Recent reviews by Maximilian Kolbe

It's so over

Dark Souls once it graduates high school and leaves its goth phase behind it, the game.

It has many of the same positives as Dark Souls II, but with new gameplay refinements from Sekiro and DSIII. It's the pinnacle of the series and the genre, and should be looked at as the shining example on a hill of what open world RPGs can be.

good

Possibly the best rogue-like I've ever played.

Get the four pack, invite some friends and dive deep into the dungeons. The experience is amazing, albeit difficult to master in singleplayer, and the easiness of having a party in multiplayer doesn't actually ruin the charm of the game as in other rogue-likes. I'd say it makes the experience better if everybody knows what they're doing.

Get it, full price.

Valve decided it was too much effort on their part to ship the item, and instead of contacting me or anybody else they've done this to, they just refunded the item and didn't respond to the ticket I opened afterward.

Don't buy Valve hardware.

The following is less of a review and more of an explaination of why reviews have gone down the gutter (May 2018).

Stellaris is a relatively fast-paced scifi RTS with one of the larger learning curves out there. Despite this, it is very accessible to the average gamer and the initial confusion only adds to the sense of discovery that Stellaris gives off. If you are a fan of any variety of science fiction or the RTS genre, this game is a great fit for you even without any DLC.

The "Mostly Negative" rating that you see up there (unless it's changed since this was written) is due partly due to people not liking the new 2.0 update, which introduce multiple changes to how movement works that balanced the game to be viable in multiplayer and long-term singleplayer, but is mostly due to the massive Chinese community review bombing the game after Paradox accidentally released a half-finished Chinese build, and removed it in a following update due to a) it was incomplete b) the Steam Store page never advertised it as having a finished or even partial Chinese translation and c) it wasn't even supposed to be released in its current state. Paradox's official statement on the matter confirms this,[forum.paradoxplaza.com] as does community member's recap of the events. Please, don't judge the game based on the aimless anger of Chinese keyboard warriors, and instead go watch some gameplay and decide for yourself.

If you happen to be one of those people looking for a Chinese translation, please view one of the many community-based translations such as this one.

I would really only get this on sale. The only features that you will ever actually use are diplomatic feedback and estates, and even then; estates are more of pointless difficulty than an actual addition to the game. Random estate-related events fire too often, usually increasing their influence and decreasing their loyalty.

Diplomatic feedback seems to only help in large-scale wars in the late game, as you can tell your allies what land you call 'dibs' on and you can see what land they do as well. Not a necessary feature, but sometimes useful.

The real thing with this DLC is the advanced culture mechanics, but until individual cultures are actually given purpose (as of now, there is no advantage to having, say, German culture as opposed to Wallonian), this is just pointless. complication.

Oh yeah, and they made Tengri not terrible. Yay. This is an 'ok' DLC, but I really wouldn't buy it until the price falls below $5, or if you consistently play as a horde.

While it was pretty much immediately abandoned by the developer, the game in itself is pretty fun, and has a pretty extensive modding community. There's not much to the game other than "build house, feed that house, build more house," but it can give you a nice 15 hours of fun before it gets old. The game isn't too well-off on the graphics spectrum, models of animals and people feel lazily done compared to the nice grass and tree textures. 6.5/10 Fun for 10 hours, don't buy for visuals.

The game itself is fantastic, but the community is terrible. You better go in having some friends with you, because the maps are often;
-Overpopulated, meaning resources are sparse
-Crowded with bandits, because resources are sparse
-Made incorrectly in certain areas, allowing players to crawl under roads and shoot people from under them.

Unless you play on a full vanilla server, which are becoming rarer and rarer as the workshop grows, the game becomes broken.

No.