Gal Pikar's Reviews
While it's too focused on war and troops to feel like a full 4X, treated as a lavish wargame it measures favorably. A massive number of unit types, lots to research and satisfyingly durable troops makes the combat tactically interesting but there is no diplomacy, culture or any sort of flavor.
Superb combat, a lengthy single player campaign and most of the old Mechwarrior charm makes for an excellent turn-based experience. The surrounding story and meta is sludgy but adequate. Multiplayer works and is a blast but quickly loses its appeal without any progression or tracking. Could have been so much more, but what's here is a great turn-based game.
The combat requires thought and is engaging if you like the puzzly vibe created by Banner Saga (which this game copies well beyond the level of homage). But the massive amounts of nonsensical text you're forced to read leech out any fun the gorgeous graphics and brilliant soundtrack create.
Regardless of how you feel about the politics, the underlying game is too simple and what it does model doesn't make intuitive sense or result in something that looks and feels like a real city state. I wasn't bored the whole time, but a lot of that is because I expended so much energy trying to understand what it's modeling. A manual would have cut my playtime in half.
Borderline casual in simplicity and thoroughly indie, but very generous in doling out new bits to play with for the full, short, play length. It's kind of peaceful, clicky and not too demanding, except when it surprises you with a vicious nightly attack.
Assuming you can imagine using solitaire as the combat mechanic this is actually quite good and imaginative. Nice loot, good RPG progression and it's all intertwined with the solitaire game. Strange but makes the time pass.
While I like TCG’s I don’t like cute, I don’t like repetitive games and I tend to not like roguelikes if they are too much like Rogue (in the move a square at a time sense). I was wrong. This is instantly engaging and highly addictive.