Unfamiliar

Story Positives:

1. Cinematic: The Opening does a lot very quickly. The two soldiers executing the man on the street (and being totally unashamed of it as they wave at the camera), the robot walking the dog for you, the super expensive car because hyperinflation, etc.
2. Voice Acting: While infrequent, the voice acting that’s there is quite good
3. Outro: Visual storytelling of the Cathedral
4. Character: The Master, mostly off camera, but still a fascinating and unique villain
5. Atmosphere: The game does do one thing very well; atmosphere. It oozes the bleak, pointless, grey, dull nature of the wastes from every pore, musically and visually
6. World Building: Similarly a reasonable amount of thought is put into what fits where and how, to make the wastes feel believable
7. Outro: The ending slides acknowledging your choices are neat little things

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: The actual ending (being kicked out of the vault) can honestly go to hell, especially since there’s no real way around it

Gameplay Positives:

1. Choices: While not as fleshed out as some later games, there’s still some decent options in choices gameplay
2. Core Mechanic: The game is quite good about letting you choose decisions that permanently alter the world state, and logically following through on those consequences
3. Overworld: The early Overworld design is actually quite tight; a clear indicator of where to go, which will naturally lead you to the first town, which will naturally branch from there, and so on until you have the water chip
4. Guidance and Flow of Exploration: Early on there’s a clear flow to what can be done where and how
5. All Roads Lead To Rome: While not as much as later entries, there are still quite a few ways you can progress through the game (usually on the three spokes of ‘sneak, talk, kill’)
6. Choices: Bonus points for the existence of the Low INT Playthrough
7. Outro: The multiple choices and design of the Cathedral ‘final dungeon’
8. Replayability: Between the quest pathing and the builds, the game has decent replayability

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: The right click ‘mode of interaction’ system is the worst control system I have ever seen in a video game…
2. Controls: …earning…
3. Controls: …three negatives
4. Options: Total lack of rebinding capabilities
5. Interface: The entirety of the inventory system is the worst I have ever seen in gaming history. The one line of inventory, total lack of any search or filter, by itself…
6. Interface: …deserves…
7. Interface: …three negatives
8. Interface: Then there’s the basic interface itself. Very little convenience or quality of life features, no ability to cross connect between windows or modes (small example; You can only tell your carrying capacity on the character screen, not the inventory screen)…
9. Interface: …earning it…
10. Interface: …three negatives
11. Interface: Then there’s the companion interactions, which are frustrating for other reasons but my favorite part is the total lack of proper ability to… interact with them, outside of too few dialogue options or literally stealing from them to give them items…
12. Interface: …earning two negatives
13. Party AI: Then there’s the party AI which is… exactly what you’d expect from a game from 1997
14. Enemy AI: Ditto for the enemy AI, which is not super great
15. HUD: The little text interface in the corner has entirely too few possible characters and is entirely too irritating to navigate
16. HUD: Also the quest log, if you can call it that, isn’t… THE worst I’ve seen… but it’s pretty bad
17. Map: I’m not even sure if it counts calling the in-cell area map a ‘map’ but it’s awful, and the ‘motion detector’ does not help anything
18. QoL: General negative for irritations of life
19. Core Mechanic: So as with all old PC games, the pathfinding is legitimately terrible… though I have seen worse…
20. Core Mechanic: …earning two negatives
21. Visual Distinction: The game is brown and boring and drab and too samey and entirely too hard to see what you’re looking at in almost every area….
22. Visual Distinction: …being one of the worst games for visual distinction I’ve ever seen
23. Visual Distinction: Then there’s the ‘facing wall’ problem, which is THE worst I’ve ever seen of its ilk. You get a tiny circle of visibility around you, even in a room you are currently in, and this wouldn’t be an issue if both game and characters were fond of being right up against that wall…
24. Visual Distinction: …earning…
25. Visual Distinction: …three negatives
26. Core Mechanic: The pixel hunting is weird in this game. It’s not like it’s hard to find stuff (well, it is, but that’s a previous negative) but being able to CLICK the correct thing is entirely too aggravating, often misclicking or straight up missing someone…
27. Core Mechanic: …earning…
28. Core Mechanic: …three negatives
29. Too Skippable: Entirely too easy to totally miss out on dialogue, quests, or otherwise via accidental dialogue interaction
30. Info In Game: There is a massive lack of info problem in game. I’ve seen worse, but this is just… not great, usually requiring manual inspection to learn anything of worth
31. Guidance and Flow: The latter half of the game honestly falls apart pretty hard, especially in contrast to the tight design of the first half
32. HUD: So, there’s (almost) no way to tell which NPCs are which. This, ironically, wouldn’t even be a problem except they pepper most maps with generic NPCs to make areas feel more lived in, so finding the people who will actually talk to you is just a chore that involves slowly mouseovering each person individually and manually, and even that has issues with it. Overall finding who to talk to is far more of a pain then it should be…
33. HUD: …earning itself…
34. Hud: …three negatives

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: While there’s not a lot of it, the voice acting is pretty legit
2. Doodads: Actual proper usage of doodads in several towns
3. Humor: While famous for it, it’s not that prolific… but the game does still make me laugh now and again
4. Atmosphere: While not as bleak as the first game, there’s still definitely some hopelessness vibes going in this one
5. Internal Continuity: As will be mentioned later, the game does a pretty good job of keeping track of itself…
6. Internal Continuity: …earning two positives
7. Dialogue: Dialogue is surprisingly well written throughout…
8. Dialogue: …earning two positives
9. Character: First Citizen Lynette is a great example of … what she is
10. Character: Marcus is fascinating in how he is, still, a true believer in his cause… he just also moved on and is pragmatic enough to deal with the now
11. Character: Generally good supporting cast throughout
12. Prime Opt: Modoc quests
13. Prime Opt: Everything to do with Vault City
14. Prime Opt: The NCR town which has literal slave pens not that far outside its borders
15. World Building: New Reno is easily the most well fleshed out portion of the game, and it shows
16. Characters: New Reno’s cast gets special mention for their usage and uniqueness
17. Character: Sgt Dornan. ‘Nuff said
18. Brickwork: Generally good brickwork throughout
19. Plot: Slow but steady build up of Enclave
20. World Building: Redding and the NCR backing their currency in gold (leading to Redding’s wealth and situation)
21. Consequence Storytelling: Almost every major decision you make in every major town doesn’t just affect that town, but others as well, in ways that make sense
22. World Building: So the way the major towns are interconnected deserves its own positive for the level of complexity involved. Vault City has medical tech and a successful GECK usage, Redding has gold but none of the stability, GECKO has power but none of the expertise, Broken Hills has mining but species issues, NCR is expanding but needs everything, and New Reno has drugs and is controlled by crime families. All of these points link with each other and make the whole region feel well thought out and believable…
23. World Building: …earning…
24. World Building: …three positives by itself
25. Prime Opt: Broken Hills is unfortunately well written, as instead of the two ‘sides’ working together for mutual benefit, Francis and Jacob are both doing everything in their power to kill off the other side, to everyone’s detriment
26. External Continuity: Good follow through on the events of 1
27. Writing: Generally well written
28. Character: Richardson is… fantastically evil, he is the Enclave in one conversation, and really so earnest about how flat he is

Story Negatives:

1. Atmosphere: The game… is really unnecessarily crude, all the time, to the point where it actively detracts from the narrative
2. Intro: The Intro is… honestly quite weak

Gameplay Positives:

1. Core Mechanic: As with the first game, there’s definitely some permanent consequences your actions can and do have
2. Overworld: While not as obvious at first glance, there’s still definitely some overworld design to the flow of things (you’re inclined east first, which leads you further east and then south east, which leads you south, which leads you west, which takes you to San Fran, and finally to Navarro and the end game)
3. Choices: So the Low INT playthrough is back! And it’s better than ever, with lots of fun and unique options…
4. Choices: …leading to two positives
5. All Roads Lead To Rome general
6. Encounter: There’s noticeably more actual encounter design on display here
7. Enemy Variety: Similarly, there’s actual variance into what you fight and how they operate
8. ARLTR: The Den has, surprise, good spread of choices in gameplay
9. ARLTR: Generally good ARLTR in Modoc, GECKO, and Vault City
10. Choices: Now New Reno, this is where the quest design really shines. There are lots of ways to do New Reno, with lots of permutations. It’s easily the best designed location in the game, and for this one section alone…
11. Choices: …earns…
12. Choices: …three positives
13. Core Mechanic: This is a weird one, but Fallout 2 has a lot of unique ways to kill people. Reverse pickpocketing is probably the most famous, but the various options and their multitude of uses throughout the game AND the fact that the game acknowledges these…
14. Core Mechanic: …earns two positives
15. Choices: So, generally fantastic choice gameplay throughout the game…
16. Choices: …earning…
17. Choices: …three positives
18. Prime Opt: There’s some issues, but Navarro is in general unique and fun to progress through
19. QoL: The car is nice… not for the travel time (though there is that), but mostly for that wonderful mobile trunk space
20. Prime Opt: Redding and Broken Hills quests
21. Replayability: The game is generally replayable, mostly due to the massive number of options and possible routes…
22. Replayability: …earning two positives
23. Outro: The Rig is, similar to the Cathedral, pretty legit; lots of options and routes, all of which are viable and most of which aren’t even mutually exclusive

