How true.
True, the devs agree with inaccuracies and keep silence.
True, I get disappointed and decide not to buy the 3K DLC.
What a horrible note to end on.
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Yay Game of Thrones 
What I’m saying is do not get too attached to a game (or TV series etc) ever. Don’t hold unconditional faith.
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Nah, there’s going to be chronicles II with Macedonians for sure…
Dude, you’re a funny guy. Seriously, you made many mad. After seeing all the drama, glad to see a troll here. Too bad the others took you seriously, but again, if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be fun to read all those angry comments directed at you.
Yeah, now I understand. Forums are definitely niche and don’t represent the community at all. I get the criticism for Thirisadai, but I don’t think people care about it that much, even if it’s Tamil propaganda or anything. Besides, even if we want to care, there’s no end to this. Iberians don’t have Genitours/Jinetes, Malians use a Beninese unique unit, Burmese use a Meitei unique unit, even though apparently Burmese forced some Manipur/Meitei in their armies, Chinese didn’t use Zhuge Nu/Chu Ko Nu/Repeating Crossbow not as regularly as one may think to create a unique unit out of it, Koreans didn’t have those weird, Chinese-influenced chariot-esque wagon units, mangonels come after the onagers, not the other way around, and they’re also called traction trebuchets, so we have two traction trebuchets now, Japanese Samurai were cavalry archers/cavalry soldiers first and some even used rifles later, so a tricky unit to design since it’s an ever-evolving military rank, the Ottoman Janissaries were similar and they started with bow and arrow first, Woad Raiders are a Pict-influenced unit and could be considered the first breach for this so-called sacred medieval periodization people want to uphold so much, Centurions were mostly infantry, not cavalry officers, and the list goes on and on and on. You can make even more examples like this, guys. Seriously, there’s no end to this. So be like Schwarze and have some fun, but perhaps not by triggering people, eh?
Yes, as others have pointed out, Bugrundians and Sicilians are fine (almost perfect).
The main issues were some gimmicky one-time use technologies, which have been mostly fixed (except for Flemish Revolution and the First Crusade spawning serjeants, instead of e.g. increasing conversion resistance and creation speed), and also that there had been some missing civs and Indian Umbrella, but we received Sicilians and Burgundians of all people…
But getting short lived city states, with heroes (aura effects, build limit 1, not convertible), no trebuchets, and even more gimmicky stuff, is just too much at this point.
Adding some decent gimmicky abilities (charged attack, melee/ranged switches, healing etc) or regional units is perfectly fine, but there is a limit…
Additionally, it’s a 3rd DLC in a row that does not add new campaigns for already existing civs (quite the contrary, it adds new civs with no campaigns) and we have yet again been ignored about our “standard DLC” pleads.
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and:
- the innecesary work for the Hei Guang Cavalry
- Jian Swordsman → Automatically switches between shielded and unshielded versions (wtf)
- Xianbei Raider → Charged volley attack (wtf x2)
- War Chariot (wtf)
- Wu → Military production buildings and Docks provide +65 food (wtf)
I’m probably forgetting something
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I gave chronicles negative review, and disliked it more than V&V. I did not like it at all - felt like an overly scripted long RPG campaign, unrelated to the nature of AOE2 (and those cutscenes were horrendous compared to standard slides). The new civs didn’t even make it to ROR, and it was obvious that it had been just another “experiment”. This 3 kingdoms nonsense is also due to the fact that the majority universally liked the chronicles, whereas quite a lot of people complained about mountain royals, especially its price tag.
The game is still unifinished - too many civs with no campaigns, several regions with missing important civs (Tanguts, Mapuche, Tlaxcalans, Zimbabweans, Wends…), and we keep getting experiments. Once one is liked, it leads to another - always remember that.
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Unfortunately, they still managed to screw it up with their increments…and now people got higher medals than they should, if they completed a scenario in the period between the downgrade, and the upgrade.
…If they wanted to fix it like this, then that is why it should have been rolled out hours after the downgrade, else they should have been much more thorough.
Anyway, better leave it now as it is…I guess.
I understand your criticisms, but I did see many positive aspects for Chronicles:
-More scenarios than previous DLC, we didn’t get this much content ever since the HD expansions almost 7 years ago, and ever since we’ve gotten less an less. I think this was a good decision, especially given it’s a campaign-focused DLC. It would have sucked if it only were 15 scenarios, and now with Three Kingdoms I think we’re getting 13 only, with all campaigns having the exact same final map, though I’ll have to check later. And that’s also a problem with 3 Kingdoms: each campaign has 5 levels and the story is extremely rushed through, but Chronicles doesn’t have that problem.
-Historically accurate civs and units. It’s a very basic thing to ask for a historical game, but look at the Armenians and Khitans, apparently it really is too much to ask for sometimes. But the creators of Chronicles did their research, hired historians and it shows, they did a good job on that department. And, even if they are not for ranked, I still got 3 new civilizations, so I get more content on that regard even if I only play the campaign.
-Difficult missions, I know many complained about this and the timers, and I’d put less timer-focused scenarios in the campaign, but I like a good challenge and the harder missions didn’t feel unfair to me. The Pericles one was close to frustrating, but I think it’s a very creative mission so I’ll give it a pass.
