I think in many cases the fond memories people have for MoM is not so much rose colored glasses as nostalgia. The game came out a long time ago, and many of us were quite a bit younger, more easily impressed and less critical back then. For many people no game could ever be better then MoM because we can't go back in time and play it as a kid (or teen or college student or whatever).
So just to be clear, is it true that this isn't an actual new game like Armored Princess was, but just an addon to Armored Princess that adds a few new things?
[quote who="b0rsuk" reply="11" id="2757631"] I don't know what to say. Master Of Magic and the options it gives to a creative player can easily set your imagination ablaze. [/quote] Yeah and I agree, there were a lot of things that stimulated the imagination. Crazy fantasy races, spells with cool effects, etc. It's just that it wasn't so much a strategy game as a sand box for creating your own fantasy empire. It wasn't the type of game you playe
For the record though, although there were lots of spells that did lots of cool little things and lots of options you could choose from for your wizard, none of it really mattered all that much. Advanced mundane units were extremely powerful, generally much more so then summoned ones, and you could easily win the game without ever casting a single spell. Meanwhile the AI was so incredibly bad that outside of getting overrun very early in the game, there was no realistic way to ever lose.
[quote who="enigma691" reply="47" id="2756089"] If you don't think those kind of things happen in corporate, industry, then my friend I have some ocean front property in Arizonia for sale. And for the reviews and avg. being the same can't say I have seen that in fact it seems from Gamespot where they gave it a 4.0 user reviews had it around 6.7 hardly the same avg. but hate it if ya want it's your party and ya can do what ya want too. [/quote] Well no I do not in fact
[quote who="enigma691" reply="42" id="2755062"]I guarantee that a few of the bigger gaming companies have influenced the exaggerated negative hype especially with reviews. [/quote] So you seriously think is all part of some shadowy conspiracy against Stardock? How do you explain the fact that the average user review is just as low as the average critic review, or the fact that stardock itself has apologized for releasing the game in the state that it's in?
Battle for Wesnoth is more of a story/campaign game though, rather then a game where you fight the computer with equal numbers on an equal map. So any sandbox/random map mode is definitely not how I'd recommend playing it. It's still a great game though and something you should try.
There's never been a universal agreement about what exactly it means to call a game a RPG. The general consensus though is that any game in which your character's abilities (ie dexterity, weapon skill, level, etc) are used to determine success rather then your own is a RPG. Obviously though this is not a perfect definition by far, and some disagree with it. But it's the closest thing to a universal definition you will find. This does mean a game like GTA San Andreas has roleplaying el
[quote who="Ahroo" reply="32" id="2754262"] Love how everyone conviently misses how they waited to review other games. [/quote] Well you've mentioned a whole two (out of the thousands of games they review) other instances when they waited longer to review a game, and in one of those cases there was already a review out for the console version. So we can assume that the other 99% of the games they review are done immediately, making this very consistent. Meanw
[quote who="Ahroo" reply="17" id="2754030"] Quoting hairrorist, reply 14 I'd suggest simply ignoring Ahroo. He is clearly either mentally challenged, or somehow emotionally invested in how this game is reviewed. 1.07 invalidates all reviews... [e digicons]8(|[/e] You remind me of Derek Smart's sycophants that were shocked and outraged that Battlecruiser was poorly received. I suggest simply ingori
[quote who="woca" reply="16" id="2754017"]I was wondering this the other day - do game reviews thing 70 is average, or 50? or do they think it's something else? I usually went with a 70 was average, and recently i've gotten in many arguments with friends who say 50 is. If they were going on a 50 average, I overrated a lot of girls on the hotness scale probably. [/quote] Well I think that's a problem with game reviews, that there isn't any one consiste
[quote who="cattess" reply="28" id="2752771"]Yeh - the games-for-fun vs. car-for-safety thing makes the example irrelevant to me...not at all comparable. How about this: A movie comes out, backed by advertising how great it is. It had been shown to some preview clients, who had some concerns about it, but the producer thad made some changes based on the feedback and hought they addressed many of those issues. The producer no doubt would have liked to work on
As the name suggests, galactic civilizations is really more like civilization then MoO. You move your units one space at a time on a flat civ style square map, and battles are won and last immediately when one unit moves into another. Being in outer space the world is kind of empty, so it's not as interesting as the terrain in Civ. You mostly only care about the sectors that have solar systems and completely ignore all the empty space between them. I like the game, but I'm sure it's not for e
[quote who="fatindian" reply="173" id="2751532"] It has no overall metacritic score because there aren't enough reviews yet (same way rottentomatoes works), it's not special treatment. [/quote] And there aren't enough reviews yet because most reviewers are giving elemental extra time before they review the game Edit: I'm not saying that metacritic itself is giving them special treatment. I'm saying that most other reviewers are and it's reflected in their
[quote who="Xan" reply="168" id="2751371"]Elemental's going to get a 60 or so metacritic average and you think they should be counting their lucky stars? Only an idiot or asshole would consider that lucky, take your pick. Go out onto Metacritic and look at the types of games that get a 60 metacritic average. MOO 3, a total POS game got in the 60s. Elemental has its flaws but it's a masterpiece compared to MOO3 when it launched. And only became marginally better because
The SC II notepad did have branding stuff on all it's pages so your probably correct about it's purpose. Regarding Elemental, even before any possible future expansions I expect to see a large number of gameplay elements completely reworked to create a more balanced and cohesive game. I guess it would have been kind of sad to have this huge printed manual which is no longer remotely useful or accurate.
