Old World

The 4,000 hour review of Old World: In many ways, I think a number like that ultimately speaks for itself. There are few games I've played in my life that have consumed thousands and thousands of hours of my time. Becoming not just a game I play, but an entire hobby in and of itself. Whether it's something like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, the Elder Scrolls series, or many many other specific games across different genres, we've all either experienced directly, or certainly know through the zeitgeist of gaming, the types of games that devour us for hours on end, ultimately becoming part of the very fabric of our lives. For me, Old World is one such game. Like many of you, my 4x strategy game experience began with the Civilization franchise. As far back as the 90s that series engrossed me completely; it captured my imagination and inspired a love of both history and strategy that has stuck with me for my entire life. As time has gone on, I've always found myself craving the t...

As a long time Civ fan, i was gutted at how 7 turned out, from what i have read anyway. Old World is satisfying that Civ itch and then some. It goes about things a bit differently and is far from a Civ rip off from what i have played. Really enjoying the family dynasty aspects of it and the managing of domestic politics with the various internal factions. There are a lot of interesting systems like how culture of specific cities unlocks different improvements for that city. Gifting luxuries to heads of families improves relations, how everyone gradually ages and you have to ensure succession of the family line, it makes the random events all seem meaningful. In my current game King Philip was assassinated in a random event and the son, Prince Alexander became King, thankfully i had him marry a bride from a rival family a few turns (improving relations with them in the process!) before an heir was born a turn before. It is for sure a bit overwhelming at times though, the sheer quant...

I'm a history buff and Viking re-enactor, and love playing Old World! However, I don't play it the way the devs intended. I sandbox it through the multiplayer menu, turning off victory conditions and playing against my chosen AI civs on epic maps. My favourite part of the game is to create large, complicated families, getting ahead through strategic marriages and diplomacy. I wish this part of the game were more developed. At some point, of course, the fun peters out, and I start over with different civs. If I knew how to mod, I would create a bunch of what if scenarios, such as: What if the Gauls, Brits and Teutones had teamed up and successfully resisted Rome? What if polytheistic pagan beliefs had outlasted monotheism? What if female leaders and warriors had made women's participation the norm? What if iron were scarce, and the trade networks necessary for bronze had persisted? Alas, I can only imagine. As it is, Old World is far more engrossing and historically interestin...

If you like Civ-things and this is deeply on sale, feel free to give it a try. But. Be prepared for extra mechanics which are pure RNG, have horrid UIs, and nasty consequences. The screen itself seems full of junk and less useless than it should be, and the extra family stuff is just more noise most of the time. I don't actually feel empowered to take any actions with the whole rulers/families/etc crap because at best you get to take 2 of those actions in a turn - and that's if you sacrifice taking actions with units! And they're still completely up to RNG - in fact the person doing or receiving the action could randomly take ill or die the very next turn with little if any indication there's a problem. But if they are currently ill, you do get a warning if you try to action them. I like it when story elements turn up, but you've almost no control over when they'll appear, and they rarely have meaningful choices for you - mostly just a good and bad one, or even no choice i...

One of the coolest games I've played in a long time. It has unique story plots, combat is ok (still new), and has big maps with city building. Every thing seems logical and well put together. Dev team gets 2 thumbs up !

This game is incredibly boring/repetitive compared to the Civilization series. Others will disagree but there's WAY too much going on, compared to Civ where you have WAY LESS to worry about. Civ: Settle lands, interact with other Civs, protect your lands or invade, build unique districts, straightforward, turns are way more simple, so on and so forth. Old World: Settle lands, marry a wife/husband, scold your child, disown your child, lecture your child, love your child, hate your child, cheat on your wife/husband, discuss foreign affairs, take in foreign traitor, send luxuries, create worker, choose a cult to follow, clear a marsh, pick a law, celebrate a death - WHEN DOES THE FIRST TURN END? It's just way too much crammed into a 4x4 game. If you like it, I'm very happy for you. But I'll play Civilization any day and watch Game of Thrones for political intrigue. I honestly believe this game would be way better if it were shrunk down a little, to where I had a city or two to wo...

The gimmick of having ck-like character system and some basic events is really neat. Unfortunately after you get passed that you're left with a content light game with tons of overpriced dlc and a bunch of really clunky, artificial and unfun mechanics like the orders system or preset settlement sites, bordering on shitty mobile game design. The game - a 4x strategy game of all things - being primarily designed around multiplayer is also a very special kind of stupid. An insanity only topped by, well, almost everything in Civ7..

I f you had asked up until a month or two ago I would have told you I love this game. 1800 hours playing time. In the last month or so the game just randomly shuts down. It happens often enough that has become unplayable. It's too bad. I really enjoyed this game.

I'll start with the game's weaknesses to get this behind me: - The biggest problem, which is also the only reason for the negative review, is performance. I have a computer that meets the recommended requirements, and yet even on the smallest map, with two opponents, lags and freezes start occurring halfway through the game. Interestingly, the system performance monitor does not show any CPU, memory, or disk overload at that time, so I don't know what's wrong, but it significantly spoils the gameplay, just when it starts to get really interesting and exciting. - The second, much smaller problem is related to the combat system. Unfortunately, the ability to purchase additional moves for units (beyond the fatigue limit) greatly spoils the immersion. The AI can pull units from across the map in a single turn if it has enough Training points to do so. In general, a system that encourages attacking individual units is not immersive and does not fit historical reality. Infantry should enga...

I had to split my review in this one and comments. Okay, leaving this mainly cuz devs really care for their product and still respond in steam threads, so prob will take some notes from my comment. So, old world, kinda a mix of civilization 5 and crusader kings 3 to me. Let's start with civ5 part. From the first view it really looks like similar to the civilization 5: settle city, research stuff, train units and etc. With some exceptions: you can't settle your city anywhere you want, there are specific spots on the map that you and AI can take. This leads to some lulz moments cuz you can park your scout at AI nearest "city slot" and AI won't be mad at you (which is weird, it should be). Instead of civ5 global happines you have "families" which is kinda CK3 part here. Each time you settle a city you give it to some familty and each family have their own "happines" meter. If it is too low then you get some rebels in random family city and units from that family get some huge damage/d...