Adrenaline Vault Review of Victoria

[unmerged(2238)]

The only part I thought was laughable was his focus on the lack of play options because there were only 4 scenarios. FOUR SCENARIOS AND 100 COUNTRIES. And you can play every country totally differently every time. That's the only part that really stuck out for me. The idea that Victoria isn't ambitious enough made me laugh. There are some problems with Victoria right now, but a lack of ambition and play styles is NOT one of them.

 

[unmerged(7034)]

I read the latest reviews and it seems to me there's a definite trend emerging: in order to write game reviews, you have to be a moron in a hurry. That's qualification number one.

 

[unmerged(13909)]

The only part I thought was laughable was his focus on the lack of play options because there were only 4 scenarios. FOUR SCENARIOS AND 100 COUNTRIES. And you can play every country totally differently every time. That's the only part that really stuck out for me. The idea that Victoria isn't ambitious enough made me laugh. There are some problems with Victoria right now, but a lack of ambition and play styles is NOT one of them.

Perhaps he wasn't far short of the truth with the 11 playable nations ?
As things currently stand nowhere near 100 countries are playable; I don't mean industrialising them and conquering the world, most of them you have to elimate the army, all other expenditure, pray for the Trade tech to build factories and hope you lucky enough to get a small luxury eventually going.
ie last game I tried Persia, didn't the usual things, but wisely kept 4 divisions on ultra low maintanence, still loosing 30+ pounds a day. After a couple of years an event for british advisors turned up, and I got 25-26 ! techs in one go. Great I thought, bit excessive, but this gives me a chance. Wrong, just as I was working out if I had the 'bottle neck tech of trade' the rebellion kicked in. Fair enough you'd expect a fair amount of revolt with the British event, most provinces seemed to be 1-4 % revolt risk. Bang, all hell broke loose within a few short months, despite my best efforts, half of the provinces were in revolt and controlled by them. Not long after the capital revolted and it was all over.
This revolted in a change of government... to Democracy. This I found utterly unrealistic. How does Iran go from an absolute monarchy to a wide open democracy in the late 1830's ? its inexplicable, didn't make the country any more playable. At which point I have up as the revolts were starting to kick in a few days latter.

 

[sensei]

Why was the 2/5 stars portion of my original thread title removed?

 

[Green Giant]

I don't understand the mediocre reviews.

Victoria is really fun. Its like EU but so much more complex. Sure, it has issues but IMO the superior gameplay shines through.

 

[Alexandru H.]

Lines that made me laugh: :rofl:

"The game has a fine pedigree. After all Paradox Entertainment was the force behind Europa Universalis. " - seeing his review, I doubt he ever played EU

"Where is that pause button?" - where it always is, on every keyboard

"The goals of the game are rather easy to understand. You are tasked with recreating world history given a certain political and historical base and span your empire across Europe" - it seems that this guy wants to conquer Europe with every country in the world....a EURO-hatist it seems

"The game is keyboard driven" - I already threw the mouse out

"The graphical quality of this game is simplistic. Victoria is a mapboard game" - Wow...you mean, we don't get the flashy AoE buildings or the Warcraft heroes and spells...man, that is really crude...a mapboard is not a very fun thing to play with

"Better to step back and pick up a copy of Europa Universalis" - including the reviewer too...

"The map looks nice, but offers nothing that will truly get players to sit up and go ‘wow!" - WOW! I said it...

"Concept: 7
This is a title that has packed a lot into a finite space. The economic base is deep, the political base is deep and then you are confronted with the evolving goal of creating an expansive empire. The game’s pacing really needs to be tweaked to allow players a chance to breathe and plan." - What the hell does he understand by "concept"? Deep economical base, deep political base, but no, mediocre concept....yes, we should search for some gold and wood and build a bowyer....

 

[unmerged(4747)]

I wonder if the Gamezone reviewer played the game more than 30 minutes.

"Too fast"
"11 nations per scenario"

Eh, what?

My feelings exactly. I was even wondering if perhaps someone else had played it and he just wrote the review off what they said. If I hadn't already played the game and read his review, I'd STILL be wondering what the game was like.

 

[unmerged(3168)]

I really must be getting old as I can't see what some these reviewers are on about, learning curve?, poor UI??. I'd just re-read their Moo3 review and they gave it better scores that Victoria for interface and overall score, huh?.

I can't see how anyone in their right mind can think Vicky is worse that a vertical learning curve, un-loseable, uninformative, hideous UI'd shocker that was Moo3.

 

[dtroiani]

The problem is that PC games are now a niche area. These reviewers are use to the shoot them up or drive over them games of the consoles. In some ways I think it has dulled their senses. If you do not give them a lot of eye candy and something that allows thems to blow things up, it confuses them. Games that require too much thought overwhelms their capacity for thought. They just can not handle it.

