a subtle but constant balancing act. Where you need to maximise the damage you deal while minimising the damage you take. Further compounding this, is the fact that while you can dodge there’s generally a limit as to how much you can dodge. Especially because aiming the targetting cursor at enemies, causes you to move in that direction. So if you are trying to dodge incoming shots which will allow you to keep charging your lock-on shot, then you still need to be mindful of where you’re aiming. As otherwise you’ll end up moving back towards the enemy fire you were trying to dodge! I appreciate that this all might seem a tad verbose. Basically you move with the cursor and you only have a limited amount of room to manoeuvrer.

One other thing that the Panzer Dragoon remake does to keep you on your toes, is manage the health system in a slightly unusual way. You see you can’t get more health during each of the game’s 7 stages. And beating a stage only gives you some health back. Therefore unless you are a real expert, you’ll probably struggle to clear the game with one life. Fortunately enough, you can gain more lives (or credits as they’re called here) by shooting down enough enemies. As a consequence, you’re actively encouraged to be more aggressive. If you shoot down 70% of enemies, you’ll only get 1 extra life. Whereas shooting down 90% of the enemies will give you two extra lives. Of course, as mentioned above the more lock-on shots you use the harder it is to deal with incoming enemy fire. So Panzer Dragoon is a game that incentives aggressive play, while also kind of punishing it.

Another twist that Panzer Dragoon offers that other rail-shooters don’t, is that you can rotate your direction of view while moving. Most rail-shooters would only let you shoot targets in front of you. In Panzer Dragoon on the other hand you’ll be shooting to your left, right and even behind you. This mechanic is used to good effect when fighting larger enemies, who you overtake and who overtake you which makes the fights feel larger than they are. It’s also a way to add further challenge to the game. As while you do have a radar that shows all nearby enemies and where they are. You still need to prioritise targets lest you get repeatedly hit by enemy fire from a direction you’re not watching. These enemies themselves are also quite varied. There are a range of both larger and smaller enemies each of which have their own attack patterns. Some attacks can be negated by shooting them down, while others just have to be dodged. Considering how short the game is, the amount of enemy variety is actually pretty impressive. Plus each level obviously has it’s own unique boss. Some of these bosses even have multiple forms, but none of them felt unfair or overly difficult. Instead Panzer Dragoon is a game that manages to deftly handle it’s difficulty curve. So that the late game is a large step up over the early game, without ever being overwhelming.

And the stages themselves have a nice amount of variation, both in colour palette and theme. There are sandy dunes, Mediterranean-esque ruins, industrial bases and besieged cities to take in over the course of your mission. Each area looks great and manages to look distinct, without being so distracting that it makes spotting the various enemies difficult. As for the soundtrack, it’s pretty good and suitably high-energy for a game which while short is consistently entertaining for it’s full duration. Finally while there is a story (and the credits even mention three lore experts) it is pretty minimal. You get a surprisingly lengthy opening cutscene which could charitably be described as a bit mad. Then are thrust into the action with only very short cutscenes occasionally appearing between stages. The plot is unsurprisingly quite simple. You are given a dragon by a guy and you need to stop the bad dragon from entertaining some sort of doomsday device. Along the way various fauna, critters and soldiers of some sort of empire will try and stop you for some reason. Don’t worry though, because the main point of the review is that Panzer Dragoon looks good, sounds good and runs at a pretty stable frame-rate. At least in this remake edition.

And that’s about all I have to say about the Panzer Dragoon remake, because as mentioned it’s exceedingly short. To be fair, after playing it from start-to-finish in an hour, I did unlock the “secret menu” which allowed me to: browse an art gallery, watch the credits again and even play through any stage with cheats enabled. While these additional features are cool, they can’t mask the fact that this is a very short game and one without any co-op or multiplayer features. As a consequence while I do think it’s a great game, it’s one I can only earnestly recommend in two circumstances. Either you are a big fan of the original and/or rail-shooters more generally. Or if it’s available at a low price during a sale. As mentioned, I paid £1 for my copy from GoG and I imagine a similar price will be available during the next big GoG sale. At that price anyone should buy it.

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Quick Note: This game is slightly glitchy if you start fannying around with co-op settings. If you get stuck you can always force the game to close by opening the Steam overlay and making it quit the game that way.

The House of the Dead: Remake is a game that came out of nowhere and was quickly snatched up and thrown into my Steam library around the time I first saw it was available, as for whatever reason it’s been the only HotD I haven’t played yet. Much like it’s sequels the game has the campy charm of a low quality release while still offering a variety of fun enemy encounters, a short-enough game length that it’s great for co-op while having enough unlockables and collectibles to still offer a decent amount of playtime. Unfortunately the port job hasn’t been conducted without any issue, as the game’s port by a motley band of developers I literally haven’t heard of has resulted in a Unity port that does little to dispel the negative conception of that particularly ill-fated engine. The two main issues I’ve encountered (and fortunately I haven’t encountered the “bug” where the game just flat out refuses to work) are surprisingly long load times and occasional instances of the game failing to load anything visually aside from the enemies. Fortunately these issues are fairly minor, as the game only fails to load the level briefly at a time and the actual loading of each level while slightly tedious only needs to take place when you’re booting up the game for the first time, or loading the game’s gallery mode. As such the game itself is able to operate on a fairly speed basis, with enemies jumping through windows, falling down from ceilings or clambering across walls and water features without any delay which keeps the pace up. The House of the Dead: Remake is therefore a fast paced game and were it not for the fact that it only includes 4 levels you would be in for a roller-coaster ride of an experience, but alas the game is over almost as quickly as it starts once you’ve figured out how the bosses work.

