This Game Sucks!!!

[Japher]

(This is my first post on this board)

I bought the game without trying out the Demo, because I am adventerous like that. I was looking for a new turn-based game and really wanted a fantasy game since I am unable to get MoM working despite my best efforts (XP suks too!). I bought Master of Orion 3, thinking it would be like the 2nd one; stupid me. So, I got Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, and wasn't to impressed. Some one on another board told me to try Dominions 2, so I ordered, and about a week ago I got it.

I spent almost two days going through the manual and the walk through, and then, I loaded the game.

I wasn't to impressed with the graphics I saw, but I figured who cares, I was willing to settle for MoM. So I started to play. The interface took some time to get use to, and I don't think I still completely understand it. Yet, 35 games later and over 100 hours of my time wasted I finally got a realm with more than 4 provinces!!! Yaaay!

Anyway, to get to the point, here are some reasons why This Game Sucks!!! (feel free to add some of your own)

-Too many starting options; If I wanted a game that took me 500 years to figure out how to best begin the game I would of just got a chess set! God shapes, dominion, stupid little scales, themes, castles, and then the magic!!! WTF!!! All these starting options will just give the game even more play time, which really adds nothing to the game.

-Too many spells; Come on who needs all those spells? I say one spell per path, and it can just go up in strength per level. That should be enough, right? And they should all be "ball" spells. Fire dude a fireball , water dude a waterball, death dude a deathball, etc...easy. It really takes a lot from the game when you have to sort through all those spells.

-Too many units; Do you really need more than a guy who shoots missles and a guy who swings a sword? It really confuses me when you have like 100 guys who can all swing a sword but this guy can do it under water, this guy does it faster, this guy has better armor, blah blah blah. Really! Enough with all the units!

-Too many magic sites; Yeah it's nice to have little discoveries now and then, but do they all have to be different? All this does is make you anxiously run around trying to uncover magic sites to find anoter 1 of the 10000s of troops or help you get 1 of a billion gem combination to let you cast 1 of a trillion spells... Really takes away from the butt kicking nature I thought this game would be about.

-Too many random event; everytime I hit the end turn/host button SOMETHING HAPPENS!!! What's up with that?! The game really slows down when some superhero dude wants to join my army or my people killed a stupid witch and stole her gems.

-The SFX in battle mode are lame; Come on guys, why make a sucky game even suckier by putting in 3D graphics. Everyone knows that all the good games have tiles that represent units and they just girate to pictate a fight... Really, was any development put into the game?!

-To Many Things To Do; This game is micromanagement hell! Everytime I want to play a turn, especially late in the game, I have to go through every province and double check to make sure I am not wasting money or resources, or that they are defended well enough, or that I have spells being cast, or that I have dudes moving around, or that I am recruiting the right people. I think if you take my other comments and just give 2 units and 1 spell and then make everything earn the same amount of gold and resources and recruit the same and cast the same no matter what, the MMing will work itself out. Also, make the map and the provinces linear, that way you know which way would be the best way to go and you don't have to worry about building the right buildings in the right spot.

-This Game is Not Relaxing; Games are suppose to relaxing, this game is not. I'm always stressing over that "host" button; did I catch everything, am I going to die? What the!!!

-The Music is Too Hypnotic; It's as if your trying to lure us into the game with your happy little tunes. It's saying come play me, I have happy little tunes, play the game!!!

-The Game is Too Addictive; Seriously, this is a big problem.. no, it's a HUGE problem. How are you suppose to stop? It's like there's crack cocaine in the programming or something. Someone should really report the programmers to the FBI, CIA, FDA, ATF, AFA, or some Federal agency that can't put an end to these types of games. When my wifey leaves me for playing this game too much they will surely be hearing from my attorney!


Well, that's all I got so far. Oh, and in case you couldn't figure it out... ah, nevermind. I have already wasted too much time posting here; I need to go play Dominions II!!!!

[SalsaDoom]

Jesus, you seem to dislike the game for the very reason that I like it. I bought the game and love the game, because it has enough options to keep me interested.

I honestly am tired of playing games that cater to the lowest common denominator. I want my brain to be challenged here.

