Recent reviews by Dicedead

One more thumbs up.
This game's simply great. The singleplayer actually demands skill when you dwelve into the hard difficulties, as you cannot use the same tactics twice and hope to win: in short, there are four Paths to Victory - that's what they're called, right? - and each civilization has either a general advantage or a perk that prioritizes a certain way of playing that itself may lead to one or two possible Paths. For example, (I think) Arabia has double petroleum - duh -; you can use it either in your army or in trades, making either your army or your economy strong. Therefore, you'll have the choice between a militaristic victory and a diplomatic victory. A little downside regarding this subject is how the game pushes you towards the cultural and diplomatic victories in most cases. You really need a strong army to get a militaristic win as all the other civs will go mad and start attacking you - I'll talk about that below -, and let's not even talk about the scientific victory which I usually just forget. It did let me win in extremis though, once, on the 499th turn (/500 in normal lenghted games).

So yeah, this is not Risk or just another war strategy game. Talking about war. Another downside is how pretty much all civs will consider you a warmonger for capturing a few cities (especially city-states, oh god...). Sometimes, even the leader who begged you for 50 turns to make war to another civ will come scold you.
Finally, the third and last but most important problem I encountered in this game is its addictiveness.
I'm not encouraged to start a game anymore when I only have an hour or two, as I know I won't be able to stop. Fyi a full normal game takes five to six hours. Cutting a game short, aside from being hard, makes you forget your tactics for the round, so you'll be lost the next time you play. Yeah sure you can always play fast and short games but, I don't know, it's not as fun. :T

Aside from that, the music's cool and relaxing, although annoying during warfare when the game thinks you're going to lose and turns on something tragic sounding. The tutorial isn't bad but you'll need to train on easy mode for a little while before jumping into moderate difficulties, and I actually advise you to start with (random) Continents maps as they're the most basic. Diplomacy is actually and logically a huge point in the game, as important as intel in MGSV; I won't expand on that subject or this review will become way too long. Just one more of the many good points: the combat system. If you're smart enough, you can beat your outnumbering opponents but in the contrary, if you make a mistake, your brand new army can be crushed pretty easily.

In conclusion, it's one damn good game to have. You can even play with your friends online or locally, and I haven't even talked about the scenarios nor the mods.




Go nuke Washington, Gandhi to be.

I cannot recommend this game enough. Yes, I didn't play it much recently, as I was busy with some Assassin's Creed and MGSV. But that's what's beautiful about it: after you've played the game for some time, you can just come back to it for a match or two. Won't talk too much of the constant work the devs put in, adding new maps, cars and even gamemodes every now and then to praise the overall entertaining gameplay, which is as addicting as you've surely heard.

Before you buy this game, just note one thing: singleplayer isn't all that fun. Yeah, sure, it's a bit of a challenge in the beginning, but just like in Fifa, the real deal and real fun is in multiplayer, so you'll need an okay wifi connection.

EDIT: 3 months after this review was written. I play RL pretty regularly now. It gets really good when... well, when you git gud and start scoring some awesome goal. Recommending it even more expressively than before.

I didn't enjoy enough the first 80% of the game, honestly. The 8-bit 'battle' system was just not my thing. Luckily, I played the Pacifist run so I got a decent ending - but still with frustrating boss battles. However, according to numerous fans of this game including a friend of mine, this should've been an instant favorite in my Steam library. So really, as said multiple times in this comment section, it's the fandom that kills it.
Maybe that's me? I usually prefer just watching heavily narrative games like this one on Youtube (jackaboy apparently has an extended let's play of this game that I didn't watch yet) than actually playing them, as I primarily search for fun, entertaining and/or action-packed gameplay - please note 'primarily'; as a bookworm I still enjoy interesting plots.

I do not actually not recommend this game, the thumbs down is just a little mostly useless step to lessen the hopes of players like me.

PS: Soundtrack sounds pretty awful when not in context but gets surprisingly better in-game, although it starts giving you earaches towards the end of 3-hour sessions.