After having played the game extensively the last 5 days, I can only agree. The original review here seems way to optimistic here. Not for the bugs, but for the voids in the game. The ultra short campaign, the lack of direction and difference in the sandbox game - where in the end one sandbox game is like any other. It is also the totally out of whack difficulty. Often the other factions had only 1 or 2 cities, another time I really worked hard and met an enemy kingdom/empire with 5 times the size and a super army several times my strength and it was virtually impossible after such a short time for the AI to have that without cheat. Too many times in "easy" I was overwhelmed with masses of armies. The balancing here is nuts, and this game needs MONTHS to patch not weeks.
And indeed, from a $50 game you expect more. If it were ~$30 I would not be so angry, but fifty bucks is a lot of pot, and I expect more from it. (Hearing the campaign is mediocre and only 6 hours, doesn't help either, btw.)
Yup… To me, it's not about the 50 bucks I spent - though I must say, I don't appreciate Brad's "It's ready" statement because it was a factor in me taking the plunge.
Nah, to me it's more about the way Stardock is doing this on purpose - and that people are ok with it.
That means we're sending a clear signal that it's OK to release a completely bare-bones construction kit, and expect players to fill out the game - whilst the developers are slowly fixing and shining it up.
If only more people were pissed, I wouldn't have to be. But if this is where the state of the industry is headed, then I'm going to have to give up supporting it entirely.
I could say the same for Paradox and their EU engine games, as they tend to be pretty messed up as well, but at least they have a somewhat strong design behind them. The Total War series suffer similar issues, but also have decent designs and are generally not technically flawed to this extent.
But, more and more developers are actively exploiting their customers, and what's worse is that customers are being unfathomably apologetic on their behalf. I don't really care how hard it is to make a good game. It used to be doable, back when budgets were small and returns weren't in the millions. It used to be doable in 1-2 years, with games that had fantastic designs, and the worst bugs were squashed within the first couple of patches.
There's nothing technical holding games back, and no one told Brad to be such an incompetent designer. They're self-funded, so I really don't see ANY reasoning that can excuse the state of release.
Right now, people in droves are actually PRAISING Brad, because of his letter posted above. They're basically THANKFUL that Stardock is PROMISING to fix the broken game they released, and took their money for.
How does that work exactly?
A promise is nothing but a promise. Not that I don't think they will try to fix it, but they're obviously incompetent game designers. Even if they EVENTUALLY manage to fix it up, they're still not to be praised. Praise needs to be earned, and you don't do that by taking money from people, selling broken software.
I guess I could release what I've got available for my personal project, which is completely non-functional as is, and then I could simply promise to support it indefinitely.
So, pay me 50$ bucks please