Quick strategy(ish?) game reviews for busy people like me.
My name is Thoraxe and this is Strategy for Busy People. This is a channel for people who don't want to spend two hours watching someone explore a game for the first time. This is a channel for people who just want to know if they should bother checking out a game. These are not in-depth reviews. These are quick-hit, snark-filled rants about the random games I end up playing.
If you've got a few minutes, I'll tell you what to play.
I've had my eyes on Ixion for a while but was turned away by similar reviews! I love a game that tells its story partially through the development of its factions and people (asking for things, advocating for changes, losing due to events), but maybe that means I should go back to Frostpunk for now!
If you really like frostpunk, Ixion is gets close to it. The constant feeling of managing away from certain doom. The low key environmental storytellling. But as said above, where frostpunk slowly ramps up the missery if you fail, Ixion will watch every step you do and gut punch you for every wrong one. Ixions story is abstract cerebral scify, which has less wide apeal then frostpunks.
I put some time in Frostpunk 1 quite a long time ago, but it's been long enough that I should probably go back and play it and review it and then play Frostpunk 2!
I like this comparison. I agree that Frostpunk was a much more gradual treadmill of suck, and I think the choices were much more gut-wrenching in Frostpunk, but I also didn't get that deep into Ixion.
Thanks for this Vid. Game looks really cool and I might give it a go one day. 100h lenght for 1 campaign is a bit to much for me though. These days im happy when games are a bit shorter.
Multiplayer games are lackluster in Armello. Some players join lobbies just to quit every single game! Since quitters quit because of their belief that games are decided on turn 1, I decided to stop playing multiplayer indefinitely.
Pioneers isn't my taste, I really liked the hybrid of New Allies not full rts not full economy not full city builder, Is a nice spot. Also prefer Manorlords vs Pioneers
I only played an early access/beta version of new allies and it was terrible. Although I'm very disappointed with Pioneers of Pagonia as well. It's not settlers 8. There are no enemy AI players to fight, just different scenarios with random NPCs spread around the map. So you're not really competing against anyone/anything. I thought it would be like setters with other AI factions that tried to take over the map. The game is a huge disappointment. Although admittedly I only played it for a few hours when it was released, but I don't think they've added any AI opponents or have any plans to ever do so.
There were certainly AI settlements that I was interacting with, and they were expanding. I didn't get deep enough into the different game modes to say whether I can agree with you or not. I found it Settlers-enough 😀
Getting good platinum scores on tough in Ranked is one of the most rewarding strategy game challenges I've done so far (and it's nice that it doesn't take more than 2 or 3 hours). Though I think this game could be just a little more perfect if there was a version without any hidden information. It feels to me like there is a conflict between the undo mechanics encouraging puzzle game like approaches and the hidden planet types making the success on any particular seed at least a little bit dependent on the luck of scouting the right planets
Also I think it's somewhat of a consensus that getting full plat on some of the campaign missions on tough is a bit too luck dependent. I don't know how much of a problem this would be with no hidden information and thus more potential for planning
nice 3 burgers.. Love it.. the starving folks of the Ursee also love it.. That said they do go out fishing in the upcoming massive update (also in public beta now) it's coming next week. But thank you for giving it a spin.!!! this took time and effort to play and get to the good bits. Thanks!
you're welcome, and, of course, thank you for spending the time to talk through some of the finer points and for being receptive to feedback. I will keep an eye out for the update and maybe give it a respin!
@@strategyforbusypeople oh yeah I'm a fan of medieval dynasty lol.. it's a slow paced game. A little confusing at times but I'm definitely going to check out the video. Thanks 😊 again
LOL, just dropped a comment on another one of your videos and thought I would check out others. Man, I loved this original series, bought most of the DLCs and played it nearly to death. Didn't even know a new one had come out, will wait for a sale as I am busy enough already with both CS2 and BeamNG. Too many games, too little time! Thank you for another helpful video and, again, best of luck with your channel.
Ha, I was ahead of you by about 5 days. After waiting since launch to play this game, I finally made the plunge... and glad I did. After playing CS1 for many years on my PS4, I am finding it somewhat of a challenge though getting back to flowing easily through all the menus with either a controller or mouse. Soooo, I have been mostly farting around with it trying to get some 'muscle-memory' back for my gameplay. As you stated, parts of both versions' gameplay can be really tedious. Anyways, I thought this was a very good and fair assessment, best of luck with your channel!
Thanks! You waited just long enough to get into CS:II. It's finally "here." Check out the Road Builder mod that's dropping in a few days. It looks to be super sick.
6:32 "Civic choices appear to be permanent" They're actually not; you can change them later, but it costs influence. You can also get random events that allow you to change them for free, but those are fairly rare.
@@Brett-uq4tz Not really? It's a slow-paced RTS inside the Dune franchise. There isn't really any politics. There's no dealmaking or treaties or anything of the sort.
