I had a lot of time over the weekend, so I've demoed it and played for a while. Did three games, as feudal, barbarian and mystic. Don't really feel like continuing, I'll maybe check back when the full edition is at -70%.
I think
whocares pretty much nailed it. This game finishes the transition of AoW from a wargame/rpg hybrid with a rudimentary, but fun, strategy layer into a bog standard 4X with fantasy coating. Thus, the biggest issue and the proverbial elephant in the room are not cultures or lack of races (although it sucks, for sure), but the fact that the strategy layer and the entire 4X part is even more featureless, plain and boring than it was when the game was still AoW. Planetfall's biggest sin was that it took so many features away offering very little in return, but AoW4 takes it a step further and there's literally nothing. Not even the most rudimentary AoW stuff, like altering mana nodes. No special building unlocks, no upgrades affecting the strategy map, no cosmic happenings, no builder unit offering some basic tile development, no npc factions/dwellings, no corrupting farms/springs of life, strategic magic got neutered even further. All there is is the simplified SECTORS!!! system from PF and rudimentary adjacency bonuses for some of the special sector types, because I guess this became another mandatory thing to have in your game after nu-civ stole it from Endless Legend.
The city development is I guess kinda better than PF, mostly because there is something to build now and they backtracked on the genius idea of buildings having no costs and auto-garrisons. But, just like I thought, all those buildings are +5/10/15 and the "unique" ones are unique, because they give +10/5/15 instead. Buildings that do anything else are extremely rare and when they do, it's not interesting, either. Also, a lot of basic math/design problems, like tower upgrade that gives +2 mana per kept hostile hero when the basic shrine gives like +10, lol.
The economy seemed like something that might as well not exist. I was swimming in mana and gold despite just trying stuff out and clicking shit at random. There was literally never a time when I had to think which unit to train or building to produce due to funds. The random events all have options to pay couple hundred mana/gold to get a better outcome and it's like "lol ok why wouldn't I".
They talked about Free cities all the time in the streams, pumping it up with drums rolling. The reality: you meet a neutral city, you give them a "whispering stone", wait a while (might spend imperium mana or whatever to speed it up) and you can either integrate or vassalize them. Or just conquer and migrate your race. Like... ok? PF with its npc factions having completely unique unit/mod/spell sets shits all over this nothingburger.
And I think the worries about map size were very justified. In my first full game I was cornered by free cities pretty much immediately and the only place I could build my own outpost was in the freezing wastes on a shore, after which almost every bit of land was either taken or unreachable.
And yeah, you cannot select your res in options
I chose Ultra in the settings and the game decided to set the res to 720p. I changed it to native through nvidia panel and the game was running butter smooth on my 3070, no freezes or crashes, either, despite the problems apparently mostly happening for Nvidida users. The loading times (both for game booting and saves) were improved a lot, probably the biggest qol change compared to the previous games.