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: The tutorial dungeon is literally one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The fact that it was made in a couple of days really highlights all this, but whatever the reason, it still turbo sucks. Too little of… anything really, too little design, too little interactions, too little enemy variety, too many enemies, too reliant on only a couple of build possibilities, and worst of all the whole thing is mandatory…
2. Intro: …earning it…
3. Intro: …three negatives
4. Level: Klamath rat dungeon. Too long, too linear, too narrow, too samey, too many encounters which are too boring
5. Controls: So it’s been slightly improved from the previous game, earning the control system…
6. Controls: …two negatives
7. Interface: The inventory system is slightly better than before (new items go to the top, for example) but still remains one of the worst inventory systems ever for all the same reasons…
8. Interface: …earning two negatives
9. Interface: Similarly the core interface has a few QoL improvements…
10. Interface: …pushing it up to two negatives
11. HUD: The little text log in the corner retains the ‘too few characters, too irritating to navigate’ problems
12. Party AI: The party members are… not smart, even with the additional options
13. Enemy AI: The enemy AI suffers the same problems from 1
14. Quest Log: The quest log is still not great
15. Map: The map retains the problems from 1
16. Pathfinding: The pathfinding is still pretty bad…
17. Pathfinding: …earning two negatives
18. Visual Distinction: The facing wall problem returns…
19. Visual Distinction: …earning two negatives
20. Visual Distinction: More of the pixel hunting problem from 1 in trying to interact with the right parts (noticeable examples; ladders and corpses)…
21. Visual Distinction: …earning two negatives
22. QoL: A special mention for how irritating it is to loot vaporized people
23. Info In Game: Still lacking
24. Visual Distinction: NPCs are still indistinct and still hard to tell whom to talk to when…
25. Visual Distinction: …earning two negatives
26. Bug: So… when playing in windowed mode, the game just kind of freezes periodically during combat animations every round. It gets worse the more enemies there are, and alt tabbing makes it worse, but there’s no resolving it outside of just playing fullscreen. This problem is nonstop and more than simply being irritating it actually frustrates combat…
27. Bug: …earning two negatives
28. Difficulty Curve: High level stuff turns into a bit of rocket tag as their armor is so great crits or armor avoidance becomes key, and they can kill you instantly with one lucky shot
29. QoL: The fact that you can permanently lose your car just on the overworld is… what?
30. Padding: Seconds in minutes (interactions, putting away guns, etc.)
31. Padding: Padding (do a quest to do a quest)
32. Music: This is more about music direction than anything, but most areas have exactly one song with too short a loop that plays for HUGE swaths of time without variation

Story Positives:

1. Acting: I’ll go ahead and say that, while cheesy, the performances are enjoyable
2. Visual Storytelling: The Mechanical Age really does some good stuff to get across the personalities of the brothers
3. Storytelling Mechanic: The readable books in the library (which also serve as hints)
4. Foreshadowing: The Rime sequence has some good storytelling, visual and otherwise, and honestly does a better job foreshadowing Riven than the main game did
5. Brickwork: The game looks quite good, admittedly it’s the remaster but still

Story Negatives:

1. Dialogue: There’s entirely too much weird repetition in the dialogue between the three principle characters

Gameplay Positives:

1. Level: Space Age conceptually is a pretty neat puzzle idea
2. Info In Game: Built in, gradient hint system…
3. Info In Game: …worthy of two positives
4. Levels: The Stoneship and the Mechanical Age puzzles were reasonably fun and interesting

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: The Piano puzzle can go straight to hell
2. Level: Space Age practically is an awful puzzle idea, not really doing the type of tutorialization or presentation necessary to make it click… this is in addition to how long it takes and how easy it would be to get lost in there
3. Seconds In Minutes: There is some SERIOUS delay that stretches the game out thanks to how every single little thing takes a couple seconds of animation to actually happen

Story Positives:

1. So bad it’s good… cuz I mean… We must stop the evil of Homcruze!

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Technically speaking I may have seen intros as bad as this in gaming, but this one is very bad. No prelude of any substance, wake up and the literal first dialogue interaction is ‘as you know’, the entire thing is severely on rails, there’s no reason or motive for anything we do, no characters to speak of, no establishment of anything other than Tom Cruise who is the great evil one (for no reason), it’s an incoherent mess…
2. Intro: …earning…
3. Intro: …three negatives
4. Dialogue: We’ll get to localization in a second, but even ignoring that there is an egregious amount of As You Know being flung all over the place
5. Dialogue: Made even worse by the sheer amount of repetition in dialogue. No one can just say something, they have to repeat it at least twice
6. Localization: Probably the reason this game has any notoriety at all, and honestly part of the biggest story appeal to it, but being real; this localization is bad. Really, really bad. Even with the ‘for the time’ excuse this is among the worst JRPG localizations I’ve seen…
7. Localization: …earning it…
8. Localization: …three negatives
9. Cutscene Incompetence: An old SNES RPG does not get a pass on cutscene incompetence. Just standing there while the villain (slowly) walks over to blow up your island is ridiculous (there are other examples, but that one particularly sticks out)
10. Characters: An absence of characters
11. Theme: An absence of theme
12. Plot: There’s a plot?
13. World Building: There’s a world??
14. Internal Continuity: The game makes NO sense even with itself. Ignoring obvious things like a VULCAN MINIGUN being a slight upgrade over a sword, or weird technological inconsistency, the way the towns don’t even function or acknowledge each other gets stark at a certain point
15. Brickwork: Okay so… I spent a good 20 some odd minutes comparing and contrasting other games (mostly EARLIER games) and really, really going in depth into tile, color, doodad, and visual design and pretty definitely earned giving this…
16. Brickwork: …three…
17. Brickwork: …negatives
18. Visual Storytelling: Then there’s the atrocious layout of… honestly just everything. Nothing feels like a city or a town or a dungeon or a fortress, it’s all just crap, it completely takes me out of the game…
19. Visual Storytelling: …earning…
20. Visual Storytelling: …three negatives
21. Plot: So Tom Cruise is an artificial person from the future. … … …sure
22. Outro: Humor aside, that ending is brief and bad and unsatisfying and stupid and literally ignores the second party…
23. Outro: …earning two negatives
24. Animation: Some of the sprite animations actively make scenes worse
25. Doodads: I’ve seen worse, but this is really bad doodad design…
26. Doodads: …earning two negatives for sheer barren awfulness
27. Story Sequencing: ….what??
28. Story Sequencing: ….what?!?
29. Visual Continuity: There are areas that literally look like you entered a dimensional portal, not a door into a building

Gameplay Positives:

1. Penalty For Failure: Lose half your gold, but otherwise just go back to the last town you visited
2. Fast Travel: Color me shocked, but the game has a decent fast travel system… basically Dragon Quest’s standard warp around spell system
3. Auto-Battle: The built in auto-battle auto fights, but actually has enough of a brain to heal when needed, however…