@@strategyforbusypeople ok that's weird, cause dune's all about politics and political intrigue, and the landsraad is featured in this game too, so I guess it's not a thing to be a schemer in the game then huh?
@@Brett-uq4tz if you watch the video I do go into the whole Landsraad voting system which is pretty important for gaining buffs. And I think I mis-spoke - it's been so long since I played I forgot that you can ally with other map players. In fact I think one of my complaints (granted, on easy) was that I was able to ally, then break my alliance, and then immediately re-ally after taking some territory.
Nice one. Colony sims is my favorite genre this year. And ONI is among the best ones. You need to try Workers and Resources. The 1.0 version has a very good tutorial and you will find that it is very similar to a colony sim.
Thanks for sharing this game I am now very interested. But I just have one question. Can you disable the dropping items on death feature. It is one of my most hated features on games.
It definitely drops your kit on death. However, that might be a feature you can turn off, and the game has somewhat of a mod community. It's worth looking into!
Fun game I've been playing since lockdown, 650 hours and I only reached tier 7 yesterday. I can't bring myself to start Satisfactory again from scratch, the game doesn't hold your hand but it's good 👍
nice review! the game does have its quirks. Satisfactory is one of the few games where you are still a noob at 24 hours playtime lol. I played Satisfactory first, but I enjoy it far more than Dyson Sphere program personally.
@@strategyforbusypeople ya know, I can't totally put my finger on it. Might partially be the perspective. I'm also not a fan of systems that use inserters, or crafting of buildings that stay in your inventory and need to be automated. I don't remember the tutorial, but if the tutorial is on rails and treats the player like they are stupid, that also causes me to bounce off a game. That was the main problem I had with foundry.
@@marcbennett9232 the early tutorial was definitely on rails, but I didn't find it that obtrusive. It definitely helped figure things out for me. But that doesn't invalidate your not liking it. Yeah, managing your inventory of assembled stuff was annoying at times, but in the later game it becomes less of an issue. Your mech gets more storage and you can temporarily keep stuff in storage buildings, too. But, hey, to each their own!
@@strategyforbusypeople its not so much inventory as it is I find it stupid lol. its a hold over from factorio, many other games do it too. sometimes I can look past it, sometimes not.
Satisfactory is the best factory game there is. I only have about 700 hours gameplay. If you don't understand the game, don't disrespect it. It takes time to understand. The Satisfactory website & partner websites has more than enough details to improve your game play. I do not agree with the final decision - most fun factory game with one of the greatest gaming communities.
I don't think I ever said that I didn't understand it. Finding mechanics or controls clunky doesn't mean I don't understand the game. If someone gave you mittens and asked you to draw blueprints, you wouldn't tell the draw-er that they don't understand blueprinting. The tools (mittens) just aren't great. Lots of people love this game, and that's OK. If you don't find the controls clunky or frustrating or find the long, painful runs between locations unpleasant, that doesn't mean that my not liking those things and finding the game so-so means you're wrong. It just means we like different things.
Dude, I am just sad for you. This game is a blast, and playing it "badly" is no reason to say its not good. There is an overwhelmingly positive rating for a reason. Maybe ask a friend to go together... HECK! Ask me and I devote at least 2 hours of my time teaching you the ropes so that you may have the joy you deserve from this game.
I didn't say it wasn't good because I was bad at it. I said it wasn't good because the single-player experience wasn't good, and for various other reasons. Plenty of games have overwhelmingly positive reviews. That doesn't create some sort of requirement for the player to like it. I give Brussels sprouts overwhelmingly positive reviews, and other people hate them. And both of us are OK. Except that roasted Brussels sprouts are 🧑🍳😘
I've got about 500 hours on Steam, plus however many hours from the Epic Store. Started playing the game back in Update 2. Absolutely love this game, but it is a time investment. From what the devs are saying, version 1.0 is going to help streamline some of the early game, really looking forward to it.
the game is absolutely fantastic. spend almost 300 hours in it. absolutely hate the building process itself. the buildings are slightly too large and belting gives me aneurysm. ...and the jetpack unlocks waay too late. everything else is 10/10
The anomaly you summon isn't actually the Anomaly. It's the doorway. The Anomaly itself is a dimension outside space and time. It functions like the TARDIS from Dr. Who.
The game shines on multiplayer. Even with random people from the match making. It doesn't have chat or voice communication and you can easily ban someone if they annoy you, which never happened to me. In my experience the game only gets boring in the very late game, when you have mastered all the mission types and explored all classes and weapons.