I mean, honestly, are you simply just hopeless bad at strategy games? 35 turns and many hours and you only got 4 provinces? ... what? The first time I played the game I did pretty good and got a decent sized empire..!

I love the huge list of spells. I love the variety of units. I love the varied magic sites. I love seeing what crazy stuff happened between turns.

The battle sequence is graphically simple, thats true. But the terrain looks good enough, and frankly, I like the fact the battles are completed fairly quick. Although, the missile speed should be adjustable for the love of god!!

Micromanagement? In Dominions II? Hardly. You should see Space Empires 4, it has ten times the micromanagement. Which, incidently, is the #1 game that sharpnel produces. And not relaxing? .. I mean, you worry about if you missed something that much? Forgetting something doesn't ruin your empire, dude.

I agree the music sucks, I turn if off and listen to mp3's.

Addictive. Well, yes. Does your wife know you make Posts like this?

I donno what exactly your complaining about, since the game is exactly what it was advertised as. Like yourself, I just bought it on whim. But I at least read what I was getting into. If Dom2 was missing the spells, units, options and what else, it just wouldn't be 1/10th of the game it is now.

If Dom3 didn't have everything that Dom2 had and whackload more, I wouldn't bother to play the demo even.

--SD

[Gandalf Parker]

I think he was being sarcastic. It was creatively done but the post is what is known as a "troll". Posted to get a reaction.
Ive fallen for a few like this before.

[ January 23, 2004, 21:35: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Strages Sanctus]

I am pretty sure the poster actually likes dominions.... It was a jocular post laced with sarcasm.

[Xavier]

Jesus, you seem to dislike the game for the very reason that I like it. I bought the game and love the game, because it has enough options to keep me interested.

Actually, I think if you read him a little more closely, you'll find that he likes the game for exactly the same reasons you do. He just chose an odd way of expressing it.

Sounds to me like he was parodying the gamespot reviewer. (And if you were - why not go post this on gamespot as well? Just be sure to make it a little more explicit that that is what it is - most of their readership would never figure it out otherwise)

For example, I find it hard to beleive that anyone could seriously suggest that a game should only have 1 spell per path and 2 different kinds of combat units....

[PvK]

Just what we need - sarcastic troll Posts from fans of the game. Too much!

PvK

[Breschau]

The initial reasons listed would confuse the reader if they don't read the entire thing - there are people, and quite a lot of them, out there who would see those as genuine faults.

But that Last reason tells you for sure that it's a joke post. This kinda post'll have trolling effects (on folks that don't read the whole thing, or are unconvinced), but hard to say if it's an intentional troll without knowing the poster. Probably not, imo.

[Raging Idiot]

Bah, anyone who says he spent 2 days going through the manual and reading the walk through before installing the game and then Posts something like this must be joking.

Note he did say he was hooked, if he really had that many problems with the game he would just uninstall.

[Japher]

Sorry for the confussion, I hadn't intended it to be so obscure... I thought it was funny, and did not mean it to be a troll (though I have been know to do that)

I just wanted to introduce myself and state why I like the game, and thought I would try and incorporate some humor into it... Yet, as they do say "saracsm does not work on the internet".

I am actually thankful for all those things, and this a game I can surely sink my teeth into...

oh, and yes my wife knows I post things like that, sarcasm works better in real life.

One honest complaint I did have was that the computer managed the battles. I found this to be a litte bit of a let down. Yet, after realizing all the variables you DO have to control battles as well as the mounds of other MMing you need to do within a turn I was rather thankful that I didn't need to control the fights as well. (Plus, simultaneous moves are awesome for Multiplayer) Also, I am not to crazy about the graphics, but as I said that is not what I buy games for or I would settle for boring games like Myst.

Sorry once again about the pseudo-troll, I will try not to feed them.

[LordArioch]

I found it pretty amusing, because by the end you are certainly revealed as sarcastic.
I used to not like the idea of losing control over battles, but then I realized that Dominions II has more control over battles than many games because of the combat system.
You cannot give direct orders, but your indirect orders matter because battles are more strategic and less of a "large army beats small army" slugfest. I much prefer the Dominions II system than having to give the same orders every battle to my army because there's no strategy and the designers threw in a bad combat AI/autocombat. Nothing worse than battles with simple strategy where you can still abuse the AI battle after battle.