-Tons of new assets. It had multiple units for the scenario editor, when Mountain Royals had only one, and Three Kingdom has… 0?
-Characters are more memorable than in other campaigns, not a major thing to praise, but for a campaign DLC I think it’s important not to make them bland. I watched gameplay of the Liu Bei campaign and the characters have at most 3 lines per mission and barely show any personality.
But I also have some criticisms for it, like some important battles are not depicted, like Plataea and Aegospotami. Battle of Marathon is so scripted you literally can’t lose it, I tried it and broke the game. The enemy units literally stopped attacking lol. And heroes should be nerfed, it’d make the campaign even harder but I’d prefer them not to have such strong buffs.
I was naive thinking that FE would “take notes” on the good parts of the DLC, and in the end all they took from it was the UI. Yay, we get to click rhomboid symbols when choosing a level, that’s what Chronicles really was about all along. I cannot say anything positive about 3K though, this “experiment” is too bad on too many fronts…
I don’t believe it deserves to be as succesful as it is now, not more succesful than Chronicles at least.
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I don’t think the BfG campaign was actually that “hard” by design. What I saw was the way scenarios are designed are very scripted, and the modders aren’t as experienced as regular campaign makers that make the official campaign. So if you didn’t do exactly what they want you to do, it would be frustratingly challenging, if you did do exactly what they wanted to do, it would actually be really easy. Unfortunately i must say the hints& scouts were really not that good for those scenarios. I noticed this when I saw Ornlu playing a scenario and he had a really tough time playing it, where I found it really easy. The other thing making it “difficult” is just how terrible the pathing of this game is and the designers for those BfG maps really didn’t design their maps to make pathing easy in the first place.
That being said, I still think BfG was decent, for what it was. I had fun playing it and the story seemed nice. However, I still gave it a negative review because I didn’t think the campaigns were as good as the usual ones, I felt they were too scripted, arcady and unbalanced civ wise (although all that being said I still had fun playing it). However, the biggest reason I gave it a negative review is that I saw the direction this game was going and I didn’t like it. I was worried that the positive reception might make them implement similar things into the “regular” DLC. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.
Although I don’t like the new DLC, to give credit, there is A LOT of new assets in the editor including a lot of really nice new trigger effects, conditions and map lighting effects. It’s by far the best part of the DLC.
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I’ll admit it’s been months since I played so I don’t remember much, but I didn’t feel like it was too scripted. Except for Marathon because it’s unloseable, and maybe the Byzantium one because you’re forced to rush the enemy, I didn’t feel railroaded or anything like that. Do you have any examples?
Better than tomorrow, worse than yesterday…
The positive reception praised many things which are not present at all with 3K. The two similarities they have is that they’re set in antiquity and this yet another of their experiments, but the good parts of BfG are not present. So I don’t know what they learned from Chronicles, they just recycled the UI and called it a day.
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However, the biggest reason I gave it a negative review is that I saw the direction this game was going and I didn’t like it. I was worried that the positive reception might make them implement similar things into the “regular” DLC. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.
Exactly, BasedTeuton gets it. It’s always about the long game and consequences we might get. It’s pretty stupid, but the marketing teaches people “you have to shock your customers with something new and unexpected” and “customer does not know what they want”. If we give in and praise something experimental and unrelared to what we’ve been asking for for years, it’s a terrible thing for the future.
We’ve been asking for campaign only DLCs, or DLCs that woul add a few new civs, as well as new campaigns for those civs + some existing civs. The last time we got that, was with the mountain royals, and then we got Victors and Vanquished (completely different to what we were asking for), and Chronicles (even more different). Like…if we got 3 DLCs in a row that we asked for (like we did in the beginning), and then we got some experiment, like ROR, i’d give them a pass, like i did with ROR (even though we could get all the OG campaigns, as well as a campaign for AOE2 Romans…). But several missteps in a row must be stopped, and not supported in any way.
I understand your criticisms, but I did see many positive aspects for Chronicles:
Yes, CitingOregano, most people see it that way, and I am actually glad you liked it! But consider the future effects that might come up. Would you like to see future chronicles and experiments, or would you rather go the standard way? It’s very rare that companies would choose both directions at the same time…
Unfortunately, Three Kingdoms are not yet disliked enough (Even though their reception IS pretty bad all things considering), so we shall see which “notes” will be taken this time…
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In my innocence, I had a little bit of hope that Microsoft would take the right notes. As in, every once in a while make a campaign-focused DLC, with more scenarios than normal, better writing, and better historical accuracy than usual. That’s the notes I would have taken, basically “make something good”. But I am not Microsoft-brained so I guess they went the complete opposite direction.
Apparently what players want is more experiments and clicking on little rhomboids when selecting a scenario. That’s the defining feature of Chronicles, right?
Now we have even less scenarios than usual, 0 accuracy, bad writing, but at least we have rhomboids.
