7 years of development and it simply feels like a graphical update from the first M&B.
I really, really wish I could fathom what the devs spent their time on.
Sure, the graphical upgrade is nice but hardly AAA.
Let me list a few reasons for my disappointment:
- Combat is clunky and lackluster. While this was true for the older games I'm sure most of us expected some innovation on this front.
- The menu-based system for commanding troops is cumbersome - again, I expected this to be improved.
- Gameplay-wise it feels like very little was improved upon from the original games. This feels more like a new map with some mods.
- Which brings me to the cost. Why on earth would you charge so much for a title that is in all respects simply v1.5 of your original game?
Minor complaints:
- Certain cities/towns have no ambient sounds making them rather lifeless.
- Town/City NPC's are as cookie cutter as you can get...and not in a good way.
- The Character Creator doesn't seem nearly as inspired and versatile as they lead us to believe during previous gameplay demos.
Again 7 years? As a fan and a paying customer I truly believe the community deserves some insight into how so much time could have been wasted on something that you had almost the entire blueprint for already? Don't get me wrong, I will still play and enjoy this game...but no more than the previous one as it is in many ways the same product and certainly not what anyone would have expected nearly a decade later.
You lose the right to complain when you post claims in ignorance. Willful or otherwise.
"7 years of Development". They had to restart, about 3 years in, due to game engine restrictions. Where they REBUILT an entirely new engine. I can say that for sure, they did this once. But to the best of my knowledge they had to restart the ENTIRE game TWICE due to elements like this.
So no, it's not a game that's been "7 Years in Development". It's a project that has been Started, Scrapped, Restarted, multiple times in a 7 year span. Now I'm not familiar with coding at all, but I imagine learning a new game engine takes time. A lot of it. It also requires different coding. Hence why most Developers stick with Unreal or Frostbite, or whatever. They don't just jump from C++ to Linux to whatever other types of coding there may be.
A Better analogy is that you can't just expect a Mechanic to know all the design tricks of a Volkswagon, when they specialize on Toyotas. The general repairs and work arounds might be the same, but the vehicles are vastly different under the hood in design.
Combat is "Clunky" is objective. The physics are more real than the original, so positioning is more important. The Shield bash and kick are more responsive. Having mastered games like For Honor, I'm not quite sure how one would apply a "Complex" combat system like that to massive battles. Hell, For Honor lags on games with 8 players and 50 ish AI units and the AI soldiers (not heros) are braindead and only do singular attack swings.
My only complaint with combat is that the AI just swarms. So it's almost impossible to fight anything more than 1v1 because they just constantly swing. But while that is a complaint, realistically that is what untrained barbarian hordes WOULD do. They'd just do a better job to surround you, rather than swarm from the front. Again I don't code, so I don't know the complexity of it, but it's a Warlord game, you really shouldn't be trying to 1v100 Armies on foot. Though I'm sure players more skilled than me can figure it out.
The tactics menu is fine. You just need some time to memorize it so that you don't have to sift through it. Saying it's cumbersome is like saying hotkeys in StarCraft are cumbersome because you're too lazy to learn them, but the pro players have them mastered.
Literally all of your minor complaints were pre-addressed. They openly stated that a lot of town features would be missing/have place holders. I'm sure that as the bugs are ironed out, more customization options will be added, and if not, then you can complain.
As it stands I've already sunk 20+ Hours into the game (Yay Quarantine) and have had much fun, despite the bugs, graphical errors, and oddities that happen. I've yet to have a single crash in those 20+ hours. Not one, though I'm sure others have, but many things complained about like the Sea raider hide out crash have been fixed in under a day since release.
It's Early Access. You had a full warning of what you were buying. The "7 Years" excuse doesn't fly because again, they didn't spend 7 straight years designing what we have. Probably more like 2-3.