@@strategyforbusypeople now I don’t know *what* you don’t like about multiplayer, but let me just shill for a second and say that Deep Rock Galactic has one of **the** most friendly playerbases I’ve ever experienced. You could be on hazard 5, the highest non-modded difficulty in the game, say „brb, gotta feed my dog“ or something and be gone for 10 minutes, and the average lobby wouldn’t hold it against you. Voice chat can be easily turned off in the settings (I did and even on hazard 5 it’s never given me any problems). I’ve got like 500 hours of in-game mission time, and I’ve only encountered a toxic lobby **once.** If you do decide to ever try out multiplayer, there’s two things you should know: 1) avoid tryhard lobbies. If a mission has a server name like „100+ or kick, silver promotion or higher, if you play slow = ban“, it’s made by someone who plays Deep Rock Galactic *competitively,* and you generally don’t need a competitive mindset for it, at least for the non-modded difficulties. 2) hazard 4, the second highest difficulty in the game, is cursed, somewhat. I’d suggest making your own haz 4 lobbies. for some reason, hazard 4 has more toxic and competitive „play fast or kick“ type of players than hazard 5. Also; I will say that this type of game is difficult to review if you don’t already like it, since you didn’t play long enough to unlock overclocks, play multiplayer, or try out different hazards and missions types. You really get the best experience by unlocking all of the basic upgrades on every class. As someone who played nothing but the engineer in this game, and then had to switch to an un-upgraded scout: it makes the gameplay feel sluggish for a while. If this type of game is not for you then that’s fine, but I’m sure some grebeards would be more than willing to help you learn the game if you called your lobby something like „greenbeard learning the game, veteran players appreciated“. Rock and Stone!
I once spent some time speedrunning this game. It always feels like there are plenty of options on how to tackle stuff and plenty to do on every corner, which is fun, and also an interesting puzzle. It is absolutely a buggy mess of a game, but that's actually an advantage in my opinion, because the glitches actually add options. Melee attacks are unfortunately quite buggy, but they're also pretty powerful despite it. Especially with some of the bigger hackables, which does create some fun moments where the game needs to spend like 10 seconds trying to catch back up to everything you did. Might need to get back into this game at some point.
Not all "easy" ends up being "too easy." Would you have preferred I tried hard and found it too hard? What if I had found normal just right? Would that be equally not credible?
@@strategyforbusypeople To review games i would expect one to be a gamer for a long time with plenty of experience. Someone who starts easy only to discover easy gives off the vibes of an ING journalist who actually has no clue of gaming but that is their job so they write up some garbage. Saying you play on easy and find that the game is so easy it did not really even fight back is only experiencing half the game.
@@GertMega this sounds like a "true Scotsman" argument. I've been playing games for nearly 40 years, starting with a Fairchild, and mention in the review having played both the original Dune 1 as well as Dune 2 games, so it's unclear why you think that means I'm either not a gamer or don't have enough experience. It also sounds like you're saying that someone who doesn't play games on harder difficulty settings also isn't doing it right. That, too, sounds like a bit of a "true Scotsman" argument. But you can't please everyone, and I'm sorry that you found my short, sarcastic, cheeky review to lack credibility.
@@strategyforbusypeople I do not really know what ture scotsman means but it does not really matter if you have played for 1 year or 40 years if you come off as if you do not really know what your are doing or have not played it enough. As a reviewer your presentation honestly matters more the the content. Just look at IGN they give pure garbage reviews that sometimes clearly show that the reviewer does not know what he is talking about, is forced to make a good review or does not even know gaming. Somehow they still have an insane viewership because of their presentation. You could potentially have huge experience, know the game and have played it far more then one could realized, but your presentation of it did not show it.> And yes besides the point, my own biased opinion is that someone who has played video games for 40 years should never even touch easy mode. Especially when after that you critique the AI for being stupid, no kidding it is stupid on easy mode. Easy mode is literally made for people who are playing videogames like once a year or are handicapped IRL physically or mentally. They intentionally destroy the AI on easy modes on all games. Not that i doubt the AI is smart and not stupid on harder difficulties but it is probably smarter. Then you finally say you did not even play on normal or even higher difficulties. I am sorry but that destroys any kind of credibility and is one of the reasons why so many people knowledgeable about IGN hate on them, because they do not even bother to properly play the games that they review.
Very Nice. The game is still a bit buggy but the graphics are really nice. The best part for me is going in 3th person mode and just walk observing people do their things. I still haven't figured out combat tho.
@@lc6033 I think the graphics are in line with other Shiro titles. They were going for a particular look and feel, and I think they're pretty consistent with that. I can appreciate if you wanted a more photorealistic-type of feel a'la Command and Conquer or something. It's just not that game. But this also isn't GraphicsForBusyPeople e😃
Apparently, you never used the F1 key to bring up the game's help (or fully explored the in-game menu), which would have spared you most of your internet research.
Bought the game to scratch that survival itch. I was looking for something that is a bit more realistic-looking without zombies and this seems to be it!