The released version of Arcanum was almost a great game, but was buggy and poorly balanced. Even still it managed to be quite fun and interesting and had a solid game behind it. But it was one of those things where you can't help seeing how much more it could have been with some more polish. If there's a fan mod that fixes all that then it's definitely something you should check out if you can deal with a dated engine. Even without the fan mod it's still quite possible to enjoy especially if
Games like chess have an easier time with AI because they can use sort of a brute force approach when neccesary. This is where if the AI doesn't have a preprogrammed strategy, it can just examine every possible move it could make, then look at every possible move the turn after that, and keep going. This allows it to make some really smart moves even when whatever preset strategy it was working on gets thrown off it's rails. This doesn't work in most computer strategy games&
[quote who="MxM111" reply="3" id="2748581"]I disagree. Oh I agree that AI is bad, but I think balancing and significant late game changes should be incorporated. Good AI can not be written without first setting the rules of the game, and right now, I suspect lots of changes are needed in the rules in order for the game become fun, THEN good AI is possible to write. [/quote] I agree as well. While fixing the AI might give the most short term improvement, the AI will only become br
Actually the transport ship thing is probably the thing I like least about Galciv 2. I mean I understand the point of them, they slow down conquest a bit keeping you from getting overrun too early and it kind of makes sense that you'd need troop transports as well as battleships to take over worlds. But they also make it a little too annoying to play an aggressive low economy high offence race, and they are just really annoying and slow the game down as your always waiting for transports to a
It is worth noting that when a book comes out which is based on a game, it's almost universally going to be awful. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the bar is not exactly set very high here. So this is one area where I'm quite willing to forgive Stardock if the product is not great. Books based on roleplaying games can (sometimes) have a slightly higher quality to them, but when it's based on a video or computer game (or card game) then your usually thrilled when it's no worse
[quote who="Das123" reply="96" id="2746212"]Did they ever make a random map generator for Elven Legacy? I bought the original and one of the upgrades but without random maps I quickly lost interest. [/quote] Seems like an odd game to have random maps, it's a campaign/story game rather then a sandbox 4x game.
I wonder if Civ 5 will keep it's big manual. I always kind of liked that too. I also miss nice touches like the spell book that came with MoM. I guess I can kind of understand why you don't see them as much anymore, and as games become more and more likely to be downloaded from somewhere like Impulse you will probably see them even less. But just because I understand why they are disapearing doesn't mean I can't still wish they were still around.
[quote who="Raruto" reply="77" id="2745705"] Quoting rossanderson48, reply 62 I think they changed that in HOMM V Raruto. Noticed. Though it is somewhat the mere addiction of physical hero attack from distance (melee also... which is pretty absurd even for a fantasy game... "yahooo i'm gonna have a charge against an enemy group and go back where no one can touch me without a scratch IT'S SO GOOD TO BE A HERO now it's your turn stupid peasant go whe
[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="11" id="2744806"]Neither, Sword of the Stars (and it's expansions) is clearly superior to both. Especially GC2, which becomes trivially easy to beat due to piss poor AI implementation on the strategic level. [/quote] Interesting, I've always thought the AI was pretty good in Galactic Civilizations. Certainly it has a reputation for having a strong AI. But I've also found that on these discussion forums there isn't a single