Which is kind of the game’s jam, for want of a better way of describing it. The House of the Dead: Remake is deliberately designed to be a short but intensive thrill ride which has the player basically unable to take a breather at any stage of the experience, as even when there are no enemies on screen there are hidden paths and collectibles scattered around that need to be shot to be unlocked. While this is great for keeping the pace up and ensuring that any co-op partners will find it hard to come up with an excuse to leave mid-session, it does also mean that the game has to be kept short enough that you’ll want to keep on rolling with the punches. Which means you get 4 levels per playthrough, of which 1 is a glorified boss-rush that barely lasts a few minutes because you should know how to deal with the bosses by now. In fact the bosses actually get easier as the game goes on, with the possible exception of the final boss who’s “weak spot” is hidden during the intro-screen. Fortunately the bosses are still fairly intense as they move quickly and you’ll need to keep hammering away at them to stop them for dealing a ton of damage to you, but they’re really more of a show-piece than an immense challenge – at least on normal difficulty.

As for the gameplay itself it’s an on-rails light-gun shooter where your character moves at their own pace through a variety of shooting galleries, with monsters appearing from all sides often with minimal notice. There’s a decent amount of enemy variety considering there are only really 3 stages, but on subsequent playthroughs there isn’t much in the way of variation unless you take the alternative paths. With these paths often being fairly well hidden, or at least requiring some intuition. Your character’s glance might quickly switch to a button for example, which you can shoot within the 2 seconds given to cause an elevator to appear or for a locked door to be shot down. Otherwise your character quickly moves on to the next series of targets. That’s about it for the gameplay, as outside of researchers occasionally getting in the way there isn’t much to it. These researchers are essentially civilians who you can shoot, but you shouldn’t as they give you extra points and sometimes healing items. In addition if you’re able to save all of them then you get a “secret” bonus room during the final stage. The House of the Dead: Remake also comes with an optional horde mode, which I had initially assumed was some sort of last-stand or defensive side activity, but which is instead just the same levels as the base campaign but with considerably more enemies on screen at any point.

With all that being said there isn’t too much to discuss about this House of the Dead remake, as while the graphics are perfectly acceptable they’re not worthy of extensive coverage. There’s a new soundtrack due to licensing issues with the original, which sounds fine to me but which can be replaced with the original’s via modding (on PC) for those who dislike it. The gameplay is enjoyable, faithful and frantic even if it’s fairly straight forward. There isn’t a huge amount of content but there is some replayability via the 3 different endings, different stage routes, achievement hunting (which unlocks additional weapons and even cheat codes) and the optional horde mode which provides a challenge for more hardcore gamers. It’s therefore a serviceable port of the original which features a handful of extra features, but which is sadly let down by the lack of online multiplayer and the lack of alternative game modes. So it’s short and sweet, but not particularly filling unless you are the sort of person who cares about 100% completion. One last thing to mention again is that you can unlock multiple different weapons and cheat codes which are fun to mess around with, but of course you can only play through the 4 included stages so many times before they begin to get a bit tiresome. Horde mode alleviates this slightly by mixing up the enemy spawns, but changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to have much of an impact.

In conclusion then The House of the Dead: Remake is an enjoyable co-op game and a decent enough single player experience, albeit one that most players won’t spend too much time with. While I’m glad that the game has been successful and that a sequel is in development, I am hoping that the House of the Dead 2 remake gets a bit more extra content to help add some meat to the base game’s bones. Unfortunately while The House of the Dead: Remake is a good remake, it does have some weird quirks like the lack of online co-op and some graphical bugs which haven’t been patched by the developers. As for whether I recommend it? Well yeah I do, I think it’s a fun little game and it’s not particularly expensive – plus having a local co-op game that’s not lengthy or overtly complicated is always a good thing. I do just wish it more content however, as playing through the campaign takes under an hour and once you’ve done that you’re just replaying through largely the same handful of stages with the same bosses, even if the alternative routes offer a sliver of much needed variety. The unlockable guns are great, the gallery is cute, the voice acting is still appropriately bad and the visual upgrades are nice, but it’s just oh so short and it’s replayability is near solely dependent on whether you can convince someone to come to your house and give it a go.

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Diablo 2 is one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time, and over the years has garnered a massive fanbase across the globe. As not only one of Blizzard’s most popular games during it’s golden age, but also as a frequent addition to the myriad “greatest PC games of all time” lists I’d also felt like I was really missing out by not playing it. Now for a quick bit of context, I only really started caring about the PC during the 6th console generation and while I did plenty of older games I tended to stick with RTS games and some shooters. As such while I did buy Diablo 2 around 2005ish, I never really got into it and dropped it at the end of Act 1 in favour of playing more Red Alert 2 / World of Warcraft / Simcity 3000. Now that close to two decades have passed, I’ve finally gone back and played through the entirety of Diablo 2 after having played a couple of other ARPGs such as Torchlight 1 & 2, Titan Quest, W40K Inquisitor and even Diablo 3.

