Divinity: Dragon Commander

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It has a arrow to the knee joke. Neat game before that but difficult to play due to awkward controls.

[u][b]It has interesting ideas that fails to reach their full potential.[/u][/b] It has bits and pieces here of the various genres it tries to implement, but without the polish that each one needs to make it all worthwhile. This could be good, but it needs a lot more work before I'd recommend it to anyone. The real time strategy is spamming units, and luring the enemy AI into throwing their fleet into your larger mesh. Units move and die for too quickly for precise usage of the more utility units to be viable. This might change later in the game, but unit diversity mattered little compared to sheer unit size. A Hunter that's strong against a Trooper gets dunked by the 1:3 Hunter:Trooper ratio you can spawn them at. When it's just a few units against another few you can get an inkling of how this balance might've mattered, but the strategy isn't there for it to be engaging. The turn based part is superficial; the units you initially have decide what you start with, but they're not anymore powerful than units you spam during the real-time aspect. It's more about allowing you to invade and defend territories you control. Despite this part deciding the real-time stage's initial conditions you can win even if you're against overwhelming odds. Not due to superior strategy of positioning, understanding the game's mechanics on a deeper level, or terrain utilization. But because you can turtle it out until you can build a mega blob to steamroll to victory. The empire ruling was interesting initially, but after 4 choices it's pretty obvious that there are certain choices that're explicitly better; 4/4 times the choice does a +3/+2 faction support increase/decrease with no other benefit to balance out the +2 side, no neutral opinions, or benefits from your decisions that'd later affect gameplay and/or unit mechanics. It should tie more directly into how your empire actually works, that the player can feel their choices mattered more than a single moment. In the end this results in the characters, and by extension the developers, feeling like they're talking down to us about what is right way an empire should be. Instead of letting the players be free to shape the empire to their liking. At a glance - areas for improvement: Real-Time - A breather moment to allow the player to see the field of play and plan out how they're going to approach it. As it is now, while I survey the field the enemy is spamming units, even in my home territory. - Make terrain matter more in how it affects troop movement and bonuses against each other - Slow down the building, spamming, and overall combat speed such that unit abilities can actually be used Empire Turn - Government decisions affecting the empire as a whole; equal pay means a greater reduction of troop funds from the treasury, or gay marriage reducing population growth, etc - More in-depth resource management and racial uniqueness in terms of benefits; special unit access, special building access, etc