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: I’ve probably seen worse Intros than this, but… severe walkthroughitis, unclear interactions, a literal optional boss encounter that vanishes if you lose to it, a long boring dungeon followed by a stat wall boss, all done with a single party member in a game designed around multiple party members, all the starter gear is obnoxiously expensive and barely an upgrade, just… the worst…
2. Intro: …leading to…
3. Intro: …three negatives
4. Auto-Battle: …the auto-battle is actively detrimental, only worth using when you’re mindlessly mulching. It deliberately randomizes targets, so no focus fire, and has no priority of mana usage or turn order when it comes to healing or attacking
5. MSQ: No access to vendors or other town amenities during the entire Badbad arc…
6. MSQ: …including the basic ability to save the game anywhere but at the home hub
7. Inventory: Items don’t stack and inventory size is 32
8. Inventory: Also to access inventory there’s no QoL at all, you have to select, then switch, then switch, then select, for anything
9. Core Mechanic: Second party issues (separate leveling, separate gold, separate inventory, no trading)
10. Core Mechanic: Also it’s an entire segment of the game which is effectively worthless
11. Core Mechanic: …also there’s second party-only dungeons (and parts of dungeons) which only serve the point of getting more gear and levels on a team you not only have no reason to use, but actively can’t in several plot dungeons
12. Walkthroughitis: The entire key section is walkthroughitis hell
13. Level: The maze is just… bonkers stupid. At least they warn you about bringing a rat-tail
14. Level: The mining cave dungeon is… honestly it’s like most of the levels in this game, but it’s one of the longer ones so it’s a bit worse
15. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Lack of saves in nice long dungeons…
16. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: …frequently
17. Grind: Party members start at low level with NOTHING to mitigate this…
18. Grind: …and this NEVER stops the whole game
19. Info In Game: Good luck figuring out what equipment does what, nevermind the fact that it has legitimately bad showcasing of what stats are good in what direction, and even that requires you to already have the item and attempt to equip it
20. Info In Game: Mechanics are essentially not explained at all. Good luck figuring out what vulns are, or the special hits, or the speed stat
21. Guidance and Flow: Good luck figuring out where is what and how to interact with it. It’s kind of the usual old JRPG trigger problem, but worse in every way…
22. Guidance and Flow: …earning two negatives
23. Music: There are a couple of songs that aren’t terrible
24. Music: …but then there’s the short loops and extended sections of one song
25. Guidance and Flow: This is a weird one, but most games have what’s called feedback. It’s how you know you can do, are doing, or did something to interact with the game world. Good feedback is a whole thing by itself and a principle of game design. It’s VERY rare I encounter a game, even amongst bad games, that has an ABSENCE of feedback like this
26. Power Progression Curve: Yeah so each level barely makes you stronger. And gear barely makes you stronger. And it all takes forever, AND each new ‘area’ is awful and barely survivable until you drag yourself up into the yellow line…
27. Power Progression Curve: …not the worst I’ve seen, but pretty damned bad
28. Difficulty Curve: Speaking of which, the difficulty bounces absolutely all over the place. In fact it legitimately feels like it wasn’t playtested, like, at all… I’ve seen worse though
29. Encounter Rate: I can actually think of several (better!) games that have worse encounter rates, but it’s still about 1-8 steps, and that’s still pretty bad…
30. Encounter Rate: …earning two negatives
31. Core Combat: Core combat is like the worst of all worlds from Dragon Quest and FFMQ. I won’t bore you with specifics, but having to select fight, person, option, spell, strength of spell, target, yes, every single turn gets pretty old
32. Interface: Special mention to just how bad the menu looks and operates
33. Interface: And then there’s the controls and design of the menu (‘back’ doesn’t always work, the game only uses A and B so a lot of buttons pull double duty in ways that make no sense, the layout is bad, the visual distinction is bad, you have to bounce between menus to check stuff, etc.)
34. Grind: There’s no getting around this; this game is grindy. Even for JRPG standards this game is grindy. “Stop the game for 30-60 minutes per new area” grindy. I’ve only seen one game worse than this, so…
35. Grind: …this game will get…
36. Grind: … a full three negatives for grind
37. Difficulty Curve: Special mention to the fact that occasionally one enemy can just decide to ruin your day because screw you
38. Itemization: I’m hard pressed to think of a worse itemized RPG across the board. The dungeon items are insufficient for the range you’re at when you do them, the mob drops are infrequent and suffer the same problem, vendor prices are through the roof, in some cases you literally don’t have access to proper vendors, and items are a scaling chunk of your stats. Overall itemization gets…
39. Itemization: …a full…
40. Itemization: …three negatives
41. MSQ: The desert oasis segment is already bad (no indication of how the ‘maze’ works or what to do on it, while boring music plays, while on the worst tileset of the entire game)…
42. MSQ: …earning two negatives
43. Saves: The fact that you can only save at the save dude is problematic on several levels
44. Unskippable Cutscenes: They’re brief, but they’re there
45. Map: Total absence of an in game map (we solved this SIX YEARS ago with a previous console)
46. Overworld: I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen better too
47. Music: The music restart problem continues to plague early gaming
48. Walkthroughitis: The golden nail. Enough said
49. Enemy Variety: There’s two types of enemies. Ones with magic and ones without…
50. Enemy Variety: …yep
51. Level: Booth Castle. Very, very samey design, bad palette, tons of encounters, easy to get lost, trick overheads, and teleporters. What more can I say…
52. Level: …earning two negatives
53. Graphics: I’m not sure where to classify this but this game is eye cancer. It literally is headache and nausea inducing in its visual design, even ignoring the flashing lights issues, there’s just areas (like the moai, or the ocean) that are just BAD…
54. Graphics: …earning two negatives
55. Level: Did I mention Gara’s castle? The eye cancer that is Gara’s Castle? Screw that place so hard…
56. Level: …though it’s not as bad as Booth’s place
57. Level: So, Steeler’s Lab is the worst level to-date. Which is saying something. Usual enemies and encounter rate problem, combined with boring grey problem, on top of being a teleporter maze… yeah…
58. Level: …earning…
59. Level: …three negatives
60. Level: The Kustera radioactive dungeons
61. Walkthroughitis: The five radioactive items required for the final dungeon are BONKERS. Nothing, anywhere, tells you you need something to power the ship. Nothing, anywhere, tells you what you need even if you somehow knew you needed something to begin with. Nothing, anywhere, tells you where to go to get the items in question. And they’re in Kustera only dungeons (sure hope you’ve been leveling them!) which cannot use the airship. This is… the single worst walkthroughitis event I have seen in gaming, earning it itself…
62. Walkthroughitis: …three…
63. Walkthroughitis: …negatives
64. Outro: The dull, boring corridors of the final dungeon combined with the same damned dungeon song we’ve had the whole game
65. Outro: Then of course the actual final dungeon is a blank black space with a dirt road going through it to represent going down the volcano…
66. Outro: …which is both boring and somehow aggravating
67. Outro: Theeeen there’s the fact that you get to do the final spiral twice, because the first time you lose to Tom Cruise (mandatory) and have to go do some padding and then go all the way BACK down then talk to a CHAIR to start the first of the final boss fights
68. Outro: Okay yeah that final boss (both forms) can go straight to hell
69. Hub: Generally bad town layout (and the home town keeps changing its layout)
70. Visual Distinction: There are so, so many examples of not knowing what you can interact with, what items are where, and of course grey on grey on grey action…
71. Visual Distinction: …and grey…
72. Visual Distinction: …aaand grey

Story Positives:

1. VA: Generally good voice acting throughout
2. Character: Rozatta is weirdly well written and acted and kind of shines on her own
3. Character: Okay so this is going to sound weird, but Roz actually adds to Jango’s character by how they interact and how he reacts to her
4. Character: A surprisingly strong batch of side and supporting characters throughout
5. Brickwork: It’s a bit drab, but there’s still obvious effort and design into the visuals of the various worlds throughout
6. Atmosphere: The cult areas do a good job of selling how creepy and messed up the cult is
7. MSQ: Big plus for the first cult level does a lot right; visually, atmosphere, the recitation by Rozatta as you progress
8. External Continuity: The way the game keeps things quietly and low tier in the background works quite well in the confines of Star Wars
9. Humor: Okay so the out-takes are legitimately amusing and deserve to be watched

Story Negatives:

1. Cutscene Incompetence: It’s infrequent but there’s a few here and there and a lot of the cutscenes just do not work
2. Dialogue: I wasn’t going to say anything but the dialogue gets noticeably worse the further into the game you get

Gameplay Positives:

1. Kit: A decent variety of equipment which has their own varying uses (homing rockets, autofire repeaters, grenades, instant kill charge use darts, etc.)
2. Kit: For all the control issues the game has in general, the jetpack is still some janky fun
3. Level: Probably the only good level in the game, the Moon of the Dead uses its colors, platforming, and enemy swarms to much better effect
4. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Generally good, visible checkpoints (saves your ‘progress’ too)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: Having to mash to put out a decent fire output
2. Controls: Having to hold R or L 1 or 2 while constantly hitting other buttons rapid fire is hand cringing
3. Controls: On top of all of this, Jango’s movement is janky as hell, even worse when he starts to jump
4. Visual Distinction: Lots of dull browns in the first few levels and little clear indicator of interactables
5. Intro: The Intro is not good gameplay wise; It’s not the worst I’ve seen, but there are issues with flow, enemy spam, camera issues, and platforming issues
6. Level: First Coruscant level
7. Map: Lack of map/minimap
8. Level: The cargo containers jumping puzzle is okay… in a game with proper controls and a camera that’s not constantly bugging out on you
9. Level: The outside Coruscant level has a wonderful combination of enemy spam and finicky platforming
10. Level: Enemy spam upon enemy spam in the prison riot level
11. Camera: The camera is janky and likes to warp around wildly…
12. Camera: …in addition to being awful to control
13. Audio Spam: Weirdly it’s not the sound effects, it’s the dialogue from the infinite wave of mobs
14. Level: The final escape mission can go straight to hell…
15. Level: …having to do certain reactor segments in order…
16. Level: …and each reactor is near copy paste of the previous ones
17. Level: Also the final escape level requires killing certain specific guards. Nothing indicates this anywhere, and it’s never been done before, and it’s completely uninformed in the level itself, oh and enemies respawn infinitely and have the entire game
18. Penalty For Failure: Lives system and redoing entire levels
19. Level: The jungle trek level can go straight to hell, first with the enemy spam…
20. Level: …and second with the awful sniper escort section
21. Controls: The decision to essentially enforce constantly holding down R1 or R2 means anyone, of any age or physical aptitude, is going to slowly wear their hand out as the constant tension causes physical pain the longer you play the game
22. Boss: The ‘large vehicle with breakable parts’ boss design isn’t great and there’s quite a few of them
23. Boss: Montross gets special points for boringness
24. Level: The Death Stick Factory level has tight platforming in a janky game with janky camera with dull difficult to see gray graphics over a lava floor while snipers shoot at you. This is… not good…
25. Level: …easily earning two negatives
26. Boss: Monstross 2? Still boring… MORE boring, actually
27. Level: Tatooine 1 is a nice long jetpackless shooty gauntlet
28. Outro: So yeah that… was not impressive. I’ve seen worse, but a dull chase against the same general melee type with a few unique scripts and that’s kind of … it
29. Enemy Variety: So there’s people with blasters, melee guys, animals, and snipers. Yeah…
30. Difficulty Curve: There are some absolutely wild difficulty spikes and troughs in this game

Story Positives:

1. Cinematic: The opening cinematic does a wonderful job of setting the style and tone
2. Storytelling Mechanic: The uniquely well done, ‘awful’ cinematics are great
3. Intro: The ‘tutorial’ at the beginning was funnier than I thought it’d be
4. Intro: And the whole Intro does exactly what it needs to, setting up the entire rest of the game…
5. Intro: …earning two positives
6. Voice Acting: Wasn’t sold on it at first, but the voice acting is pretty decent
7. Brickwork: Visual flair adding to…
8. Atmosphere: …atmosphere
9. Animation: Ridiculously over the top
10. Moment: Punching the reactor and subsequent fallout
11. Moment: The video games speech deserves its own mention
12. Dialogue: It’s cheesy, but surprisingly well written
13. Sound Design: Fits the aesthetic perfectly
14. Character: Rex is delightfully cheesy
15. Humor: Generally amusing game
16. Spritework: Yeah, it works for the aesthetic

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Intro: Fun, interesting, and to the point
2. Core Combat: Stealth takedowns and takedown chains
3. Viscerality: For all the visual noise problems, the game does have surprisingly good audio and visual viscerality…
4. Viscerality: …earning two positives
5. Music: Yeah okay, the music is boppin’…
6. Music: …two positives
7. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Actually pretty well done overall
8. Kit: The gun variety is decent
9. Kit: …but the ridiculous and awesome upgrades are what really sell it
10. Enemy: Most of the enemies are whatever, but the Dragons are nicely designed
11. Enemy AI: Okay, we all make fun of it, but the AI being able to navigate these tight bases, stairs, and still pursue and fight is impressive
12. HUD: There’s honestly a lot of good info on display immediately on the HUD…
13. HUD: …earning two positives
14. Fast Travel: Generally good fast travel
15. Info In Game: You can find what you need and where entirely within the game
16. Guidance and Flow of Exploration: There’s plenty to collect, multiple ways to find it, and it’s worthwhile
17. MSQ: The escalating awesomeness of the infinite ammo Mortal Kombat section
18. Outro: The final assault on the base as a hyperbeam moment

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: The fact that the game insists on trying to connect with the servers (which do not exist) when you fire it up or pop into the menu, freezing the game while it tries, is stupid
2. Bug: And the necessary steps to prevent this are stupid too
3. Animation: The game locks you into some actions (or out of others) while doing the animations, which can get frustrating and essentially clog down combat
4. Visual Noise: There’s really a… lot of crap on the screen. Glares, scanlines, neon colors everywhere, but the worst part is…
5. Raspberry Jam: …the effects for when you get hit or are low on health
6. Visual Distinction: While appropriate and neat, the visual distinction in this game is honestly really bad
7. Controls: General jank issues, pretty normal for Far Cry games
8. Difficulty Options: Usual boring difficulty mods

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Doodads and brickwork of ship screens
2. Brickwork: Missions themselves
3. Character: Lunete is a weird bright spot in the entire story, with interesting and engaging dialogue and easily the best animations to her

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: The Intro fails at essentially every level. Exposition, epicness, enjoyment, character, theme, plot…
2. Atmosphere: Bad cheese / failed epicness
3. Animation: Remember Fable 1’s animation? Cuz they sure do!
4. Voice Acting: Quality. Despite some decent talent they just are not there
5. Voice Acting: Consistency. Sometimes it’s actively ridiculous, with how they’ll voice a few words in a sentence then stop without even pausing at a period or comma in said sentence
6. External Continuity: The game likes to spit a bit on 40k
7. Cutscene: Pretty much the presentation and style of the entire craftworld mission…
8. Cutscene: …combined with the CONTENT of said cutscene, which was badly written and actively removes characterization from main characters
9. Character: Ectar is… really honestly a bad character. Poor direction of his actor doesn’t help, but he’s way too flat and disinteresting and they never go anywhere with him
10. Outro: The big payoff to the entire character arc is ridiculous in its own right, but then you have the big villain showing up at the last second, dudeface winning the day for you, the cheap ‘sacrifice was worth it’ bit, and of course gotta get that post credits teaser in…
11. Outro: …very, very unimpressed
12. Pacing: The plot doesn’t even start until 20 hours in, and each plot point is dragged out across hours and hours of filler missions

Gameplay Positives:

1. Core Mechanic: Terrain manipulation. It’s honestly the closest the base game comes to engaging tactics is working around the interactable terrain
2. Viscerality: The sound, primarily, feels very beefy
3. Enemy Variety: It’s not the best, but eventually some actual enemy variety does show up
4. Prime Opt: The Dreadnought missions are actually quite fun
5. Boss: Aeger the Benevolent
6. Core Mechanic: Not the best I’ve seen but the AP economy is decent
7. Kit: There’s some decent kit and variety in gear and (primarily) abilities
8. Kit: The classes are also juuust enough varied for a positive
9. Save System: The saves are actually pretty decent, allowing you to save in mid combat, and with a robust auto save…
10. Save System: …earning two positives
11. Core Mechanic: The bonus objectives system and the way in which you can both benefit and detriment for them is actually pretty neat
12. Kit: Dreadnought. Interesting, lots of options, generally awesome
13. Boss: Malathian the Harvester
14. Boss: Ship invasion

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Tutorial: So we’ve got a LONG tutorial and it’s a forced tutorial…
2. Tutorial: …and worse, it doesn’t even explain everything
3. HUD: The UI is lacking at best. Wrong icons in the wrong places and not the right sizes or color distinctions
4. HUD: : Further, the HUD just… does not indicate what is where sometimes, and even when it does it’s done terribly
5. Info In Game: A surprisingly large amount of information is lacking here
6. Core Mechanic: Scatter. It always sucked but it really sucks here as enemies get a full round of actions and your ‘turn’ is effectively cancelled the moment scatter is triggered
7. Interface: Continued interface issues (escape key lack of use, inconsistent drilling, unclear equipment issues, weird requirements for equipment)
8. Interface: Lack of cross referencing
9. Difficulty Curve: Some missions are way too easy, others are way too hard
10. Terrain: Other than the interactables the terrain might as well not even exist
11. Pathing: Both enemy, AI, and partners have no idea how to maneuver on the terrain
12. Mission: The Eldar Craftworld mission came pretty close to being good, and then swarmed you with ridiculousness all over the place
13. Boss: The first boss fight in the Eldar Craftworld… sssuuucked
14. Core Mechanic: AP limitations… 3 AP is simply too little for what this game is trying to be
15. Pacing: The early game is too dull and it takes entirely too long to get to the good parts…
16. Pacing: …and that ignores the awkward stilting lurches between plot missions and grinding missions
17. Seconds in Minutes: Many actions could be refined a lot and they are not, and it takes entirely too many clicks to just do things
18. Difficulty Curve: Wonky as absolute hell
19. Kit: Limited use of the amazing Dreadnought?
20. Grind: You have to grind to grind…
21. Grind: …and everything takes absolutely forever in all three phases of the game
22. Prime Opt: The grind missions are really, really, really boring…
23. Prime Opt: …and there are many of them
24. Audio Spam: Hope you like hearing voice barks every single action, reaction, and command
25. Music: Impossibly generic and entirely too overplayed
26. Outro: The entire game is designed to encourage maxing out a small elite squad, the Outro mandates two squads with no warning… cute
27. Outro: The final mission is bad…
28. Outro: …and the final mission is LONG and boring and slow and long
29. Intro: Buried in tutorial crap
30. Replayability: A truly rare negative, the game has a long unskippable tutorial sequence and then hours upon hours of grind to actually reach the core gameplay loop