And boy oh boy do I not get it at all! That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but honestly the whole experience could be described as a graphically impressive treadmill. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I picked the Necromancer class and focused on my summon abilities, due to the fact that I thought it was pretty cool having a bunch of disposable goons in front of me. Maybe it’s the fact that I played a bunch of other successor games first, and so the novelty of Diablo 2 wasn’t there. Or maybe it’s just a case that I don’t see who this genre is for or why people bother with them. To give some context, once I hit around level 10 or so every fight played out exactly the same. My skeletons and golem would rush in, my mercenary rogue and skeleton mages would hang back, and I wander around occasionally resurrecting my minions or engaging in combat myself to expedite everything. This was every encounter for around 15 hours once I’d got my cool spells (prior to this I didn’t have a golem sadly). Now I can only assume people will point out “Hey LOSER, you can just play another class or build!!!” but that seems to be a solution that sounds great on paper but doesn’t actually achieve anything. I can say this with confidence because I initially played this game all those years ago as a… Paladin and it was really boring. Then while playing my Necromancer I switched between melee and ranged builds, then dabbled with the other spells and really the whole felt identical. I was wandering around like a big spooky simpleton, getting rushed by the same mobs and clicking on them ASAP before they made my health bar go down. Sure I could emulate President Trump and build a BIG BEAUTIFUL (bone) WALL to keep them at bay, or I could use an Iron Golem instead of a Flesh Golem but it really didn’t change the overall dynamics of the game at all. You’re just some feckless murder-hobo being pushed from big open plain to small dungeon to big open plain for about 20ish hours.

Fortunately the developers at Blizzard came up with an ingenious system by which losers gamers would be kept endlessly amused by this entertainment juggernaut. That solution? You can pick up items, that give you some bonuses to some stats that make you better at clicking on things! I guess the name for their MMO originated from players yelling “WOW!!!” at the prospect of fighting the same enemies in the same places over and over and over and over so they could have another Crossbow but this time with BIGGER NUMBERS. You probably think I’m probably being facetious (and I am) but honestly the max level is 100 and you can beat the game before you’re level 30. So why the hell would you spend the incredibly large amount of time grinding up that main number so that you can then grind for the other items that contribute to the little numbers? This is what I mean when I start my review with “I don’t get it”. It’s not that the combat is bad, as it’s fine and honestly the enemy variety is pretty decent for an RPG. There are cases where enemies are reskins, but it’s not a big issue and most enemies fit into a clear archetype that when combined results in some fun target prioritisation. But unlike say… Serious Sam which does the same thing in a frantic FPS environment where you are dealing with dozens and sometimes hundreds at a time, Diablo 2 is only giving you at most a room full of guys to deal with (around 20). Otherwise you’d just get melted by everyone punching you at the same time. Instead of having progressively higher stakes and needing to learn movement mechanics like in a good FPS game, you instead get a big ass unnecessary grind for you to brag about on the online servers (and/or forums). It’s baffling to me that this is not only one of the exemplars of Blizzard’s existence, but that this grinding simulator is held up as the pinnacle that inspired an entire genre of successors. Who the hell wants to do the Act 2 boss fight 50 times in a row so that they can maybe get the Ultimate Halberd of King Knut (+30 life +30 energy +1cm penis size +2 Dexterity +15% chance to cast bear mace (Level 3) on hit) so that they can then have a powerful build for when they replay the same game but at a higher difficulty level? Why do these people exist???

Of course I’m not being entirely fair, as there are a few points in the game where the gameplay changes. Don’t worry, there’s not a mandatory stealth section or anything. Instead when you have to face Bosses, you’ll quickly realise that they have a shitload generously large amount of health and deal a fucking retarded significant amount of damage. This changes the game a lot, because you lose a lot of gold (It’s your current level as a percentage of the gold you had) when you die and indeed when you die you need to find your corpse (to loot so that you can regain your EPIC gear), which in this case will be right next to the boss that just kicked your ass. Act 1 doesn’t really have a boss, but the final quests in Acts 2, 3 and 4 involve dealing with a very large demon that makes every other enemy in the game look like a pussy. In fact most of these bosses could shred through my big health golem very, very quickly and my other summons (and mercenary) even quicker! This obviously presented an issue, as even with my more powerful spells and abilities I was in trouble. Fortunately I devised an expert strategy that almost never failed, which was to bring a lot of potions… and use the shared section of my stash so I didn’t lose any gold when I died… and just teleport away when near death to regain health for free. So in a sense, they were kinda broken in terms of balancing and I was super broken. I did feel kinda bad, because it seemed like the heroic thing to do would be to rush in like a crusader of yore and batter them into submission, but even my fancy golden crossbow did bugger all damage to them and missed like a third of it’s shots. So each boss fight became a battle of attrition between my character and how many mana potions I could fit on my belt to keep spawning golems so that I could shoot more crossbow bolts that basically just tickled the bosses. I also tried melee and died really quickly. Plus I did try using spells, which did more damage (yay!) but meant that I burned through way more mana and so it was much harder to keep golem meat-shields around. I’m sure there’s some build that makes the bosses a cakewalk, but after double checking how to deal with the Act 2 boss without being a little cheating bitch I found out that my build was actually considered one of the best ones. Go figure.

