Honestly, the game is much more fleshed out than I thought it would be. And I don't mean that I had low expectations, I knew what I was going into but I was pleasantly surprised to see those expectations met and exceeded.

Let's start off with the positive. The squad selection and customization is top-notch. You can customize anything from your squad's size, their armor, weaponry and so on. Also the fact that you have a limited number of supplies means that you will have to make certain compromises which is honestly brilliant. Some squad leaders serve well as purely command support, others as AT or MG teams, some specialized for mechanized assault which might be the best way to play the game.

I liked the variety of enemies you can face off. Every threat requires different tactics to follow and the different missions with different objectives means you have to be flexible. For some where you need to rescue civilians, mobility is key so focus on mechanized or motorized assaults. Others where you need to infiltrate and sabotage means you have to pick units with high concealment, position them correctly and make use of the terrain. I liked having a vehicle with a heavy mortar to launch smokes to block sightlines for those and they were a nice change of pace from your typical combat.

They've managed to make turn-based combat feel actually engaging and impactful. When you blast someone with an SMG at close range, you feel that same as when you open up on some poor pirates with an HMG from the hip, blasting them to bits.

What I really appreciated was the vehicle customization. You can choose to have mortars or radar, autocannons, various types of heavy, light and medium machineguns, tank cannons or perhaps laser turrets. The way they've implemented lasers and plasma weapons was neat as well where they have "infinite" ammo but you have to vent the weapon to get rid of excess heat if you're firing in quick succession. There are several types of vehicles and each feels unique and useful in its own way.

One of the most important aspects is economy. Each mission, you're bound by a certain amount of supply that you have to stick to. So even if you technically can give your troops the best gear and put them all out into the field, it doesn't mean you should and the game doesn't allow you to do so. So even if you're in the later stages of the game, you might still make use of "early" game gear. With that being said, certain enemies that have good armor will be nearly impervious to weapons with low or no armor penetration or damage.

Now a few things to bear in mind is that there isn't that much variety in terms of maps. If I had to guess, I would say there's about 8-10 but I am not entirely certain on that front. Still, after playing about 30-40 odd missions, it didn't feel stale until 20 odd hours in. Also, I believe that missions are generated from a seed so it does introduce a bit of variety with that.

My biggest pet peeve has been the deployables. You have to use them very carefully. That is to say, you can use them once every mission but you have to be sure that any strike you call in will probably miss because it takes a whole turn, sometimes more for them to be deployed. And even if they do hit, they don't do that much damage. I had expected my orbital laser to knock out anything in its path but it couldn't even finish off a late game basic unit even though it hit right on the mark. Mortars are also a bit iffy and I feel as though that the problem is that they consume too many action points. They aren't very accurate but the fact that you can maybe fire them twice in a turn and even if they do hit the mark, they don't really do much beyond suppression against anything but soft targets makes them quite unviable.

I must say that this is the one turn-based combat game that I have played- and I've played a few- that just felt right. It felt raunchy, impactful, meaningful. I would recommend it to anyone who has even a remote inclination to try it wholeheartedly.

It's taken me about 25 hours to "finish" the game but there's still many things to do. I still don't have a proper tank chassis, haven't maxed out all the faction relations and it seems like there will be more they will be adding later on. I feel like 30 hours should be a reasonable playthrough more or less since I was on the lowest difficulty and kind of sped through certain missions with superior gear. Still, the game has only released in early access so I believe that that playtime should increase from here on in.

I still don't understand the navy.

This is my favourite Total War game by far. I still play it to this day. I love all of the factions and sieges and battles are extremely enjoyable. Certain factions are lacking much variety but most of them have so much flavour that it pretty much devoids all of that. Naval battles are also somewhat enjoyable even though they weren't as prevalent after the Empire was established. It's probably the most polished Total War game out there. None of the systems are overly complicated but they still satisfy most of what your OCD craves. The AI is quite terrible compared to a human player, even on the higher difficulties which is a bit of a shame but helps you roleplay as Rome fighting against the Celtic tribes and most other factions, well unless they were Hannibal Barca. It's honestly one of the best strategy games of all time in my opinion.

I had a positive review originally but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone. I have crashed more than 30 times at the point of writing this. The game runs like dog trash on my system and just about every other system out there, unless you have a 9800x3d and 4090. While visually it looks solid, that does not account for the absolutely horrendous performance and we have UE5 to thank for that.

This game had no business coming out now when the A-life system is barely existent and the game is plagued with bugs. I am talking about a ridiculous amount of bugs. I have in all my years of gaming haven't come across so many game breaking and game altering bugs. I modded Skyrim extensively and modlist reached over 300 but even in the days of NMM, I never came across anything near as broken as this game is. Which is a shame because the game has so much to offer but at a certain point, you still cannot look past all of the flaws.

I love the developers for their work but they should have taken more time with this game, to refine it fully.

w

The game is dead a few months into its release and the only updates are very minor fixes and stuff added to photo mode. Suffice it to say, the game is in a very bad spot and I would not recommend anyone to buy it until it receives a big update where they overhaul most of the systems but even then, it won't fix things like the lackluster story and new game+ progression, the character progression and lack of any skills or attributes, a lack of exploration and the complete annihilation of their gameplay loop, which you would assume they grasped the significance of this since they keep bringing it up over and over. You need to have a solid foundation to actually fix your game like CDPR did, and this game lacks such a foundation since it's devoid of any passion and soul. Bethesda has been trying to appeal to a wider audience by dumbing down their games and they are not at a point where they no longer appeal to anyone.

I have been patient with 2K up until now but now I've finally had it. They've announced that 2K23 will be current-gen on PC. This company does not care about its customers. They might point to the lackluster PC sales as opposed to next-gen console but the only way they can actually increase their sales is making a port for next-gen on PC. I've still bought last year's game because I was craving some basketball but here's where I draw the line, also I hate that damn cruiseliner.