Orbi Universo II

Fun mechanically, but built on the same misconceptions of ancient human societal development and organizational structures that all these kinds of games do. The idea that society develops on a linear path from less to more advanced; that these ancient cultures functioned the same as the modern invention of nation states; that social stratification, hierarchy, and state centralization are both inevitable, linear, and good; etc. For instance, I saw that public land can only be researched if there is a certain level of centralization, or if there is a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the land starts privatized or owned by elites by default. This is not the way things progressed; public land was the default well into the middle ages, even remaining in some form well into the rise of capitalism. This game isn't any worse than Civilization, in fact I think these kinds of mechanics are more in-depth, engaging, and thought out than the simplicity of Civ, but I've just had enough of this fairy tale of history to listen to it again, no matter how good the mechanics are.

just cant say its worth it

Good game but for some reason i couldn't get into it like some of the more complex geo political games such as Global Power and Superpower 2

Didn't really like it. Inability to zoom out enough to see all the node connections seems bad. Nodes appearing without notice they have appeared or where they are seems like somehting that shouldn't have made it past beta. The mess is far worse than Orbi 1 which was a more coherent game for the most part. It's a shame, since I really liked the structure that the world provinces brought to the game. If the main core gameplay wasn't an appalling cluster then I'd gladly rate it higher but unfortunately 5% good doesn't offset the remaining 95% of mess. Unlikely I'll go back too much more as 6 hours was enough to burn me out and realise it isn't clicking. Might give it one more go but if this review remains a negative then safe to say it's not somehting I'll push past. EDIT: Forgot to mention that the random trait spam is really bad. I hated it.

Clunky and laggy, past a certain point the game just cant handle the numbers anymore and crashes

Unable to move beyond size 30 government because "grip of religion" no explanation on how to remove it. When unlocking emancipation you can set the initial value to anything, if you set it to max the maintenance is over 100 political power per second (when your cap is close to that) basically destroying any you have until the very long time it takes to reduce the node to 0. No explanation why when I have a larger much more advanced army I'm taking massively more casualties than my opponents.