On the subject of mercenaries, these are NPCs you can recruit that function as companions and followers. Unlike in many fully fledged RPG’s they have no dialogue (well, they say thanks you give them items) and don’t impact the plot at all, but they’re still useful to have. In my case I kept my starting rogue, as these mercenaries level up and have a variety of abilities they use automatically. They can also equip a weapon, a helmet and armour that you give them but not the other item slots such as rings, boots, gloves. On the flip side they don’t need ammo which is great, but when they die you need to pay to resurrect them. Which would be fine, if they weren’t suicidal when dealing with bosses. You see the companion AI is about the same as the minion AI which is the same as the enemy’s AI which is on the level of charging the nearest hostile and being dumbfounded by chasms. Due to this, I’d say keeping my emo rogue alive constituted almost the entirety of my gold expenditure throughout the game as death was free, shop items sucked and so many potions and teleport scrolls were dropped by the baddies that I never had to buy them. Even this source of expenditure was fairly low, except for the final boss when my occasional death to Diablo’s basically one-hit kill death-beam would cause them to kill themselves in solidarity. So even after abusing the stash gold loophole, I still had to pay some money to bring them back. Which would’ve been fine, if they had been able to avoid Diablo’s attacks, which they couldn’t, so they often died really, really quickly.

But all my negativity aside there are some aspects of Diablo 2 which are actually pretty impressive. First of all having the entire game be playable with friends (or randoms) is cool. No doubt about it, if you couldn’t afford an MMO then this was an interesting way to interact with people and I can say that even when I last played the game close to a decade after release it was still popular. Plus as mentioned there is plenty of enemy variety, you’ve got multiple classes with different builds and the challenge of grinding out the harder difficulties. Why you’d bother is a question I can’t answer, but if you enjoyed the game for whatever reason then hey you can play it with other weirdos online and there’s a ton of (repetitive) content to explore! Perhaps more noteworthy for me as someone who wasted around 20 hours of their fleeting, worthless existence on this game due to the peer pressure of strangers, I will admit that the art style is pretty good. There’s plenty of variety between the zones of each Act, with the general look and feel of each area being handled well. It’s a good looking game and the remaster does a solid job of bringing it up to modern standards, without losing any of the appeal. Even the font and UI have been chosen with care and the whole game successfully captures the feel of a Gothic low-fantasy world. The music is also a good accompaniment to the game, although I have to confess that it loops like a motherfucker because there aren’t really many tracks here. The ones that are there are good, but I’d personally say they kinda peak in Act 1. Last but certainly not least, the cinematics show that Blizzard really know what they’re doing in this department and as ever they’re great. Not only they are visually impressive, but they’re a good way of providing context to the events in the game’s world and are a good way of breaking up each Act. In fact I’d say they provide a better reward than the loot on offer, but I’m probably just biased because my class couldn’t use half the late(r) game equipment due to not having enough Strength.

In conclusion then Diablo 2 is a game I really don’t understand. It’s a perfectly serviceable ARPG for those who are desperately seeking more carpal tunnel syndrome in their lives, but for the typical player I don’t see the appeal. It’s a game that looks great and has a striking art-style, with well made accompanying music and plenty of content for you to grind through if that’s your bag. For those seeking a good story, that’s not here. For those seeking a varied and engaging combat experience, I don’t think that’s here either. Instead it’s an RPG for that subjection of RPG gamers who only wants to make the numbers go up. The plot is minimal, there are no choices, there isn’t even much of an ending, but there are numbers. By the light, are there numbers. So for those who love grinding, or are seeking a co-op game at short notice then by all means give Diablo 2 a go. But for me, it’s just the cause of one big inescapable question – Who are these games for???

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Now first thing’s first, I haven’t played the original game (released back in 1989) so I can’t do a comparison for you guys between this latest remaster – as there was one back in 2013 – and the original game. Second thing’s second, The Bluecoats: North & South is a game that I picked up in a bundle a while back, and as such I didn’t pay much attention to it when I first bought it. It turns out this was a mistake on my part, as The Bluecoats: North & South is actually a really enjoyable game even if it’s hard to pin down exactly what kind of game it is. It’s got a Turn Based Strategy layer, which is arguable the meat of the game and is fairly simple. Basically there’s a map of the (Dis)United states as of the time period, with each state functioning as a region and each region being able to hold one army at a time. Some of these regions contain forts, which are connected by railway lines and if a player owns both of the terminus points of a railway line then on the start of their turn a train will run along the line and generate gold for them. Generally you get two or three gold for each train that moves between your forts without a hitch and as such maintaining control of the railways is crucial to success. There are also some other minor factors to consider, such as a wandering storm cloud that affects one region per turn and paralyses any army contained within it (unless you pay some gold), the potential for Western states to be attacked by Mexicans and American-Indians and North Carolina having a port that provides free armies every few turns. Generally there isn’t too much to handle on this overall strategy layer, but as armies can only move to one neighbouring region per turn and as you can only have one army in a region (although you can merge two armies together up to 3 times) you do still have to carefully consider your moves. One other twist is that if you have 3 Gold, you can buy a new army but only on regions without an army already on it – but that army can then move as per usual, so it’s possible to lose an entire army in an attack and then buy a new one to send in against the harmed enemy army. If you have the money of course!

