Multi-quote incoming!
I agree completely, and is what I was hoping you’d say. Watching the last round of videos in particular has really cemented for me some of the changes and systemic upgrades, especially playing AoW 3 again like I am. Sectors in particular I’m really cool with, they really amp up the “board game” flavor, and the way the units seem to have more going on, especially with mods, should be really fun and interesting (hopefully the AI can play with all those toys effectively as well).
There are some other cool things, like how empire quests are tied into victory conditions, that I really appreciate as well. Stuff like separating out operations into two pools, for another example.
I don’t think we have to worry here, the details I’ve already seen have convinced me the units and lore will be as fun as AoW 3 has been doing, and the single player campaign isn’t something I’m going to put stock into if it’s not great, because I rarely play the campaigns in games like this anyway. Now, that said, if it turns out the campaign is really awesome and has a fantastic tale to weave, I’m all in. I do like it sounds as if the campaign is molded after Shadow Magic (AoW 2’s outstanding expansion) in that there seems to be three playable factions you pick from and as such, three different start locations. That could lead to a fun, actually replayable, campaign mode.
Watching some of the press, and for some reason especially the Paradox guys that were streaming without Lennart last week, I think you’re in luck. Several of these guys seemed to not have more than a basic grasp of the mechanics and they were doing pretty well. But we can see there is a lot of depth here, tons of interesting choices to make from sector base building, colonizing, research, and build order and beyond. It’s going to be nuts, I suspect, and the best kind of nuts.
I actually agree. The units are really doing it for me, the more I see of the game and the more polish it gets the more I’m growing convinced that launch Planetfall will be almost as good, or as good, as current AoW 3 and only grow from there. The 64-bit engine is really exciting, too. Not just for what it can do for future growth, but also what they might be able to get the AI to do.
This is driving me crazy - every video that had narration would mention X-COM and one mentioned it three of four times in a row. But if it gets more people interested in the game that might otherwise skip it, there is a huge audience of gamers that love stuff like X-COM and Civilization that may have never tried AoW before, I guess I don’t mind.
So that’s where I’m at now. I’m actually really excited the game looks like it’s in such good shape but they still have 6 months to work on it, because that is a lot of content, polish, and balance for a release strategy game. My only honest concern at this point is the AI, but that’s something that I always worry about when it comes to new 4X strategy games. I’m not even worried any more there will be a faction I don’t like - they’ve all been amazing, and I’m having a real problem deciding who to play as first. Random, I suspect.
