So, couple of things about this review:
1) I have played Warframe for a very long time, not consistently mind you, but I have been in and out since the earlier days of the game, mostly because I remember the old web map for planets back then. I never dove into the game like some people have... people who are now outraged at actions done by the company. Ill get to that in a second.
2) I never felt a need to review before this point because I simply enjoyed the game. I would throw a few hours in here or there and enjoy.
3) This is a response to the criticisim and outright review bombing being done currently, so do keep this in mind as you read.







STOP WINING ABOUT YOUR CHEESE BEING GONE YOU EFFING CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More than once in the few hours I played, I had someone who simply threw a frigging Sun clone out and AFK'ed through the mission, completely ruining my experience and likely for a lot of others as well. The hell are you playing for if you just gona AFK?!?!?! some of you idiots payed MONEY to do that.... I don't care it was farming meta, ITS CHEESE! GET YOUR CHEESY A-WIPES OUT OF MY GAME!!!
So, to recap here: People are but hurt over their cheese being nerfed because it caused people to 'meta'. when over ten percent of the player base is constantly using a SINGLE frame (The monkey man frame) and over twenty percent of the weapons used are AOE weapons in the last year, something is wrong with your game. Why monkey man frame? he has a clone ability with infinite ammo. Why AOE weapons? because monkey man clone can have infinite rocket spam, and AOE in general was unbalanced due to posting in a corner and having enemies bottleneck into your AOE death pit. So, DE decided to prevent stagnation and make other builds and styles more viable, they nerfed AOE and made the monkey man clone use ammo, while also boosting other weapons to compensate. Hence the but hurt over the rats precious cheese being taken from them so they can't AFK their way through levels now. If you are playing so that you can AFK..... why are you playing at all?

This is a disgrace.
I haven't loaded up the game in some time, and yes I don't have a great many hours playing, but I still love this game.
but, to find that they released a DLC that not only was terrible, but destroyed the base game?!?!?!?
None of my buttons have text on them. No menu I can open up beyond the main menu has any kind of text on its buttons, the drop downs have no text on them.... Why are the words gone?!?! and this is without mods mind you!!! this is the Normal game!!! I didn't even buy Leviathans and my whole game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥.........
Who ever allowed this to ship needs to be fired and exiled, their families exiled. Whoever wrote the code that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this game this badly needs to be put on a pike. This isn't advancement... its an attempt to murder an IP.
This is a travesty, and a worrying development seeing as they are releasing Victoria III in due time.

Disclaimer at the start, I may say I don't recommend the game, but that's not to do with the game play itself.
My negativity is not the game itself, which is fine for me and many of my friends and brings back a lot of memories. that can cloud judgement, but in this case it doesn't because it has nothing to do with the game play.

My gripe is the Progression system.
Now, yes, it does lack the pay to win or pay to advance features so many hate in the gaming community, but this is not much better. The progression system as it is punishes those who only like playing with friends, or don't like playing the more competitive multiplayer modes. You have to progress through EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF ARMOR AND OTHER ITEMS, in order to get the parts you ACTUALLY WANT. That means you HAVE to play HOURS UPON HOURS of games, getting items YOU WILL NEVER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ USE on your character to even come close to the spartan look you want.

In the old Reach, you gained credits with each match, but more importantly, playing the campaign as well. You didn't get nearly as much playing campaign as you did multiplayer, but you at least got something. It meant you could pick and choose your parts you wanted, and while some parts were way more expensive than others, it gave you goals to achieve that weren't 'I have to get through seventy levels to get the one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ helmet I want', its more, ' I just have to get enough money for that helmet'. The level of your account and the armor you had were divested of one another, which was BETTER than this abomination we currently have.

Now, your armor is a sign of how much you have played multiplayer, and only multiplayer. Not just games with friends, as you only get experience with Match made games. That means, most of the time, you are playing with random people on the internet, who either are worse than you, or so much painfully better, that you get nothing from the game. the amount of experience you get in a game is DEPENDENT ON HOW WELL YOU DO. If you get trashed as a player in a game, you get pity points, which amount to almost nothing at higher levels, meaning it can take dozens to hundreds of terrible performance games to get levels above maybe twenty or thirty. being FORCED to keep playing when you are doing poorly is not a great progression system, its punishment for doing bad. because that's what this progression system does, forces you to keep playing so that you can get the things you want before the season ends. It doesn't matter that the seasons are six months long, for some more casual players of match made multiplayer, that could very well be not long enough to get through the entire set.

I cannot recommend the game in its current state as the progression system, which has been stated several times by 343 to apply to all the MCC games, is garbage. Utter Flaming Garbage. Until it gets overhauled, I will not recommend the MCC to the general gaming community.

EDIT: Okay, so now that its been out a while, I do have to update a few things. Progression seems like less of a grind... but still sucks for casual or friend only players. The seasons don't disappear at the end of the season, so you can still work on them. But yeah... opinion still hasn't changed about progression.