Which brings us to my favourite part of this game, namely the RTS-esque battles that take place between two armies. These are frantic but enjoyable and involve juggling between three unit types on the fly (as you can only control one unit at a time). You’ve got Artillery which are seriously powerful and can 1-hit KO entire enemy units if you get the perfect shot in, but need to charge each shot and they can only move left-or-right whereas the other unit types can move forwards. Then you’ve got Cavalry which are fast and lethal against all unit types (including other Cavalry) but melee only, so they need to dodge incoming fire while rushing towards the enemy. Finally you’ve got infantry that can advance like the cavalry, but have a ranged attack albeit one with a slight delay before firing. As mentioned earlier in this paragraph, part of what makes these battles so engaging is the fact that you need to keep switching between units to make the most effective use out of them. So you’ll need to be moving your artillery and firing shots, while manoeuvring your infantry and advancing your cavalry so that no unit is a sitting duck or about to be outflanked. Of course having a larger army does provide some advantages, as you can field more individual soldiers per unit type, but newly created tier-1 armies already have the maximum number of soldiers in the infantry unit. In these cases you have reserves which are instantly spawned when the units you initially deployed with are wiped out (e.g. you have 9 infantry soldiers in your army, 6 deploy at the start then if they all die a unit of 3 soldiers spawns). As such effective use of a smaller army can easily lead to victory against a larger force.

Most games would be content at this stage to be a RTS/TBS hybrid, but The Bluecoats: North & South is not most games and adds an additional layer in the form of two FPS mini-games that largely play the same. When you attack an enemy fort on the TBS layer, you will initially have a normal battle if they had an army defending and if you succeed (or they didn’t have a garrison army hanging around) then you start playing a FPS mode. Don’t get me wrong, this mode isn’t going to compete with Doom or even most bargain bin FPS games, but it does have it’s own charm. When these battles start you’re given a 4-minute time limit to gun down a dozen enemy soldiers, each of whom die in two shots or one headshot. The twist is that you have a limited amount of ammo and unless you hit 12 consecutive headshots, you’re going to need some extra ammo. Fortunately your enemies are kind enough to occasionally drop ammo (and sometimes even health!), which is a clever way of the game discouraging camping as you’ll run out of shots and need to dash out into the fray. This is where you can get overwhelmed, as reloading takes some time and the enemy is accurate even if they’re slow to fire. To prevent these FPS battles from being punishingly difficult, the enemy only has 4 active combatants at a time and you have a rough idea of where they are thanks to a mini-map in the upper right corner. In spite of the relatively modest amount of enemies at any given time, you’ll need to be careful when playing these battles as enemies can bum-rush you with melee attacks and if you need to reload at the wrong time you can quickly burn through your health bar. You do have two NPC buddies with you during these missions, but they don’t deal damage and instead can only stagger enemies with their shots.

The game also has another FPS mini-game that is very similar and which takes place during train robberies. These robberies happen when a player has an army occupying a region with a railway line that is running between two enemy forts. If an army is placed in this way then when the train reaches the occupied region a train robbery mission will start. These missions are essentially the same as the fort missions, but instead of wandering around a fort you’re rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ your way up the train. If you can make it to the locomotive engine within 4-minutes, then you steal the gold and the enemy gets nothing. Alternatively if your train is under attack, then you need to defend it from the enemy lest you suffer the same fate! These missions are short and easier than the fort attacks, but still enjoyable and can be tense as often successfully conducting a train robbery (or train defence) will decide whether you or your enemy will get to buy an additional army.

And that’s about it as far as The Bluecoats: North & South goes, as while the game has a myriad of game modes each is short but sweet. The campaign is essentially four scenarios back-to-back which are loosely based on the historic progress of the war in each year from 1861 to 1864, with some tweaked starting armies and regions pre-allocated. The game also has a free play mode which lets you select either the RTS or the two FPS modes and gives you some choice with regards to settings so that you can play each mode at your leisure without needing to mix and match them as per the campaign gameplay. Finally you can play each mode either against the AI or against a friend, acquittance, lover, relative, or exceptionally-intelligent-pet either online or in split-screen. Ultimately this is a game that’s intended for short bursts as playing through each of the campaign scenarios shouldn’t take you very long (around 2 hours), and if you win a handful of the initial engagements in a campaign it’s entirely possible to win in only one or two turns as the game has a powerful snowball effect in play. Part of this is that the more armies you have, the more regions you can capture. Another part is that you gain a bonus for having more regions/states at the start of each turn, which gives you one extra gold. When you consider that having more regions almost certainly means you have more forts and are thus earning more money anyway, it puts your opponent at a serious financial disadvantage. To win all you need to do is defeat every enemy army and make sure they can’t afford to buy a new one on their next turn, at which point you get a cute little victory screen and not much fanfare.

In conclusion then The Bluecoats: North & South is a short but sweet hybrid game with a charming art-style and a handful of relatively simple gameplay modes. It’s not a deep game by any means, but it’s a blast to play and manages to keep mixing things up so that it never feels stale at any given moment. The developers have done a good job of making every engagement feel important, as you can easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (or vice-versa) with a hard well-fought battles. Plus as you’ll be switching between TBS, RTS and FPS frequently you need to become competent at each to have any chance of victory, lest your brilliantly capable army fail to storm a fort repeatedly. While the AI is a little easy on normal, it’s a decent challenge on hard and of course the multiplayer mode provides plenty of opportunity for glory or upset. As such I’d have no problem recommending The Bluecoats: North & South to anyone regardless of skill level or even fondness for videogames, especially as it’s priced as a budget title and has full multiplayer support.