Story Positives:

1. Storytelling Mechanic: Uninterrupted audio logs
2. Intro: Strong, establishes a lot, narratively interesting
3. Brickwork: Twisty Bridges is honestly well designed and visually gorgeous
4. Visual Storytelling: The Alterra bases really do a good job lifting the story up
5. Character: Al-An, Fred, Parvan… just a generally good supporting cast
6. Doodads: Excellent doodad spread
7. Voice Acting: Surprisingly good voice acting
8. Outro: The final sequence is really strong (and should have happened at the midway point)
9. World Building: More development of both the setting as a whole and the Architects

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Robin… she is… aggressively uninteresting, and worse she preaches at us
2. Dialogue: The dialogue in general is very lacking

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: Continues to control well for the most part
2. Core Mechanic: Building the base is even more fun than before, with more tools and toys to tinker with
3. Difficulty Options: Some very well designed starting options (which can be changed on the fly?)
4. Early Game: The early part of the game is easily the strongest, with a good directed resource path and a nice little setup plus the best zone in the game
5. Enemy Design: While some are lacking, some other enemies are rather well designed (notably the worm)
6. Intro: As before, the Intro does a great job of setting you up for the basic gameplay loop very quickly and efficiently and even encourages you to stay underwater naturally thanks to the new cold mechanic
7. Kit: Scanner and gear
8. Kit: Truck. Seriously, the Seatruck is actually awesome. It’s modular, reconfigurable, and can be redone on the fly too, allowing you to literally have a mobile base and your Prawn and your explorer all in one go…
9. Kit: …easily earning two positives
10. Lighting: Still some good lighting design
11. Overworld: Nowhere near as well designed as last time, but there’s still enough decent overall design for a positive
12. Penalty for Failure: Gradient design returns from the previous game
13. QoL: All the features backported to Subnautica 1 obviously came from here and, as such, still qualify
14. Visual Distinction: Still visually distinct in how you can identify what where

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Sound Design: Some pretty bad audio balancing issues
2. Backtracking: The game is… really backtrack heavy, by design. If you don’t know what you need and come prepped, you will very likely have to just slog back and forth over and over and over…
3. Backtracking: …earning two negatives
4. Bottleneck: Magnetite and a few other things
5. Bugs: The same basic bugs as last time
6. Guidance and Exploration: Direction. Or rather, the direction is… weird. Sometimes it’s lacking, sometimes it’s literally not there
7. Core Mechanic: Inability to build from chests continues to be a problem
8. Info In Game: Several things are still not properly explained
9. Inventory: The personal inventory problem is still there
10. Late Game: Late game isn’t as bad as mid game but only because it’s mostly just a lot of backtracking
11. Mid Game: Mid game is honestly awful. Very slow, very boring, very sloggy, and encapsulates all the other problems I’ve mentioned several times. I would have put the game down at mid game if not for the review…
12. Mid Game: …earning it two negatives
13. Outro: The Outro is all the other problems of the game in one concentrated awful-fest….
14. Outro: …which already sucks but then you add in that it’s designed to force you to do one last backtrack through the endgame zones…
15. Outro: …and then do ANOTHER one to get back to the actual ending
16. Save System: Save limitations as before
17. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out where those artifacts are

Story Positives:

1. Writing: Event writing. It’s a bit flowery but well written throughout
2. Writing: Dynamic storytelling that emerges naturally from how the game is designed

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Alternate Leveling: Lifestyle mechanics and the bonuses and powers that come with
2. Core Mechanic: Built in entropy to changes and modifiers, ensuring that such things can change and move fluidly throughout a playthrough
3. Core Mechanic: Casus Belli system, and how it changes warfare
4. Core Mechanic: Opinion System and how it effects everything, honestly forming the core backbone of the whole game…
5. Core Mechanic: …earning two positives
6. Core Mechanic: Randomness! There’s a lot… and I mean a lot… of random things that can happen
7. Core Mechanic: Stress can be irritating, but it’s not universally negative, can be used against others, and helps to enforce a playstyle conforming to your character’s personality
8. HUD: Line of vassalage on selection visibility
9. Interface: Character filters. There’s a lot of options and they have preset save capability…
10. Interface: …earning two positives
11. Interface: The Highlight system is absolutely on point, very well designed and a great way to get across a huge amount of info quickly and without disrupting the game… and all of this has options to change how (or even if) the system works…
12. Interface: …earning a full…
13. Interface: …three positives
14. Interface: The mouseover information is honestly fantastic in this one. Lots of things you can mouseover and good layout of the information provided…
15. Interface: …earning two positives
16. Interface: Almost every search function has presets
17. Interface: The search function itself
18. Kit: The options and interactions you can do are decently good kit…
19. Kit: …earning two positives
20. Map: Surprisingly good information and at-a-glance in the map design
21. Mod Support: Game designed for mods…
22. Mod Support: …earning…
23. Mod Support: …three positives
24. Mod Support: QoL of mods in launcher…
25. Mod Support: …earning two positives
26. Mod Support: Tools for mod support…
27. Mod Support: …earning…
28. Mod Support: …three positives
29. Music: Dynamic music and, of course, culturally appropriate
30. Tutorialization: The tutorial is actually surprisingly good overall, and helps you ease over the barrier to entry
31. Starting Options: Recommended starts and a good interface and menu to help you see your choices and get you into the game
32. Starting Options: Play as anyone! The options for who to play as are bonkers, especially since…
33. Starting Options: …the character customizer is just excellent
34. Starting Options: The amount of options for the match are excellent, and there’s a lot of them rather than just easy/hard/etc.
35. Replayability: Game is generally replayable…
36. Replayability: …and of course has the variety to back it up
37. Mod Support: Depth of mod possibilities. It’s not the most convertible, but it’s definitely got a decent amount of depth to the modding scene
38. Prime Opt: The very nature of the event system is awesome and it really helps keep the game fresh
39. Early Game: Early game isn’t super great, but it is definitely good
40. Mid Game: Mid game is where the game really shines. Politicking, arranging your dynasty, dying, starting over…
41. Mid Game: …easily the best part of the game
42. Core Mechanic: Vassalage and related systems
43. Co-Op: Existent and functional multiplayer

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Save System: Save limitations (while it has auto saves, no quick save/load nor hotkey, and irritation in saving / loading through menus)
2. HUD: Lack of pop up showcasing results of actions
3. Info In Game: Certain lack of info in game
4. Interface: Occasional issues with having to click through extra menus unnecessarily (like calling an ally in to a war)
5. Options: Cannot rebind keys. In a grand strategy game. In a PC game. Right…
6. Options: …two negatives
7. Core Mechanic: Lifestyle problems upon death
8. Core Mechanic: Randomness
9. Core Mechanic: Lifestyle locking mechanics behind it
10. Late Game: As per usual for large scale strategy games, there… is no late game, and it’s just…
11. Late Game: …boring
12. Bad Launch: Some pretty bad, buggy issues at launch and at DLC launch

