Recent reviews by Lagstro

I'm going to put as much effort into this review as TaleWorlds puts into its multiplayer scene. Here it goes:

As a singleplayer experience, the game can actually be pretty fun.

As multiplayer experience, the game is awful. The MP is very laggy in general, and the worst part of it is that it is full of blatant cheaters. I don't even think cheaters get banned in this game. I've been seeing the same guy standing AFK in the same server for like two weeks straight, with a profile name that promotes his cheating website, with a character of ridiculous body proportions that would be impossible to make without blatantly using cheats (his arms, legs, and neck are all individually longer than the whole body of a normal legitimate character in-game).

It genuinely would not be an exaggeration to say that about a solid 1/4 of the players I have seen in the park have been blatant cheaters. It's the highest ratio of cheaters I have ever seen in any game that I have ever played. This game is in dire need of an anti-cheat.

At this point in time, this game is better than CK2 in every way except for allied AI being almost completely useless in wars.

Update: Game has improved in pretty much every way over the years, except for AI allies still being mostly useless in wars.

The game comes with all the civs from previous expansions, new civs unique to this version of AoE 2, a clear visual upgrade, and many quality of life improvements that make the managing aspect of the game less of a hassle, thus making the game overall feel more enjoyable than previous iterations. I've easily had more fun with this game than either the original, or HD versions of AoE 2.

Another major plus side to this game (imo) is that the AI doesn't cheat in any way, and instead is effectively programmed to use strategies that experienced human players would use, which does a much better job of preparing you to face real opponents than most other games would.

Edit: I felt the need to add that AI teammates in this game are some of the most self sufficient and helpful AI from any game game that I can think of. There have been many times when an enemy AI is attacking me early on in the game at a point where I am not quite prepared for it, and then my AI teammate sends some military units to help me out out of it's own volition. That help allows me to fend off the early initial attacks from AI sometimes, and provides me with the space needed to age up and boom so that we, as a team, can make the enemy AI suffer for it's early aggression later in the game. The AI on harder difficulties feels like it actually has a real intention of winning the game. It's a nice change of pace from strategy games where friendly AI feels virtually useless and is incapable of working well with you.

The game gets new civs through paid DLCs, and then receives substantial balance patches around the same time new civs come out, which tend to change up how most civs in the game are played at least a little bit.

It's what Chivalry could have been.

Simply the best medieval combat experience out of any game thus far. Hopefully Bannerlord can alter that fact.