The post The Bluecoats: North & South (2020) appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: While I did play the original DS version back in the day, this review is based on my recent play-through of the remastered version which came out in 2017 for PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One.

Before diving into what makes Lock’s Quest such an interesting game, I’d just like to give credit where credit is due for the fact that THQ Nordic had the sheer balls to consider it for a full fledged port. Not only did it only receive modest success upon it’s initial release for the Nintendo DS (with it’s 81% rating on Metacritic sadly converting to below 100,000 units sold worldwide according to VGChartz), but the entire game is designed with touch screen controls in mind and obviously these had to be entirely reworked for the game to be playable. Even once the controls were totally reworked, most of the game’s assets including character portraits, unit and turret sprites and the soundtrack then had to be rebuilt for platforms with considerably higher display resolutions and standards. Now it’s true that there were some cutbacks, including the loss of multiple levels and the game’s multiplayer mode. Yet almost a decade after the game’s initial release, THQ gave it a second shot and I’m personally grateful that they did.

The reason for my gratitude is simple, Lock’s Quest is a pretty unique game and it’s combination of tower defence and active offence make it an enjoyable experience. The game itself is split up into 74 days, each of which functions as a level although these levels are played across a smaller range of maps. The way it works is simple, the game will load up a new map and then you’ll be tasked with defending it for multiple in-game days with each day being represented by a time limit (generally 3 minutes but occasionally longer). Before a day starts, you get 2 or 3 minutes with which to setup your defences, which take the form of a variety of turrets, walls, traps and occasionally AI human defenders. Walls are critical as not only do they keep the bad guys at bay, but they also link up with turrets and give them a defensive bonus which vastly increases the amount of HP your connecting turrets have. Therefore a large amount of the game’s strategy involves juggling the offensive power of your turrets (and the types of enemies they can engage) while building enough walls to ensure these turrets don’t melt while you’re distracted.

And you will be distracted! Lock’s Quest starts off gently and initially seems pretty straight forward as you only have a handful of wall lengths, turrets and traps that can be used against a small amount of different enemy types. Alongside these defensive buildings, you also have the ability to attack enemies yourself and will soon be able to build up a power meter which can be unleashed in the form of powerful abilities. A significant part of the game is balancing the need to repair your structures, attack enemies yourself and keep an eye on your health. If you don’t repair your buildings, they’ll be destroyed and you’ll need to use a significant amount of your limited resources to rebuild them. If you don’t attack the enemies, you won’t build up your power meter and you’ll really struggle to churn through the enemy waves before they can build up a critical mass. If you don’t keep your eye on your health, well… I think you can guess why that’s an issue!

As Lock’s Quest progresses, juggling defence, offence and Lock’s mortality continues to become more complex as the game continually ramps up. Each new map consistently introduces new enemies, abilities, defensive structures and ways that you can attack. By the late game, you’ll have 4 different wall strengths (with different costs), multiple utility turrets that give certain buffs, multiple turret types with have different ranges which counter nearly a dozen different enemy types and a wide variety of attacks and abilities that Lock can use. Oh and did I mention that the game likes to mix things up even further with boss battles, or the occasional need to conduct an offensive mission (such as sallying forth to clear enemy camps while under attack or reach a certain part of the map to complete an objective)?

In spite of the ever developing complexity on paper however, I actually felt that Lock’s Quest was most challenging earlier on. As mentioned previously you only have a limited amount of currency, called source in the game, which means you can’t have too many turrets at once. Due to this you need to be quite careful with your positioning, as maps have plenty of obstacles that make forming a nice neat-and-tidy line tricky. In addition, most maps have multiple routes that the enemy can take and so you’ll often need to split your defences between multiple angles which further makes things difficult. Fortunately Lock is no slouch and can deal significant damage to enemies himself which helps you finesse this challenge. The reason the game’s balance is a bit wonky however is that initially his abilities are so limited that he often needs to venture forth and then retreat so that his health can regenerate. Due to this you’re very dependent on your turrets to provide you with some shelter and so you are constantly bouncing between attacking enemies and repairing turrets while you’re regenerating health. Around halfway through the game however Lock gains a health-steal attack which funnels health from the enemy to Lock for a period of time, and from this point onwards HP management becomes much, much easier even as the enemies you face continue to increase their health and damage output. Not only does the health-steal attack give you the ability to stay in the fight longer, but if you hit multiple enemies you’ll continue to steal health from each of them while building up your power meter. This not only enables you to use your powerful abilities more frequently, but while you’re using them you can’t be hurt and so you will regenerate your health… which then lets you continue to attack the enemies!

As such I found that I didn’t really die after a certain point and only enemy attack routes I failed to foresee caused me any trouble. Don’t worry, the game wasn’t a cakewalk and there were still some close calls but generally the difficulty actually decreases as the game goes on. Fortunately it’s around this point that the game’s plot really starts to pick up from a relatively slow start and there are multiple twists and turns that belie the humble beginnings that Lock (and his perennially cute sister Emi) find themselves in. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say that some of the twists come out of nowhere and the whole thing is surprisingly engaging even if it does have that slightly twee vibe that is more associated with Japanese games. To give a basic idea of what I mean, Lock and Emi are orphans who live in a quaint, peaceful village that gets attacked by the evil robot army. Lock gradually becomes the ultimate Archineer (as the game calls those who can build defences) and realises that there’s a sinister backstory involving his family that ultimately culminates in him becoming a hero so that he can save his sister and the world. Again at a basic level it’s not particularly high brow, but it is a fun little adventure and it helps justify a few unique scenarios that give the game some memorable moments.