 

[unmerged(17324)]

I don't understand the mediocre reviews.

Well when a bunch of people start telling you that something needs improvement, it usually does. 2 out of 5 hehe, glad I'm waiting on the bargain bin.

See reviewers are less biased (fan(atics)) about the game and give a more honest working opinion of the game out of the box, not waiting for the months of patches to come to finally "finish" the game as it should have been.
You that are fans don't like it cause it's not "Strategy Game of the Year" material and your friend that has a Xbox and Halo is gonna rub it in your face! lol

 

[Dinsdale]

Well when a bunch of people strt telling you that something needs improvement, it usually does. 2 out of 5 hehe, glad I'm waiting on the bargain bin.

So what are you posting here for? If you're not interested in the game than aren't you wasting your own time?

If you do slavishly follow reviews then enjoy your time with the herd.

See reviewers are less biased (fan(atics)) about the game and give a more honest working opinion of the game out of the box

Hmm no, some reviewers haven't spent enough time on the game to figure it out. If you had the game you'd be able to see all the mistakes they are making.

There are plenty of positive and negative views of the game on this forum. Though if you wish to label the place full of fanatics then do so

has a Xbox and Halo is gonna rub it in your face! lol

Are you 6 years old?

 

[unmerged(22698)]

He's probably the reviewer from Avault.

 

[Alexandru H.]

Well when a bunch of people start telling you that something needs improvement, it usually does. 2 out of 5 hehe, glad I'm waiting on the bargain bin.

See reviewers are less biased (fan(atics)) about the game and give a more honest working opinion of the game out of the box, not waiting for the months of patches to come to finally "finish" the game as it should have been.
You that are fans don't like it cause it's not "Strategy Game of the Year" material and your friend that has a Xbox and Halo is gonna rub it in your face! lol

Read my post. The reviewer was drunk at that hour. This is not a fan-reviewer issue, it's just that he clearly thought with his feet at that particular hour. Read some HoI and EU2 reviews, excellent ones, that give away their weak spots but never forget the good things in them...

 

[Aquitaine]

Just in case anyone is actually interested how these things work:

No, Avault does not review games while their reviewers are drunk. Unless they have changed their procedure from about a year ago, each reviewer has one review to write each week. There was some variety in terms of how much time that left people to actually play the games, but it comes down to 'how much free time you have in a week.' Then they submit the review to an editor, who, er, edits, sometimes sends it back for additional changes, and then that's it.

The Avault guidelines for review are actually quite good, IMO; I had a rather severe disagreement with the editor, but if you don't mind giving up everything you write to someone whose grasp of grammar and English is good but not great without being able to review the changes yourself (and losing ownership over the review text) then it's a good deal. Free game a week.

You can tell a lot about people from the manner in which they criticize. You can also tell a lot about people from the manner in which they react to it.

-Aq

 

[Jim Cobb]

I wonder if wargamer.com is going to do a review of Victoria.


--
EnPeaSea

I'm wrapping it up now.

 

[Alain-Masque]

Unsuprisingly (due to being the "adrenaline vault") Victoria scored badly according to them


2/5 Stars
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun gets marks for depth and scope, but unfortunately so much of the detail goes to waste due to the frustrating interface, horrendous learning curve, and sparse gameplay options. It gets so frustrating that sometimes it feels like whoever created the interface was angry at you personally for some undisclosed sin. The most died-in-the-wool hardcore strategy fans who have mounds of patience to spare may find months of entertainment value in Victoria, but for most people this will be one that history should best forget.

 

[unmerged(2567)]

Unsuprisingly (due to being the "adrenaline vault") Victoria scored badly according to them


2/5 Stars
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun gets marks for depth and scope, but unfortunately so much of the detail goes to waste due to the frustrating interface, horrendous learning curve, and sparse gameplay options. It gets so frustrating that sometimes it feels like whoever created the interface was angry at you personally for some undisclosed sin. The most died-in-the-wool hardcore strategy fans who have mounds of patience to spare may find months of entertainment value in Victoria, but for most people this will be one that history should best forget.

I think he was just frustrated at the lack of a tutorial...the interface isn't hard to work with once you get used to it. Most of the awkward stuff, even, can be automated with a click.

 

[unmerged(1949)]

I think the reviewer had an attention span of 10 minutes. The learning curve is steep, but the rewards are worth the effort. I really believe that most reviewers do not like strategy games with any depth, as it requires them to think, instead of just hacking their way through a game, or shooting whatever wanders into their vision range.
The glory of Victoria is in the complexity and the challenge of mastering it. There are problems with the game, but those mentioned are really only minor problems. Cheers all.

 

[Syt]

Mergified.

 

[Alain-Masque]

danke

didn't see that other post