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: Vanilla and the presentation of War40k
2. Atmosphere: Winter Assault and its presentation
3. Atmosphere: Dark Crusade and its presentation
4. Brickwork: Eldar
5. Brickwork: Generally good DC brickwork
6. Brickwork: Imperial Guard
7. Brickwork: Orks
8. Brickwork: Space Marines
9. Brickwork: Surprisingly good brickwork for the maps and units and, most importantly, the buildings
10. Brickwork: Tau
11. Brickwork: The Necrons, of course
12. Brickwork: Winter Assault in general
13. Character: General Sturn, the 80s action hero we all deserve (also just generally the characters in Winter Assault)
14. Characters: Generally amusing and memetastic Hero units across WA and DC
15. Characters: Gabriel, Isador, Sindri
16. Cinematic: Dark Crusade intro cinematic
17. Cinematic: The opening cinematic is way too loud, but it does pretty neatly encapsulate the tone and style
18. Cinematics: Generally amusing ending cinematics for each race in DC
19. Cinematics: The intro cinematics for each faction’s campaign are brief but enjoyable
20. Cutscenes: Surprisingly well done and lengthy cutscenes
21. External Continuity: Continued good usage of War40k throughout Dark Crusade, serving as a great entry point for the franchise
22. External Continuity: Definitely good usage of the War40k setting in vanilla campaign
23. Integration: Immersion factor of bases sticking in Dark Crusade and making it feel more like conquering rather than just winning a mission
24. Moment: The reveal of the Necrons in the final mission is honestly pretty legit
25. Pacing: Vanilla campaign
26. Plot: Vanilla campaign
27. Storyboarding: Vanilla and WA have pretty solid storyboarding
28. Story Sequencing: Vanilla campaign
29. Storytelling Mechanics: Mission briefings
30. Storytelling Mechanics: Mission map
31. Voice Acting: General across the vanilla campaign
32. Voice Acting: Orks orks orks orks ORKS orks orks orks
33. Voice Acting: Sindri (and the actor in general)
34. Voice Acting: Winter Assault
35. Voice Acting: You will serve on the firing line!
36. Voice Acting: Dark Crusade, full stop
37. World Building: Dark Crusade seres as a weirdly good introduction to the franchise and establishes plenty
38. World Building: Vanilla campaign
39. Humor: Soulstorm ridiculousness

Story Negatives:

1. Character: The god damned Eldar are just the worst
2. VA: Soulstorm’s voice acting (and direction) are occasionally just… off
3. Plot: Soulstorm’s lack of plot
4. External Continuity: Soulstorm just… what?
5. Cutscene Incompetence: Soulstorm really likes to have the hero units disappear into convenient holes at the end of stronghold missions

Gameplay Positives:

1. Core Mechanic: DC: Persistence of defenses and garrisons on the map
2. Core Mechanic: DC: The unique bonuses and general benefits of taking territory
3. Core Mechanic: SS: Worthwhileness of conquest
4. HUD: Generally decent HUD design
5. Info In Game: Generally decent info in the mouseovers
6. Itemization: DC: Wargear
7. Itemization: SS: Wargear
8. Level: DC Eldar Stronghold is similarly a good one, the enemy is extremely fortified but you gain benefits from knocking out their manipulated allies
9. Level: DC Guard Stronghold
10. Level: DC Necron Stronghold
11. Level: DC Ork Stronghold is simple but good, knocking out the banners as you go to send the enemies into each other
12. Level: Several of the DC gimmick missions are good fun
13. Level: Vanilla Mission 1 is a basic but surprisingly competent tutorial mission
14. Level: Vanilla Mission 9 does a good job of the split attention mission style and doesn’t wear out its welcome, and the second auto squad of Terminators really helps the pacing
15. Level: WA Disorder Mission 1 is actually a pretty good collector style mission
16. Level: WA Disorder Mission 2.5 keeps things good by letting you operate in side areas where your smaller units are at an advantage, against forces that are technically superior but spread out enough to be stopped one by one, all while being able to recruit from nearby buildings rather than traditionally build
17. Map: DC The planetary map layout, color distinction, and information
18. MSQ: Winter Assault fails pretty hard at mission design, but it does try unique things and, more importantly, does a good job of making the missions specific to the factions and their playstyles
19. Music: Decent
20. Power Progression: Similarly the DC Honor Guard is a good way to reward the player for taking territory and helping them to speed up / deal with better their future missions
21. Power Progression: SS Honor Guard
22. Unit Design: Imperial Guard! So you have mass units with tons of frailties that need to be constantly babied, but you have multiple tools to keep them functional and relevant and their numbers and range can turn battles. Furthermore there’s the amusement of the Commissar and Psyker units, but what really bolsters the Guard…
23. Unit Design: …is their building traversal abilities, and their wonderful variety of vehicles. Easily the best vehicles in the game, not just in raw power but in variety and utility as well, with artillery, armored transports that allow their units to shoot from within, and the Leman Russ wonders (plus the Baneblade)
24. Unit Design: Necrons. You don’t have traditional resources, but instead rely heavily on power generation (and each successive power generator costs more), but also they have the ‘get back up’ mechanic and, naturally, move like slugs…
25. Unit Design: …earning two positives
26. Unit Design: Orks, with heavy focus on either melee or ranged, and the ability to overwhelm their opponents but at a cost of a lot of a lot of population… but they also START with the ability to skyrocket their population, but their farms also function as their turrets, and the whole faction is just a nice give and take fun fest…
27. Unit Design: …earning the Orks two positives
28. Unit Design: Space Marines (general variety, good basic ‘starter’ faction with modularity)
29. Unit Design: The Eldar are a bit vanilla in unit design but what makes them shine is their micro abilities and their unique building mechanics and related gameplay
30. Viscerality: Build animations
31. Viscerality: Guns, flame, lasers, and explosions…
32. Viscerality: …all over the place
33. Level: SS There are some legitimately good ideas in the Stronghold missions
34. Replayability: Between Winter Assault’s multiple campaigns and Dark Crusade’s enjoyability, the game does have good replayability
35. Minigame: The Skirmish mode has a decent spread of maps and, more importantly…
36. Minigame: …options, allowing for some good repeatable playability
37. Mods: Moddable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Sound Design: Winter Assault’s sound balancing is just… messed up
2. Bug: Consistent crashes when alt tabbing
3. Bug: Crashes when alt tabbing
4. Bug: Flickering issues when pausing or in any menu
5. Bug: Persistent crashes when alt tabbing
6. Bug: The flickering
7. Bug: The game also has turbo nausea-inducing flicker on fullscreen mode
8. Bug: WA Disorder Mission 4… then there’s the bug. The big bug, which we actually never bypassed and just sort of lived with, but it’s functionally a game-breaking bug. Every time we start the mission, the Ork side had 0 starting resources, which made the mission functionally impossible…
9. Bug: …earning it two negatives
10. Bug: There are several small few bugs everywhere in Soulstorm that just demonstrate a total lack of polish
11. Bug: Music just… stops playing whenever you load a save mid mission
12. Controls: Entirely too many minor irritations in control that add up over time
13. Controls: Issues with being able to give out commands to unit groups, instead being forced to give orders to individual units
14. Core Mechanic: There’s a problem here I rarely talk about in RTS design. And that is ‘spacing’. It’s when a unit’s ‘space’ is larger than their actual model, and that’s the ‘space’ they need to maneuver, which gets in the way of and prevents pathfinding. This makes the aforementioned pathfinding problem even worse than it already is because in any map which has narrow corridors or otherwise, maneuvering is awful
15. Difficulty Options: Even worse than the normal lazy difficulty because all it does is change enemy health. That’s it
16. Difficulty Options: Repeat for Winter Assault
17. Level: DC’s Chaos Stronghold mission can go directly to hell. It’s a long, slow, boring slog but it also is irritating on top of all that…
18. Level: …as you have to constantly listen to that damned cackle every 40 seconds until you slog your way to the point and take it
19. Level: DC’s ‘no build’ mission can vary based on side but no matter who you play as it’s a bit tedious, especially on higher difficulties
20. Level: The Gateway mission, that is to say all of them, are just… the worst. They’re irritating and boring and slow and worst of all you have to do several of them and they’re all the same damned thing
21. Level: The Winter Assault mission design was sufficiently terrible that I just wanted to put it down… and eventually did
22. Level: Vanilla Mission 10 is neat enough in structure but the old ‘kill all’ problem rears its ugly head
23. Level: Vanilla Mission 2 runs into the old RTS problem of ‘hunt down the enemy forces to win the map’ problem
24. Level: Vanilla Mission 3 is honestly very boring, with unclear enemy locations problem (again)
25. Level: WA Disorder Mission 3 is the worst mission thusfar in the entire series. It starts off with a suicidal charge into a fortified spot which is okay, but then you have to listen to awful audio spam while fortifying while clearing the map but the catch is you also have to mind control a specific enemy unit and get it back to the center of your base. This has all of the problems with it; The MC’d unit is leashed and ignores pathing and logic, the MC’d unit is very weak and easy to die, there are only so many of the units on the map, and you need multiple of them. The whole thing turns into an awful escort mission…
26. Level: …for…
27. Level: …three negatives
28. Level: WA Disorder Mission 4. So then there’s the mission itself. Tight, narrow corridors and irritating pathfinding issues abound
29. Level: WA Disorder Mission 4 sucks top to bottom. So first we have the switch mechanic, which is badly implemented and barely works. It causes the loss of hotkeys and orders and is just janky and awkward
30. Level: WA Disorder Mission 5 Chaos, aka ‘hope you enjoy that sacrifice mechanic again’
31. Level: WA Order Mission 3, irritating upon irritation and then dull… dull… dull
32. Level: WA Order Mission 4 is just as irritating on the Eldar side…
33. Level: WA Order Mission 4 …but even worse as the Guards, being one long irritating escort mission
34. Level: Winter Assault Mission Disorder 2’s first half honestly just sucks. It’s a long slow boring slog with inferior upgrades and units in tight, windy terrain that doesn’t work well with the pathfinding problem
35. Map: The Soulstorm map is literally one of the worst maps I’ve seen in gaming. A huge portion of the real estate is devoted towards fluff (which actively hurts the eyes), the usable area is absolutely tiny and in some cases hard to interact with, the distinction and color usage is off, and the whole thing sucks on every level…
36. Map: …for two negatives
37. Minimap: Vanilla’s minimap was murky and hard to see
38. Minimap: Ditto problem for Winter Assault
39. Music: Music repetition in the earlier games, notably vanilla
40. Padding: DC Campaign structure lends itself towards a lot of redoing the same skirmish missions repeatedly
41. Padding: The Soulstorm campaign is pure padding. Way too many provinces that take way too long, and that’s not counting the frustrations of navigating the map and the maps
42. Padding: There’s general issues across the entire vanilla campaign where you just take too long to do too little
43. Pathfinding: It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen…
44. Pathfinding: …but it’s pretty bad
45. Seconds In Minutes: WA Disorder Mission 4 also has a ton of Seconds In Minutes padding
46. Seconds in Minutes: Soulstorm is one of the most padded RTS games I’ve ever seen and I can’t possibly combine all of that into a cohesive list so instead we’ll just give…
47. Seconds in Minutes: ….a full…
48. Seconds in Minutes: …three negatives
49. Sound Design: Audio balancing
50. Sound Design: That audio spam is both back and actively awful in Soulstorm in particular
51. Sound Design: The audio barks are… honestly pretty spammy
52. Terrain Design: The pathfinding just does not know how to understand the new ramps in Soulstorm
53. Unit Design: Severely unbalanced units during the vanilla campaign
54. Viscerality: Dark Eldar are gross, unpleasant, and actively bleh to even deal with
55. Viscerality: Sisters of Battle. For how cool they look, they feel awful
56. Difficulty Curve: Soulstorm’s difficulty curve is wonky as hell and all over the place, regardless of difficulty setting
57. Replayability: Soulstorm actively resists replayability
58. Terrain Design: General issues with map designs not supporting unit movement and being frustrating, and worse, the terrain itself essentially doesn’t matter other than being a series of corridors

