Purchasing advice for people interested in this game

[Aeon221]

Don't buy it.

Hey, I know, it's conceptually brilliant and should have been an easy home run. It wasn't. And the failure will probably set back RTS design by a few years, because it really was a creative idea let down by shit implementation. Especially since THQ is having trouble and Relic is therefore at risk. You know who Relic is, right? They're the guys behind Dawn of War 1 & 2 and Company of Heroes. They reinvented the RTS.

So, don't buy this game. It sucks. Why does it suck? For one thing, the unit pathfinding is terrible. For another, the UI looks like it was designed by someone who never met a user he didn't hate. A third reason? The graphics are dull and uninspired. I don't mean they're low res or low power or whatever (these are actually good attributes when you want to make an MP RTS), I mean that design wise they're boring and terrible looking. Guild Wars has low system specs and phenomenal art design, this has low specs and crappy art design.

Let's look at the books for an example of how to do game design. You know what the books are driven by? Durr! The characters!

http://www.fileplanet.com/224596/220000 ... gs-II-Demo

Beyond the phenomenal art design, you know what makes CK2 pop for me? Character. Driven.

Everything you do in CK2 is governed by the characters and the way they feel about each other, and it's the absence of that insane dynamic that makes AGOT feel so, well, bland and generic despite the creative ideas. How can you do a GoT game where every side is nothing more than a unique unit, a flag and a stat bonus? Or where commanders are tiny dudes with no interesting features. Why isn't my commander trying to get laid at every village, or torturing people for fun, or causing me problems. Why isn't my heir attempting to steal the throne? Where's the dynamic element?

Or if you don't want that level of character driven play, you could have at least made the Lord and his Heirs/Bastards interesting in their own right and given them attributes that mattered for both role play and game play. You could have made the local lords more than just a single word.

So that's where I think the game failed worst. Exciting and interesting characters were available, but they weren't used. The node control mechanisms are creative, but the implementation was spammy and irritating rather than exciting and decisive. And the art, well, the art looks like ass balls.

Don't buy this game.

[Skjuludde]

The concept could indeed have been brilliant with some tweaks and fixes. Cyanide took it and turned into an annoying capture the nod mess, something that's been around for years, and just dressed it to look cool. If you look at the core gamePlay it is simply capture the nod, very disappointing indeed. I agree don't buy this game. In fact pirate this game just for the simple fact of how they treated their paying customers, in the way of silently abandoning the game.