So, I have 26 hours in Castle Story.
I have been with this since very early in its conception, way back into the days of around .3 or so.

Heres what I have to say:
This game is one of those that can really give you a fun and challanging gameplay experiance. It may not be for all people, but few games really are. Castle Story is one of those few games where you can make legendary stories of your play, stories of heroic units fighting of massive odds, or building that legendary structure and the trials and tribulations involved. Its mechanics are solid, and continuing to improve. The difficulty involved in the survivial mode and the conquest mode are enjoyable, and present a challenge as you move further on and increase the level of difficulty. This game may be early access, but it is by far better than many. The development team actually LISTENS to the community, and has made great leaps and bounds in its production of the game since the early days. They started of with two developers making this in there own home, and now have a full team devoted to giving us a game that will meet the expectations we have put forward.

Now, this would not be a fair review if I did not put at least some of the problems forward. The ai has improved massively since its inception, with greater and more efficent pathfinding and work orders. But archers will still shoot themselves in the foot. Or they will put an arrow in the back of your valient warrior holding back the dark tide of enemies. Or a fellow archer who happens to be between them and thier target. Now, this is a component of the difficulty of the game, as stated by the developers, and I can understand that. Its kinda fun for me to come up with ways of preventing such friendly fire incidnets, but it can become tedious to micro your archers to prevent fraticide among the lot. Especially once you get further on in the survival mode with dozens of enemies breaking down your door. The only other real major complaint I have is it is insanely difficult to actuall bridge islands, something that could be seen in the earliest of promotional material for the game. with the improvements to the building system, it is sightly easier, but not very much so.

These problems are more annoying than anything else, and for me dont detract very much from the game. And as I said previously, the developers are paying attention to the community. Plus, they are keeping us up to date on developement, and their should be a pretty big update coming along soon that will really make the game shine: World Editor. For so long we have been teased by that greyed out button in the menu, and just over the horizion is that very World Editor we have so desperately wanted.

My Rating for this game: 9/10 would buy again :)

Edit (7/14/2017): So i realize this review was done way back ago, and with the release of the game so close now, i figured it best to come back and update some of the stuff thats come out. My play time has also gone up to 51.5 hours. wow. not my longest by far, but still. since i last reviewed this 25 hours ago, best to go again.

The world editor came out not long after my review, and it was just as good I had hoped it would be. combat has also been revamped, with now your bricktrons being able just pick up "kits" to become an archer or a knight. This means that you dont have to choose between getting that extra worker to increase resource production, that archer to add more daka to the line, or that knight to hold the line. you can just build kits and your bricktrons grab them when under attack. or when you order them to. There is a new crafting system along to go with the kits. to make knight ktis, you need to smelt iron in the new forge into iron bars, which are then taken to the new workbench to craft into the pieces of the kits used by knights, like helmets, shields and swords. Archer kits require wood planks and a new resource called fiber. eventually they want this to have to be converted to fabric before being used to make the hats and bows, but again, its developing, so not quite there yet.

Even some of my earlier complaints are about the game are becoming void. the archers are smarter with thier shooting, and there is *less* friendly fire. you can still hit your own guys, but it is less now and mostly when in melee with corruptrons. and there is even a rope bridge structure that can be built to finally and easily bridge the gaps between islands. It can't go very far, but it would be overpowered if it could, so no complaints there. Wards are a new thing, and a very welcome addition. Bricktron spawning is somewhat slower now, but to make up for having fewer guys to turn in to troops, you can build wards, which cost brimstone and iron ingots to build. they are powered by the crystal, so you wil have to build connecting wards for the new sentry wards (which shoot enemies) but that is fine in my book. there is even a healing ward to heal up soldiers that get hurt. even conquest has been changed a bit with new capture wards required for taking crystals, instead of just standing near them to capture.

While some things are improved, there are still a few grips about the game. Not being able to put down bricks or other structures in the world editor is one, but they have said they are working on something for that. The Ai, while vastly improved over what it was in the begining, could use some tweeking in my book. I do get annoyed when i see a bricktron walk up to my stockpile, grab three iron ingots, and then proced to walk halfway across my territory to use only ONE of them, before walking all the way back. or have three bricktrons all grab iron ingots, which takes ALL of the ingots i have by the way, and then try and go to THE SAME EXACT THING to build. When that ward only needs one ingot, and they brougth NINE. which then means the guy who is trying to build the kninght kit i ordered him to, can't becaue his buddies decided to do some lifting and carry all the iron off. It gets really frustrating when that happens, and has caused more than one instance of me chewing out my bricktrons...... probubly not a good thing........

Anyway, dispite the new grips, the game is still one of the best early access titles i have supported . And 1.0 is just around the corner for the game two. AND THEY ARE ADDING NEW CLASSES TOO. so the game continues to get better and better.

9/10 would STILL buy again.