Physics and realism offer flavour rather than undermine the raw joy of flight and space hoovering. ΔV: Rings Of Saturn is a sim for players who didn't even know this was their niche.
UI niggles and a wincingly unfunny tone can’t sink Jagged Alliance 3's strong hybrid of old and new design ideas.
More creative and cartoony than managerial, thus a bit of a treat for people less boring than me.
Age Of Wonders 4 is a plain good magical strategy that hasn't really turned me either way
The Great War: Western Front is a compelling WWI strategy game that's neither jingoistic nor moralistic, let down by some compromises and performance issues.
Satisfying and spectacular mech fights, let down but thankfully not sunk by frictious menus and a mediocre strategy layer.
An original and beautiful hybrid of builder, management, and RTS games whose design just doesn't work well.
The exact same old battles sewn onto a perfunctory, shallow RPG and an elaborate but undramatic and robotic feudalism sim
Some unevenly mighty magic aside, Songs Of Conquest is a comfortable, satisfying tactical RPG with lots of potential for fiendish spellcasting tricks.
The Iron Oath is a tactical RPG with really interesting classes and fun missions. With some tweaks and fleshing out, this could really stand out after.
Distant Worlds 2 is a 4X strategy game of ludicrous size, and small problems that become large annoyances. Still, it has huge potential if you meet it half way
Sands Of Salzaar is an army building, slashy action RPG whose personality and spectacular battles carry it through pacing and clarity issues.
Between its threadbare design and shocking number of bugs and major glitches, grungy RPG Mechajammer is an unfortunately miserable experience.
It could still be friendlier to newcomers, but Age Of Empires 4 is a sure step in a genre whose comeback is long overdue.
The strategic battles of Carrier Command 2 have potential for co-op, but single player has you spinning a few two many plates for it to be really enjoyable
