It's BotW only more refined. Ultimately the fusing/crafting elements of the game make it stand out with the creative freedom given in a lot of situations. Downside is they doubled the map size by including another map but it's very samey without much interesting.

Would rather they focus on a smaller map with more points of interest that are actually interesting.

Solid game overall but gameplay is the focus, not the story which is fine but immaterial.

Doom and Warhammer 40K make a pretty good pairing. It has a nice retro aesthetic that does try to capture elements of the 40K which is cool. But the main issue is that, it gets a bit stale after a couple of hours. The enemies and environments start to feel repetitive after a bit. Even though the environment's may be 'new' they're structured pretty similar in their design. There's not much to explore, the secrets are temporary power ups either timed or just for that level and they tend to be just tucked somewhere rather than an exciting reward for exploring. Weapons also didn't feel very unique for the most part, didn't feel like it mattered what I used it was about as effective.

I like the idea behind this, it would be cool to see it expanded and some of the design kinks ironed out, tap into the larger roster of 40K races or lore. It is a game that ultimately is difficult to complete because it doesn't do much to keep your attention with fresh game design or story elements.

A serviceable strategy game that has some interesting ideas that unfortunately translate into plodding unengaging gameplay.

The aspect of being able to create your own race and modify them as the game goes on is excellent and thematically can give your race a different feeling. While the differences aren't massive as it's only a handful of spells, of which you likely won't immediately learn them all, over time it adds up and you can steer your faction in certain directions.

An issue is that since each spell isn't particularly impactful, it's not really that exciting getting new spells (which is more or less the replacement for technology tree) when in civ there's certain techs that really change your position such as unlocking your special unit or a tier upgrade or special building to get a big jump, and that's very much missing from the overworld campaign.

Where AoW4 puts it's eggs is in the tactical combat, everything eventually ends up there and it's.. ok. Their isn't exactly much maneuvering or positioning as the maps are relatively small and the game encourages you to clump up because of accuracy and that moving can take away from how many attacks you do, and it pays to be aggressive taking out enemies off the map. There are status effects but most aren't impactful since once your forces have met the enemy combat only lasts ~3-5 turns. But after the first couple you're either almost guaranteed to win or not. It does get old and it's pretty easy to just gang up on the AI overall.

Which the AI isn't very brilliant in any situation and I found them most passive. You generally have to just make your way to them for any war to end. In tactical maps they'll just run over bad areas on the map rather than shift around them.

And as for the city building it feels kind of stripped down in some ways. Pretty much you build structures internally so actual size/map placement generally doesn't matter with the exception of your main tier settlement building and special buildings which take up a province on the map. Generally you can just build them all over time as there's very few that have some sort of draw back. And map expansion you lock yourself in mostly with what you want the new province to produce.

There is also an underground map which I don't think execution wise ends up being that interesting and you have to swap your map around to see it. You can build cities there but it honestly felt more tedious to keep in mind.

And the UI is not great, there's a lot of information that would be great to see in terms of what other free/AI cities have that you can't see, or even get a vague idea how powerful or ahead someone is to know if you need to address it.

Overall again had some interesting ideas but in the end, the execution left a lot to be desired where I wasn't really excited to play the game so much as just end them so I can do the pantheon tree.

I'm not a Harry Potter fan, I haven't read the books or watched the movies and don't not a lot. But the trailers made me interested in it. In the end my feeling is that the game's ok. There's some things I thought it did right like the atmosphere and some of the cinematic moments. There's also a couple of sections that felt unique and enjoyable from that end.

But overall it was a pretty generic story of bad guys wanting to find the McGruffin and you the Chosen One must stop them. The dark arts element they teased was disappointing, you learn the spell (pretty late) but it has 0 impact outside of combat itself so there's no reason not to get them. Some individual stories were good, some pretty forgettable.

Combat was pretty fun, though I did get caught up flipping around my spell load outs mid combat. And when there's a lot of enemies on screen it can become frustrating as you spend a lot of time just dodging/blocking. It also gets a bit repetitive as spells sort of do the same thing in the end, they either CC the enemy or just do direct damage so you just have to rotate through them.

The general gameplay is a giant collectathon for appearances for you and your crafting room. The latter I basically never engaged with outside of quests because there was really no reason to other than to identify items. There's a set of players that will really enjoy customizing the room, I was not one of them.

Overall I think the game is fine, bonus points if your a Harry Potter fan, but it hardly does anything really impressive to Open World games other than the atmosphere of the setting.

Overall pretty fun on the gamplay front. The Emblem and Break systems felt pretty good and gave some thought and variety to the combat. Much of the other sub systems (Skill Points, emblem weapon upgrades, etc) were half baked and other elements lacked transparency (character stat growth, when you actually should be promoting people). Had good map variety in the main story and paralogues. The paralogues were callbacks to old FE maps which means nothing if you're a relatively new player.

Story was pretty meh. It was straight forward without much to it but it served its purpose of giving you a reason to do the map and because of permadeath mechanic being a thing a lot of characters would stop showing up in the story once you recruited them.

Characters are colorfully designed but very one note with one or two defining traits that constantly appear in their support skits which starts to feel samey after enough times. Static endings for supports makes it not worth doing the skits other than your main combat force.

the TLDR is that this is the anti-3 Houses. The gameplay is better but the social elements are weaker. Still worth a look if you're into tactical/strategy RPGS.