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| There's some potential by FABIO 01/10/2010, 1:53am PST | ||||
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| in a game revolving around becoming the ruler of hell via calling your opponents bitches and losing face when they take your insults (Quentinbec as Beezlebub!).
But holy god the interface is horrible. Armageddon Empires was pretty bad, but it was nothing compared to this. Top priority in the design process was given to "never make the player click once when you can make them click 2 or 3 times". Just a mess of menus that don't intuitively lead to the other menus that affect them. Error message that you can't end your turn until a notice is dealt with, and you'd figure that design 101 should tell the player what's holding you up. 102 teaches you to put a one click shortcut to the problem. But the interface...from HELL makes you go manually searching. No minimap. No functional map zoom. No map scroll(!!!). Units are represented by icons that closely resemble buildings. Players are distinguished by hieroglyphic symbols instead something simpler like different colors (everyone is grey). Everything looks like a more drab, uglier Fantasy General. Then there's the loading times. 5 minutes to set up a new game, 1 minute to calculate turns. Civ4 has a hundred times more data to crunch and doesn't take a fraction of the time in the largest games. There are just so many thing wrong on the technical side that the glaring balance issues take a back seat. You can use a point system to determine your character's attributes, objectives, weaknesses, and dozens of different perks for tons of replayability with different strategies... ...in theory. In practice, nothing about your character matters but your rank, and the bonus points provided by negative perks are never worth it. You're supposed to be able to utilize all sorts of techniques and trickery other than all out war against your opponents, but choosing a higher rank and using your superior starting resources and army to crush others directly is by far the quickest and easiest option. Nothing else matters but having the strongest units and insulting/demanding weaker players into war. I was really looking forward to this one. A play by email Armageddon Empires minus the gay Magic cards sounded awesome, but this is a mess. |
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Review request: Solium Infernum by 12/23/2009, 6:29am PST  I'm waiting for him to finish patching the AI before giving my final verdict by 12/23/2009, 8:16am PST Isn't it multiplayer? by 12/23/2009, 10:42am PST Play by Email. There is a demo. NT by 12/23/2009, 10:49am PST There's some potential by 01/10/2010, 1:53am PST What version are you playing? by 01/12/2010, 12:29am PST Is there any DRM? by 01/14/2010, 10:00pm PST Don't get it. by 01/15/2010, 6:06pm PST I was just about to order it by 01/16/2010, 12:39pm PST God dammit by 01/16/2010, 10:02pm PST Did you want to PBEM or not, fucker? NT by 01/18/2010, 10:53pm PST I thought you didn't buy it NT by 01/18/2010, 11:24pm PST Did, hence the god dammit NT by 01/18/2010, 11:58pm PST Shit, I've already uninstalled it. NT by 01/19/2010, 12:00am PST Starting a game with other people tomorrow by 01/20/2010, 6:11pm PST |