These memorable moments culminate in a great series of final levels that really pull the game together and provide a decent amount of challenge. My personal pro-tip for these is that you have enough resources to spam traps, so you should build a thicc wall of cannon turrets with a healthy dose of traps everywhere, while using the health-steal attack and alternating between the power that lets you repair everything and the standard lightning power. Just be careful as the true final boss hits like a freight train and can phase through your walls!

Finally once Lock’s Quest has wrapped up, you’re treated to a cute series of cutscenes that are slightly vague before being left back at the main menu. At this point you can either play-through it all again, or engage in the additional defence mode. Unfortunately the multiplayer aspect of the DS original didn’t get carried over, but fortunately the defence mode itself provides an extra bit of challenge to help bolster the game’s modest playtime. Essentially you are tasked with defending the city map that re-occurs at multiple points throughout the main campaign, but this time there is no respite! Instead you must fight wave-after-wave-after-wave of the enemy with every third wave including a boss. As always, resources are very limited and the meagre amount of incoming source means that losing turrets is a massive pain in the backside. Those seeking to achieve 100% completion will need to clear 10 waves, which includes 3 boss fights and as such this mode adds a dollop of extra content to what is otherwise a fairly short game. For context, clearing through the campaign took me around 9 hours on the normal difficulty setting.

In conclusion, Lock’s Quest is the epitome of short but sweet as the game contains a large amount of content and plenty of heart for a modest price tag. While there are issues with path finding (both yours and the enemies), some instances of slowdown and a plot that starts off slow the game is ultimately rewarding and has it’s own unique gameplay style. If you were one of the approximately 8 billion people who missed this game on it’s first release, then I would strongly recommend picking it up.

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Today I’m taking a look at an enhanced re-release of 2004’s classic release, Rome: Total War. For full disclosure, I was a massive fan of the original release of Rome Total War and still have my physical on-disc copies of this game – which turns out to have been a prudent move as you can now no longer buy the digital versions of the original game! Instead you MUST buy the Remaster, which is currently selling for £24.99 / $29.99 / 29,99€. The only respite for purists is that when you buy the remastered version, you also receive the original digital versions – but are they even required now that the shiny new remaster is out?

To it’s credit, the remaster does a decent job of updating the visuals to modern standards (although the unit fidelity is still behind more modern releases obviously) and more importantly comes with a range of resolution options that are more pliable for modern systems. You can now utilise ultra-widescreen and UHD resolutions, in addition to taking advantage of your 4K display by enabling more modern 4K textures (FreeLC activation required for them though, as they bloat the game size significantly!) The changes are honestly fairly subtle, but between these upgrades and the new resizeable UI the game is definitely more pleasant to run on systems with high end resolutions – in addition to being more “future proof”.

This wasn’t just a standard visual upgrade however, as the developers (Feral Interactive) decided to tweak some aspects of the gameplay, which has been a mixed bag in my humble opinion. On the one hand, it is nice to see that they attempted to make some modest tweaks to the formula without sacrificing any of the feeling (and indeed, limitations) of the old game. Naval battles are still decided via auto-resolve, the occasional rebel army/fleet still seemingly appears out of nowhere (so take care when repositioning a single unit or even small army on the campaign map) and diplomacy is still handed via physically sending diplomats around the map.

The major changes are that you can now access all factions from the start of the game (via an option hidden under advanced settings), you can now access an additional 16 factions which were previously only accessible via mods and you have an additional agent type – the Merchant. Honestly I found these new agents to be a waste of space, as the AI (and even rebels) spawn them en masse and all they do is clutter up the map while producing relatively little gold. While doing a bit of testing I found that my high level merchant added an astonishing 100 gold per turn, which is about the upkeep cost of the absolute lowest infantry unit you can keep as a garrison. With such a low rate of income, I found that the best use for my merchants was taking out other merchants belonging to enemy factions – but I found that these enemy merchants could be safely ignored as they can’t really do anything to you. Considering that you can spawn 1 merchant per city and that most cities will need at least a few filler units acting as a garrison (otherwise you’ll suffer public order penalties which can lead a city to rebel) they don’t seem particularly important, but at least the option is there I suppose.

The major caveat to these pleasant changes, which range from worthwhile to forgettable, is that the remaster now has two problems which are worse than the original Rome Total War experience. Firstly, you will experience more crashes to desktop (CtDs), although to Feral Interactive’s credit they have produced a few patches which have made the CtDs less present. With that being said, even four or five months after release I had one every 10 hours or so. Not a massive issue in the grand scheme of things, but as the game only autosaves on turn start and turn end and as each battle can take anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes, it’s entirely possible to lose an hour of two’s worth of progress if the crash happens at an inopportune time (e.g. during a turn in which you have had 4 battles and decided how to spend a stack of cash on your settlements).