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Actually it’s easier to point where it isn’t overly and unnecessarily scripted. For that I would say the Spartan one that was the battle of Amphipolis (which was an excellent scenario), the 3rd Achaemenid one about capturing villages (even though the enemy captured vills in a scripted route I can forgive that since a.i is tough to script to be random in that way), and the final Spartan mission too, which I thought was an excellent scenario, despite some complaints, atleast wasn’t too unnecessarily scripted.
Let me say that I don’t think sciptedness = bad, only when it’s done far too often and unnecessarily.
For that, I will give you the worst of all aggressors. 1st, the mission where you are in a city ablaze (4th Achaemenid scenario iirc) where the timers and passages where you take damage force you to take a particular route the whole time. I feel like there isn’t any freedom to do anything in this scenario at all.
The next 2 missions as well where the map is designed so strangely so I have to slowly bring my soldiers all around the map (which was fairly empty) just to attack blue from the one direction I actually can attack him in.
Other than the 2 Spartan missions I already gave as examples of scenarios that aren’t too unnecessarily scripted, unfortunately I must say the rest are, the absolute worst one was the Sicilian one because it has the illusion of choice without actually giving any. At first glace, it looks like a build and destroy that offers some nice choice and variety in what objective I can do first… But no. First I HAVE to sneak my soldiers around the enemy in just one route available to me, so I can attack enemy lumber camps, and now that I’ve done that the next thing I have to do is train a navy and kill the naval enemy which weakens the land enemy enough so then lastly I go after him, and I can only complete the mission in that order, otherwise the mission is extremely grindy. The only choice I have in that mission is what units I should train… Oh nvm I’m Spartans, an extremley boring and dull civ where all I can do is train infantry.
Yes, but one can design a map that doesn’t accelerate the problem.
Also (in my opinion) unbalanced overly gimmicky civs that are obsessed with giving way too many auras and unique units, which ultimately, was the thing I was most worried about being present in newer DLC& Civilizations.
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My interpretation is that you have to choose one district over the other, especially when two are burning on opposite sides of the city, or splitting your army in two and microing at the same time, which I didn’t attempt because I felt my army was too small for that. Maybe I didn’t feel it was too scripted because I didn’t mind losing districts, I only rushed the one with a stable because scythed chariots are OP xd. Also they should have made the chariot much weaker, or at least get countered by anything that isn’t infantry, I had to avoid it on purpose because it was too strong.
I agree that both levels feel way too similar. I’d have preferred one of them be skipped and have a proper Aegospotami battle in the Spartan act as the penultimate scenario. At least you can skip the land route for the siege of Miletus, I think.
I actually left the navy for last because my fleet kept getting destroyed, so taking the main camp took a few attempts but it wasn’t too terrible. I didn’t feel it was mandatory, just made things much easier, and I preferred doing it my way, as it made for a better challenge.
They are too one-dimensional, especially when compared to the other two civs which have more varied units. I’d have given the Spartans a shock infantry unit like the Skiritai instead of the Polemarch hero, as we already have the campaign heroes anyway. What’s the point of picking the cav and archer auras anyway? Even with those you can’t beat the Athenians because they’re superior in every way except for infantry.
And I don’t understand why they went this route… Nobody liked that part. People praised many things about the DLC and criticised the OP auras and heroes, and yet that’s what they decided to add for the next DLCs. Customers don’t know what they want and all that.
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iirc you lose the scenario if you lost too many, and also there is the achievment to not lose any at all but I won’t factor that in too much. I just feel like the mission would feel so much funner if you weren’t on a timer.
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That was the previous mission, I remember because it was a pain.
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Yeah, the timers are a significant issue. There had been exactly 0 timers with negative impact in the early days (except that the timer in Genghis Khan 6 had the opposite effect → it helped you), and the only thing you really had to care about, were some hereos or rare wonder attempts, which was still an easy job anyway. Nowadays it’s one timer after another…like who the hell likes that? Rushing time and time again.
I purposedly play on slow speed, pause and save often in newer scenarios because of all this uncessant and unnecessary rushing. Even scenarios like “defend for 2 hours, you cannot build siege, oh, and enemy has infinite resources as well as spawn points for new units, enjoy” (hello there, Constantine, Hautevilles 4, Pachacuti 2, Edward 2 etc…) are just dumb. Why not stick to classic and loved concepts of “either build and defend a wonder or defeat all enemies” or “either capture 4 out of 6 relics or defeat all enemies” or “capture 6 enemy trade carts and bring them to your cathedral, or defeat all enemies”?. If you had to defend something in a scenario, you could bring the fight to your enemy if you were good enough.
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Ehh… then we’d have more naval missions… But i think it would definitely be better than having 2 very similiar miletus missions back to back.
If the civs were well designed I definitley would have given BfG a thumbs up.
And let me be clear, I know it sounds like i’m nitpicking but I still think the BfG campaign has a lot of good in it too. If it was a free mod campaign I would think it’s one of the best ever created, and I definitely would not be brining up all these criticisms. Unfortunatley, It wasn’t a mod, I had to pay for it, and there were quite a few issues.
Actually I liked that mission quite a bit. Probably my favourite of all the Achaemenid scenarios. Sure there was a bit of pressure there but I think that was actually kind of interesting.
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