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: We’re back to having the vibe and tone of the factions in Retribution
2. Background Lore: Chaos Rising’s optional convos
3. Banter: Some surprisingly good banter during missions
4. Banter: The banter between the Orks on the map screen in Retribution is just gold
5. Brickwork: Second brickwork positive for the aforementioned
6. Brickwork: Surprisingly top notch brickwork on the planets
7. Brickwork: Special bonus brickwork positive for the new factions in Retribution
8. Characters: Some memorable and enjoyable characters in Retribution
9. Cinematic: Generally cool cinematics
10. Cutscene: Surprisingly good cutscenes surrounding the Exterminatus
11. Dialogue: Retribution’s dialogue is honestly top notch
12. External Continuity: Lots of great connections to Dawn of War
13. Humor: Da Orks. ‘Nuff said.
14. Moment: Being on Typhon during the Exterminatus
15. Moment: Terminator Tarkus and Dreadnought Gabriel
16. MSQ: Some of the traitor scenes are actually quite well done. One point for each… Thaddeus, broken by the vanilla game…
17. MSQ: …and last and best of all, Avitus, who did not fall at all, merely gave in and gave up on everything
18. MSQ: …Jonah, consumed by a demon after being betrayed by his trusted ally…
19. Storytelling Mechanic: Item tooltips
20. Storytelling Mechanic: Mission selection maps, provinces, and of course the slowly encroaching Hive Fleet
21. Storytelling Mechanic: The descriptions on the Ork items in particular are just kind of awesome
22. Voice Acting: Chaos Rising
23. Voice Acting: Retribution
24. Voice Acting: Retribution
25. Voice Acting: Some good voice acting for just about everyone
26. World Building: Some really good background world building for the local sector
27. Foreshadowing: Though it doesn’t pay off well, there is decent foreshadowing across the games
28. Pacing: Surprisingly good pacing throughout
29. Themes: The entirety of DoW2 does a really, really good job of showcasing the overall theme of War40k; There is no victory or better tomorrow or anything, there’s just the never-ending nonstop grind, and it sucks

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Several honestly irritating characters in vanilla, but none more so than Avitus
2. Cinematic: Over-edited, Eldar are stupid, and spoils the hell out of the Tyrannids
3. Dialogue: Cyrus (can’t spit it out) and Gabriel (repetition repetition repetition)
4. External Continuity: So we’re just going to teleport all over the place
5. External Continuity: This is not how a lot of this works
6. MSQ: Some of the traitor scenes (Martellus most of all) are just sort of… what?
7. Outro: But what adds that third final ‘screw you’ is that this is the epic end of a story arc that started in DoW1 Vanilla and terminates here and it’s all just a deflated balloon
8. Outro: Not a particularly good series of endings either, made worse by how barely different they are
9. Outro: So the ending final mission is… very very clearly designed for Space Marines, to the point where it’s not even funny anymore
10. Outro: Then there’s most of the endings which are just way, way too short to have any meaning or meat on their bones
11. Outro: Vanilla outro. Plain and unimpressive
12. Plot: Load of hooey in just… all directions, really
13. Writing: Eldar continue to be aggravating
14. Writing: The Smuggler Problem with Retribution’s plot for the non main trio

Gameplay Positives:

1. Alternate Leveling: Leveling, points, builds
2. Boss: While vanilla, some effort and design is put into the traitor bosses
3. Core Mechanic: Asymmetry between purity/chaos
4. Core Mechanic: Honor guard
5. Enemy Variety: Similarly good variety across the Orks, Eldar, and Tyrannids
6. Enemy Variety: Continuing good variety in Retribution
7. HUD: Generally good visual distinction (color, icons, outlines)
8. Hyperbeam Moment: Controlling the two predator tanks in the Chaos finale
9. Itemization: Wargear and related builds and upgrades
10. Kit: Additional difficulty options and kit from going Chaos
11. Level: Angel Gate. Multiple objectives that can be done in whatever order and most of which are optional
12. Level: Angel Gate 2 and Terminator Tarkus
13. Level: CR Mission 2, the introduction of the Librarian and the gauntlet and reverse timed gauntlet
14. Minigame: Last Stand mode. Variety in waves, mirror match later on, progression keeps across matches, and general horde mode co-op fun…
15. Minigame: …for two positives
16. Music: Some great stuff…
17. Music: …and some epic stuff
18. Outro: The final vanilla level
19. Outro: The first half of the Chaos finale was actually quite fun, in fact it was the most fun I had in the entire game to-date
20. Pacing: Surprisingly good pacing of the missions
21. Sound Design: Some surprisingly good sound design in making chatter not spammy, audio design of the weapons, and general ambiance
22. Terrain Design: Destructible terrain/cover as well as cover mattering
23. Terrain Design: Garrisoning and related mechanics
24. Unit Design: Some good variety in the squad and their abilities
25. Viscerality: Decent