Those thinking you can just skip those pesky battles will be forgiven for remembering that the game has an auto-resolve feature, however it is very, very random except in clear-cut cases. If you have a 95% win chance during a siege then it’s a no-brainer, but for any semi-balanced engagement you run the risk of getting absolutely slaughtered by an AI force that is outnumbered and outclassed. The auto-resolve is also extremely loathe to let enemy generals die, to the point that a single general can and will engage an entire army to… lose half his health and then retreat out of combat range. After he already retreated, so your army has wasted a turn chasing him around the map for no result. It is truly a cat and mouse game for those who are reluctant to load up a manual battle (Achievement hunters beware, the “auto resolve every battle in a campaign” achievement is going to be a colossal pain in the arse).

The other major issue with this remaster, is that it has made the path-finding and formations even worse. Now to be fair, it wasn’t perfect in Rome Total War either but it is now noticeably more sluggish. For the Greek civilizations this is especially galling, as they depend heavily on the Phalanx formation which is now extremely temperamental due to the need for seemingly every man in a unit to be in the right spot before they actually form the formation you need. Units now also flail around like morons for longer when you try to re-position them during battle, which is a double-edged sword that can lead to you or the enemy getting plenty of free hits in. These issues come to a head in the sieges, which feature tight spaces (which make formations a pain at the best of times) and plenty of bitter close combat back-and-forth fighting. Getting your troops to face the enemy, without letting themselves get flanked, while all this extra fannying about is going on can be simultaneously challenging and irritating.

Roman players (which are the recommended choices for beginners) are also hindered by these changes, as their frontline units have a very powerful free missile attack that can decisively change how a one-on-one fight pans out. Due to the aforementioned issues however, they now need more time to get ready as legate Hugh Janus holds up the whole cohort’s re-positioning due to getting stuck on a pebble. As this powerful missile attack has a very, very short range it is depressingly common for the formation fumbling to result in your Triarii charging an enemy, abruptly stopping to stand still while every, last, soldier finally gets their javelin out, then failing to use their javelins as they get counter charged by those loathsome Gauls. Fortunately you can disable missile attacks for them when they are selected, but considering how powerful these missiles are it is a shame to forego them.

Some of the other changes aren’t a downgrade per say, but they are somewhat underwhelming. The new loading screens are bland and repetitive for example (and you will be seeing them a LOT unless you are going for the aforementioned auto-resolve every battle achievement), while the in-game Wiki is extremely basic to the point that I had to read old forums to gleam information as it is just a glorified webpage that loads in the Steam Overlay browser. To access the expansion packs you need to mess around with the mandatory Creative Assembly launcher which boots before of the game, which isn’t really an issue but does add a bit of delay between starting the game and actually getting to play the game. For context the original version on Steam just had a pop-up when you hit launch, asking which one you wanted – now you need to wait for the launcher app to start, then hit a section within it, then select play to access the new expansions.

But at this point I’m nitpicking and to be fair, there are also some small minor changes which are helpful. The map camera controls are improved which is nice, but more importantly the tactical interface during battles from latter games has been added, enabling you to see more of the battle details at a glance (and make those pesky sight blocking trees get out of the way). There are also a few more tweaks on the campaign map regarding visual overlays and “heat maps”, but I barely used these – however it again serves the purpose of letting you see more information at a glance if you are so inclined.

At this point I’ve almost entirely been comparing the remaster to the base game, so if you haven’t played the base game and have stuck with me thus far then I can tell you that it’s still a great TBS/RTS hybrid. You train units, capture settlements, move armies and agents around on the turn-based map then switch to a smaller map for RTS battles (which are generated based on the local world terrain that the armies are clashing in) when your forces actually engage with the enemy. Each faction has been crafted with a fair amount of historical accuracy in mind, which leads to them having decently divergent rosters and thus leads to the armies having their own play-style and plenty of unique units. This extends to the settlements as well, with only certain factions having the ability to construct high-end fortifications and sanitation systems (which are near essential as cities gain “Squalor” as they grow, which makes them increasingly difficult to keep happy and thus non-rebellious). As such the factions are asymmetric if not entirely balanced, which makes the long campaign quite fun as your tactics and army compositions will need tweaking from foe to foe. Plus it makes the game more replayable, as each campaign will play out at a different pace depending on how good your end-game units are – the Barbarians are generally advised to go as quickly as possible for instance.

For new-comers I would highly recommend one of the Roman factions, alongside a warning to move QUICKLY as you WILL be required to face your erstwhile Roman comrades in a civil war scenario in the closing stages of the game. If you take your time, your fellow Romans will quickly sweep through the map and thus become quite challenging when you eventually have to slap them down. Similarly if you are desperate to play as, say, the Gauls or the Greeks then you had better move quick as the Roman factions function as a group in most diplomatic matters and therefore declaring war on one means fighting them all.

With my closing verdict, I would say that Rome Total War: Remastered is a worthwhile purchase for newcomers to the series and frankly does a better job of making you feel like an Emperor in waiting than it’s sequel. It has plenty of content due to the inclusion of the expansion packs and has a lot of re-playability and length due to the variance between the factions. For veterans of the series, this is a good if occasionally mixed remaster with a handful of pleasant Quality of Life features and some newly playable factions but otherwise not much in the way of substantial changes. If you already have the originals (like me) then it’s entirely optional of course, but I would still pick it up on a sale if only to give yourself an excuse to sink another 30 to 40 hours into a campaign.

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