It was quite rough when it launched in Early Access but it really shines now. I wouldn’t say that it’s better than Civ VI or that I like it more, but it’s on par. The combat AI is definitely better than Civ AI. With a greater diversity of civilizations (hopefully a DLC or an expansion is on its way) and more unit…

The worst things for me were the bears in east Limgrave, the t-rex wolves in Caelid, and the goddamn birds in Stormveil. I eventually figured out how to deal with the birds effectively 99% of the time, but I’ve yet to kill one of the big bears. T-rex wolves are about 50/50 - they actually make for very good farming if…

Agreed. Torrent is the best video game horse. I can pick up stuff while mounted (fuck you Red Dead Redemption 2), I don’t get dismounted if I get hit in combat (fuck you Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla), he’s fast (unlimited sprint outside of combat), agile (can turn on a dime), double-jumps in a very satisfying…

Playing it on PC. It runs like shit, and the biggest problem are invisible enemies, NPCs and mount. They are still there, I can still talk to them, or kill them or ride them, they just do not render. Big bosses and animals render just fine. I tried every fix I could find online to no avail. Framerate drops is the…

Yeah, because it’s not a Vortex victory. :) I came close to winning Vortex with Lizardmen and Dark Elves but got too bored. I have no idea how to win it with Skaven or High Elves.

Speaking as someone who sunk hundreds of hours in TW2 and never finished a single campaign (unless Tomb Kings or Bretonnians count?), the poor endgame will not be a significant deterrence! I’m curious - how bug-free is it, and were lessons learned from the really long and tedious between-turn wait time?

Well if we’re speaking of POC speculative fiction authors, check out Esi Edugyan, Marlon James, Nnedi Okorafor, Omar el Akkad; there are many others of course. In RPGs there have been a few big Afrofuturistic and Afrofantasy projects lately, including Mother Lands (POC RPG authors and artists predominantly as I…

So some solutions that I can see:
- Diversify the cast. Why should people of color be only guest players or consultants? Especially since the all-white main cast are the ones reaping the benefits. This will have the added benefit of appealing to more audiences world-wide. Speaking as someone who runs a high school D&D…

Wow! You guys must be eternal optimists if you think we’ll ever see Vampire Bloodlines 2! Didn’t they change basically the entire creative team, then the developer company, and all updates have gone dark more than 6 months ago? 

Sure, but it’s not in the show nor do the characters talk very much about where places are in relation to one another. At least the show indicates how much time is spent travelling around to give a vague idea of the distances involved.

My wife had a similar complaint about the Wheel of Time show where there is no map. Granted, in the first season the lack of a map isn’t a big deal, but geography is going to be a lot more important in the future seasons. As for Witcher, I’m well versed with the Witcher universe so I didn’t feel the lack of a map so…

Agreed. I played it at release on PC, didn’t experience any crashes (just some occasional bugs and irritating framerate drops and texture glitches), had an absolute blast with it. I understand though if the experience was drastically different on consoles...

My patience with New World finally snapped yesterday, quit and uninstalled. For the price it’s not terrible (especially with no subscription fees), but after putting in 90 hours hoping that there’d be improvement, I’m done with it. My list of litanies include crafting bugs that made crafting impossible, persistent lag…

Oh yeah, the whole blog is great. I disagree a bit with the Fremen Mirage a here and there, but his “The Queen’s Latin” series was spectacular. I’m using it in my own classroom this year.

At least they are actively trying to include it in the game and have meaningful decisions related to it and get a player to hopefully think about the consequences of slavery. As opposed to Civilization, Colonization and most recently Humankind. Humankind IMO really dropped the ball on slavery as a whole as it was…

I also highly recommend that specific blog series on Victoria 2 and everything else by him as well! His series on EU4 was what got me back into the game and got me to appreciate and enjoy it a lot more and think about history of states and people in a more nuanced way.

Good list but I think at this point Civ 6 has surpassed Civ 5 in every way, and also Stellaris is better than where Hearts of Iron 4 is at the moment. Frankly I think Paradox has broken HoI4 with additional systems right now and the AI is absolute rubbish. Stellaris also has a much more interesting emergent narrative…

I think you comparison between Humankind’s cultures and Civ 6's Golden Age perks is right on the money. I find that most of the time these culture choices don’t impact the game all that much, not more than the Golden Age perks. There were a couple of cultures that did change up the game but they were few and far…

I’ve put in about 30 hours with the finished copy, and I played another 20 of the closed beta beforehand (by the way - a lot of improvements between the two, Amplitude really listened). I can’t say that I’m having a lot of fun with it - I think your line that it’s too smooth is right on the money. Granted I haven’t…

I love all of them so much! Oh those Russian bed train cabins, I remember them so well!