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bosses: Neat ideas but slow health padded slog fests
2. Bug: So… the game will not launch on modern processors. This leads to a lot of issues but the biggest is that the game will not run, at all, and is a situation that will only get worse over time…
3. Bug: …for…
4. Bug: …three negatives
5. Bug: Then there’s the ‘fix’ for it which involves editing the BIOS, which is problematic for several reasons…
6. Bug: …for…
7. Bug: …another three negatives
8. Controls: Finicky with selecting movement, good luck finding the exact spot you want to send your units to, if they obey orders at all
9. Controls: Inability to have multiple control groups (despite large groups in Retribution, and the fact that DoW1 already had the concept)
10. Difficulty Options: Boring difficulty design
11. HUD: Several elements are way, way too small to see at a glance, such as enemy health (which was done better in DoW1!) and party stats
12. Level: Space hulk level. It’s way too long, way too narrow of corridors, and the boss battle is absolutely ridiculous
13. Levels: Too long and too little to them
14. Outro: So… a long corridor, even more narrow than usual, with irritating terrain to navigate, with a very, very boring boss which has way, way too much health. The boss also can go invuln periodically, and can withdraw and regen his towers’ health even if you kill one (and they’re not out long enough to kill two) and just… the whole thing is absolutely awful…
15. Outro: …leading to…
16. Outro: …three negatives
17. Outro: The final Nurgle boss battle was, at best, lacking. Basically just yet another boss battle of the same type all the others have been
18. Padding: Health in general
19. Padding: Retribution starts to lean into padding a lot harder than previous campaigns. For some reason each level is simultaneously too small and too long, and it just slogs the entire experience out
20. Padding: Whack-a-mole
21. Pathfinding: It’s still there, just not as bad
22. Pathfinding: Rears its ugly head again in Retribution
23. Saves: No mid mission saves
24. Sound Design: Inconsistent audio compression for lines during Chaos Rising
25. Terrain Design: Multiple terrain issues in map design in Retribution
26. Unskippable Cutscenes: Weirdly true, but they’re there
27. Difficulty Curve: The difficulty spikes in Chaos Rising are just weird and off

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: Beastmen
2. Atmosphere: Bretonnia
3. Atmosphere: Chaos Dwarves
4. Atmosphere: Dark Elves
5. Atmosphere: Dwarves
6. Atmosphere: Empire
7. Atmosphere: Grand Cathay
8. Atmosphere: Greenskins, of course
9. Atmosphere: Hero intro videos
10. Atmosphere: Hero intro videos
11. Atmosphere: Hero intro videos
12. Atmosphere: High Elves
13. Atmosphere: Kislev
14. Atmosphere: Lizardmen
15. Atmosphere: Ogres
16. Atmosphere: Skaven
17. Atmosphere: Tomb Kings
18. Atmosphere: Vampire Counts
19. Atmosphere: Wood Elves
20. Brickwork: Cities and Sieges x1
21. Brickwork: Cities and Sieges x2
22. Brickwork: Cities and Sieges x3
23. Brickwork: Coastal areas
24. Brickwork: Craggy wastes
25. Brickwork: European areas
26. Brickwork: Green Cathay areas
27. Brickwork: Settlements
28. Brickwork: Snowy minor settlement
29. Brickwork: Tropical areas
30. Brickwork: Ulthuan areas
31. Brickwork: Unit cards and related unit artwork
32. Cinematic: The Lost God opening cinematic is very well done. A bit too narrated, but still wonderfully directed, great art style, and good music, voice acting, and transitions…
33. Cinematic: …for two positives
34. Cutscene: Realms of Chaos, Chaos Dwarves intro
35. Cutscene: The Lost God finale cinematic is, as with the intro, exceptionally well done, implies much, and is brilliantly presented…
36. Cutscene: …for another two positives
37. Cutscenes: Realms of Chaos Intros
38. Cutscenes: Realms of Chaos Ogres, Cathay
39. Sound Design: Soundscape
40. Sound Design: Soundscape
41. Sound Design: Soundscape
42. Voice Acting: Dark Elves
43. Voice Acting: Dwarves
44. Voice Acting: Grand Cathay
45. Voice Acting: Greenskins
46. Voice Acting: High Elves
47. Voice Acting: Imperials
48. Voice Acting: Ogres
49. Voice Acting: Wood Elves
50. External Continuity: Though invalid now thanks to Age of Sigmar, they do some good work with Warhammer Fantasy

Story Negatives:

1. Plot: Prologue. It’s… not great
2. Plot: Realm of Chaos. It’s… also not great
3. Story Sequencing: Realm of Chaos… and the lack thereof
4. Outro: The endings, brief they may be, for each race’s Realm of Chaos thing are just kind of… there
5. Atmosphere: General squick from several factions

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: Slowdown on casts, alt or regular click to change attacks, smooth and intuitive camera in battle, lots of hotkeying
2. Difficulty Options: Good strategic layer difficulty settings
3. HUD: Battle: Zzz, portrait, order type, relative health
4. HUD: Flag at-a-glance for unit types regardless of faction
5. Info In Game: A decent amount…
6. Info In Game: In-game encyclopedia for units and spells (but no search function)
7. Info In Game: …earning two positives
8. Interface: Diplomacy QoL and features
9. Interface: Diplomacy Quick Deal
10. Interface: Mouseover / lock
11. Interface: Search function
12. Kit: Heroes in general…
13. Kit: …deserve…
14. Kit: …three positives
15. Minigame: Infinite Portal is basically skirmish mode again… but with fun mutators
16. Minigame: Option to play as quest battles from the menu
17. Minigame: Quest battles
18. Minigame: Skirmish mode, general
19. Minigame: Skirmish options for custom armies on both sides, presets, map selection, etc.
20. Minigame: Trials of Fate; a fun challenge map style battle to score points to gain benefits for the main campaign
21. Mod: Modularity
22. Mod: QoL
23. Mod: QoL
24. Mod: Tools
25. QoL: Auto Resolve is surprisingly good, usually
26. Starting Options: Especially for Immortal Empire
27. Starting Options: Factions factions factions
28. Starting Options: So many lords
29. Strategic: Archaon (Unit upgrades, Authority, Warband recruitment, Path To Glory, Gifts of Chaos)
30. Strategic: Cathay: Compass, caravans, yin/yang balance
31. Strategic: Chaos Dwarves
32. Strategic: Chaos Dwarves, again
33. Strategic: Chaos Dwarves, for real
34. Strategic: Khorne
35. Strategic: Skaven
36. Strategic: Tomb Kings
37. Strategic: Tomb Kings, again
38. Strategic: Tzeentch
39. Strategic: Wood Elves strategic build tall design
40. Strategic Layer: Beastmen (Ruin, Dread, lunar cycles, unlocking tech)
41. Strategic Layer: Dark Elves (Malus and Rakarth)
42. Strategic Layer: Empire Markus mechanics
43. Strategic Layer: Greenskins Paunch (cooking buffs, built-in side objectives, keep recipes for successful combos)
44. Unit Design: : Cathay
45. Unit Design: : Chaos Dwarves
46. Unit Design: : High Elves
47. Unit Design: : Khorne
48. Unit Design: : Kislev
49. Unit Design: : Skaven
50. Unit Design: : Slaanesh and speed
51. Unit Design: : Tomb Kings
52. Unit Design: : Tzeentch
53. Unit Design: Beastman (Taurox)
54. Unit Design: Dark Elves (Lokhir and Arks)
55. Unit Design: Empire (vanilla unit spread)
56. Unit Design: Greenskins
57. Unit Design: Vampire Counts
58. Viscerality: General
59. Camera: Cinematic camera mode (and slow mode)
60. Music: Some decent stuff, mostly for certain factions
61. Replayability: I mean, yeah
62. Save System: Decent autosave and quick save/load

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Camera: Camera wonkiness
2. Controls: Inability to have multiple control groups (similar to Dawn of War 2)
3. Controls: Lack of hotkeying and other basic RTS functionality
4. Controls: Some periodic wonkiness in how the game controls (fairly typical for a Total War game)
5. Core Combat: Dragon Age 2 Syndrome
6. Core Combat: Lack of toggle for friendly fire
7. Core Mechanic: Limitations of diplomacy (better than previous Total War games, but still noticeably lacking)
8. DLC: The Paradox problem (worthwhile DLC but a lot of it)
9. Interface: Periodic little issues all over the place
10. Kit: Yuri’s customize-a-demon is a neat idea but falls flat in practice, made even worse by the fact that he can’t actually equip items
11. Late Game: Is just mid game again minus the crisis
12. Levels: Settlement maps are a bit eh at best, and arduous at worst
13. Mid Game: By the time you’ve reached mid game you’ve long-since already figured out your strategic and tactical layers and outside of individual quests there’s nothing really new past that point
14. Minigame: Realm of Chaos
15. Minigame: Realm of Chaos
16. Minigame: Tzeentch’s Realm of Chaos
17. Strategic: Nurgle momentum problem (end turn end turn)
18. Terrain: A lot of maps have no real relevance of terrain (especially the many chaos wasteland areas)
19. Unit Design: Yuri’s faction is honestly just worse than the actual demon factions in every way
20. Unskippable Cutscenes: A few here and there, notably ambush cinematics
21. Visual Distinction: Periodic issues telling what you’re looking at, depending on the map
22. Music: Some generic stuff, to the point where you just tune it out (again, depending on faction)