No, there’s really no excusing this game’s development. If anything, Robert’s should have learned from Freelancer to have a tight core product that’s actually shippable.
At this point Internet nerds are locked into throwing money at Star Citizen’s development, making it the closest thing humanity has achieved to a perpetual motion machine.
The controls hold up better than something like Star Wars Rogue Squadron, which I surprised myself to discover. I have great memories of Rogue Squadron but the controls are stiff in all the wrong ways while StarFox is comparatively easier to fly even in the non-linear arena areas.
Visually StarFox is obviously dated, but because it opted for big low detail style to begin with it isn’t difficult on the eyes the way “realistic” N64 games look today.
I’ve been part of some amateur game dev projects and SC has the vibe of an amateur project where the devs are constantly focusing on whatever catches their fancy at the moment, going back and tinkering with things they’ve already made, and sort of aimlessly scope creeping. There’s nobody to strongarm them into writing, much less following a game design document.
All of that is intuitive to me to understand.
Then there is “the dream” that is being sold to people who want this type of game. That level of very specific fandom is also easy to understand, at least from a distance. People get super into all kinds of games and spend outsized amounts of money and time.
Star Citizen is like the perfect storm of these elements.
I’ve tried playing Lords Of Magic and have bounced off of it. The real time combat feels more like a real time tactics game than a strategy game, and I’m pretty bad at real time tactics games. It also makes use of heroic characters and faction specific abilities and magic. It’s something I haven’t fully wrapped around.
Lords Of The Realm 2 is substantially different from the Civ games. In Lords Of The Realm 2 there is no tech tree and no eras to unlock, there are no alternative options for victory aside from military success, the player and AI do not create their villages but the village locations are preset on the map, there is no building of logistical infrastructure such as roads or mining quarries- instead each county has predetermined resources and the player only decides how many workers to assign to them, battles happen inside their own distinct level of play rather than happening on the world map.
The Civ games are 4x games where long term research and policy decisions are needed to build a faction. Lords Of The Realm 2 is set strictly in the medieval setting and is only concerned with the immediate local squabble.
For $1.29 you can buy a pack with Lords of The Realm 1,2,3 and Lords Of Magic on Steam right now. (This is not an ad, just saying, the game is still very accessible).
And I miss big thick paper manuals, especially ones with background info and art.
Thanks. I’m trying to put that content everybody keeps asking for on lemmy. I’m mentally toying with the idea of videos if I become confident enough to script and edit.
I never played 3. Back in the day my computer couldn’t run it, and I never got around to trying it out. I own it as part of the Steam pack I bought 2 with, but my next review will be a mystery game that I had to order a physical copy of.
I always go full vegetarian. Sell all the cows and use the money to buy a bunch of grain, preferably in winter. Plant everything, and you’re good. Once grain starts making surpluses you have enough to feed everyone and sell the excess back to the carts for the rest of the game.
In spring, summer, and winter grain needs fewer workers. Only in fall will it need reallocation.