Recent reviews by General Runtime

It just seems like a reskin of the Witcher. The character has no weight to his movements and the combat is pretty boring.

Captures the aesthetic of 40k really well! A grimdark dystopia, full of betrayals and plot twists.

Music is really good as well. Mixture of electronic, industrial, metal. Very atmospheric.

3d graphics are a little cartoony when you zoom in, but 2d graphics like character portraits are beautiful.

Game is paced quite well. Probably a hundred hours from start to finish for a completionist like me. Difficulty curve is maybe a little easy for an experienced player who takes advantage of the interactions between skills etc, but that means the combat is quite complex, and might be tough for a newbie. I'd suggest experienced RPG players should start with a higher difficulty to keep things challenging.

Characterisation and plot are very good. Most of the recruitable characters have some kind of character arc, depending on how much you put into your relationship with them, and depending on whether you bring them to a particular mission (not going to spoil anything here).

The game world reacts to your choices fairly well but not amazingly so. It would have been nice for some granular changes in NPC personalities as you develop your ideological attachment. The ideologies are dogmatic, iconoclastic and heretical, and unfortunately your retinue only comments on this choice once or twice.

spent 20 minutes verifying my age and then the game doesn't start

City builder type game but with some very difficult situations it throws you into. Surprising amount of strategy required. Also love the setting and story.

I'm a big sci-fi fan and I liked other Bethesda games, so this is like a match made in heaven.

+ Interesting premise. Earth is gone and there are totally new factions and loyalties to fight over.
+ The factions are believable. UC is a Heinlein-esque militarised democracy with fascist overtones but a good welfare system (if you're not a second class citizen). Freestar Collective is the anarcho-capitalist utopia, where billionaires control everything but at least you don't have to pay taxes.
+ Main storyline isn't too fast paced (like Skyrim or Fallout). It's always there in the background for you to return to, but you can do your own thing and explore side quests without feeling rushed. The story itself is interesting.
+ Faction stories are very fun. You can be a space cop, a wild west ranger, a corporate spy/hacker, Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, or a heist-planning pirate.
+ Love the exploration of the worlds. Visually striking biomes with various points of interest.
+ Ground combat is a lot of fun. Reasonable variety of weapons, good sound effects and feedback on shooting, enemy AI isn't totally braindead, good challenge in the early part of the game.
+ Research system is good, and it ties in with crafting items and modding weapons. Very satisfying to customise your assault rifle to fire explosive rounds, or turn a shotgun into a slug thrower.
+ Space combat is pretty fun but has some limitations. Tactics seem mostly the same (dogfighting), even though we have weapon variety like missiles. Since we're dogfighting, we can't actually make use of moving power between weapon types (to defeat shields vs hull). Very fast paced.
+ We can build our own space ships! Great systems for unlocking modules, connecting ship parts, and balancing power use and consumption.
+ Base building is fun and has a good level of complexity.
+ Houses can be bought and decorated using the same system as base building
+ Music is like a homage to TOS Star Trek, love the exploration themes.
+ Graphics are mostly great. Realism and NASA-punk aesthetic go together well. Some odd clothing choices over in Akila (Firefly was a good show but not that good!)
+ Level-up system is very good. Sinking skill points into an area makes your character feel measurably stronger in that field.

- Characters can be a little two dimensional. Some are better than others but they mostly just fill a single function without seeming to have an inner life.
- Game doesn't respond to my choices and character options. For example, choosing to have parents is nice but in a NG+ where Constellation is dead, my dad still tries to hold conversations with the dead NPCs.
- Occasional crashes.
- Usually oddities with a physics engine, such as ragdolls catapulting around on death, furniture clipping into floors and flailing around, etc. To be expected but could stand improvement.

I'm not really that interested in Egypt and the Bronze Age, but this game surprisingly sucked me in.

+ Some fun faction mechanics which take all the best parts of the Warhammer games, like internal realm politicking and competitions for offices
+ Good unit variety, with mixtures of variously armed infantry, archers, skirmishers, and chariots
+ The resource system from Troy is here but I find the numbers have been balanced since that game
+ Huge variety of buildings to choose between to develop either the economy, society or military
+ The general (lord) level up system is fun and combines with other systems (the Great King of the Hittites can appoint his generals as princes to give them special titles!)
+ Generals can be customised with wargear, like in Warhammer games, except that this loadout actually changes how the general functions as a unit on the battlefield. Eg you can swap his sword for a spear and change his bodyguard into spearmen, or into light archers, or into melee chariots etc etc
+ The history compliments the gameplay but doesn't overwhelm it. I'm not railroaded into any decisions, but I'm aware of historical paths I could take.
+ Good graphics. Environments are beautiful (I especially like chariots leaving trails through wheat fields!)
+ Maps are interesting, including sieges.
+ Battles aren't over too quickly like in Shogun 2, you have time to make interesting choices.

- The unit/model AI is weird like in Rome 2 - if you order one unit to attack through another unit, it doesn't blob up, it moves into and through the other unit, with soldiers phasing through one another. Looks bizarre.
- Seems to be a memory leak that causes lag after an hour or two of play but I assume this will be fixed soon
- A bit unstable. I crash every few hours.
- Musical score is maybe a bit reserved? I think they tried to go for very historical sounding tracks but it comes across underwhelming. I miss the campy music from Rome 1!
- The map could be larger, with more varied playable factions. I guess they want to release that as DLC.
- Not a lot of personalisation with the faction leaders. I don't really get to know them. I guess this is a result of the poor historical records from the time so it can't be helped, but it does detract from my enjoyment.

there are version numbers and DLC purchase buttons everywhere, it looks goofy

X-Com meets Europa Universalis meets Aurora.

The game requires a lot of planning and knowledge which means it isn't for everyone. I personally love learning new systems so it appeals to me, but I have autism.

The AI isn't amazing but the playing field starts so tilted against you that it's still challenging. There are some annoying quirks that make it hard to do what you want (intercepting enemy fleets, for example), but overcoming that is part of learning the systems.

The graphics are good and the music is okay. Would love some more music tracks to keep it interesting. Maybe DLC material.

Very fun and engaging game. Loved the story. There are a lot of characters so it's hard to learn who is who, but since you spend the whole game in one village, you will get to know their names and personalities which is great.

The Germans always seem to have twice as many players as the Americans or Russians