Recent reviews by Mann42

Not really a complete grand strategy game, and does not live up to the standards set by either Paradox's mainline titles or Victoria 2. Instead of a game about the age of imperialism, the height of the industrial revolution, and the fall of colonialism, its more of an economic micromanagement sim with some population governance dressing.

Economic systems are decently done, but the terrible UI and lack of automation and planning options makes it fiddly and requires way too much micromanagement. It is the strongest feature of the game though and a good foundation for the future.

Governance and political systems have some depth and are also a decent start, but it feels less like governing a country and more like balancing bonuses/maluses with some interesting flavor text attached.

Warfare has been too heavily abstracted and doesn't feel like a complete or functioning system; units teleport across the map instantly and the combat is less in depth than even a mobile auto-battler. The AI also seems unable to understand how to use the warfare system, so you can exploit it for easy wins while AI vs AI warfare results in multi-generational stalemates and countries bankrupting themselves while not engaging on meaningful fronts. It feels completely out of place in a grand strategy game and it ends up dragging the whole game down.

Diplomacy has some interesting ideas but its too heavily restrictive, and they seemed to spend more effort on making sure players didn't do anything too interesting than creating a fully featured system.

The music's great though.

As usual, Paradox will spend the next 10 years adding DLC and patches to the game, so we'll see what it turns into, but in its current form it doesn't even hold up to its 12 year old predecessor Victoria 2. Crusader Kings 3 was a master class in distilling its predecessor into its most important parts, building on them, and creating something fully featured but new and accessible, and I was hoping that's what we'd get with Victoria 3. Unfortunately, they streamlined the game out of the game.

TLDR: There are better economic and logistics simulations on the market, and due to the lack of key grand strategy features it fails as a grand strategy game. It just doesn't do anything well enough for the asking price. Wait a year or two to see what Paradox does with it.

Have you ever wanted to play Runescape again, but remembered how you definitely don't want to actually play Runescape again? In this game, you can do all the things from Runescape without actually having to play it. Numbers go up, loot is earned, trees are chopped, gear is crafted, monsters are slain.

Unlike most idle games, it's not a "clicker" clone. You're just leveling up your skills, making stuff, killing stuff, and getting loot, just with progress bars instead of all that troublesome gameplay. All resource management and strategy. Excellent for running in the background and making a couple decisions a day.

I enjoyed all 150 hours I put into this game. Cleared all side quests and got most of the endings.

The characters and story are great. Found some deep explorations of mortality, faith, family, meaning, corruption, survival, and life all wrapped tightly into the main story and even many of the side quests. The main and romanceable characters are all memorable and well written. Voice acting is top notch. The game made me care about the characters, which is rare.

The bugs I ran into were minimal but noticeable. Nothing game breaking, however. Quest bugs if you move through a quest too quickly, but would always clear up with a save reload, and loading times are quick. Physics bugs like weapons falling through the world and cars bouncing around. Never lost good loot though. Some AI issues with driving where they'd stop in the middle of the road and create traffic.

Worth playing now, and despite the issues is already one of my favorite games. A good game that will become great once it gets a couple patches in.

Solid deck-builder / dungeon crawler. There's a lot of depth to the game, with significant combos to build between cards and relics. The 4 classes are all very different in playstyles, which translates into additional replayability. The game is challenging but gets easier as you learn - until you delve into the ascension levels and unlock the final boss, which provides even more replayability and challenge.

This is also a great casual game - I frequently jump in and play one run for an hour or so and then I'm done. You can also stop a run in progress and come back to it later.

The devs are also great and are very active in supporting the game and adding new content. Since launch, they've added 2 new characters and a ton of new cards and relics, on top of regular balance and quality of life patches.

The art style can be a bit of a turn off until you play it, but once you're in the game you find it works well and doesn't detract from the experience.