Dominions 6 - Rise of the Pantokrator Reviews

rapidly approaching 1000 hours and still a relative noob 10/10 alternative to being a person

I would describe Dominions as a digital fantasy miniature war-game, better than all triple-A strategy games on Steam put together. Its literary, artistic and ludic merits are considerable. Yet there is a price to be paid for all that. The UI is tedious, repetitive, obscure, catering specifically to the needs of an obsessive-compulsive, controlling maniac and micromanagement addict like myself. I have only myself to blame for falling for this game. What a fool I have been. Let me ask the developers rhetorically, do you yourselves play your own game ? Certainly not. Yet you are happy to take advantage of a few juvenile-minded fans playing at digital toy-soldiers, wasting their life away. Dear customer you have been warned, save your time, save your life. Take care.

A game with unparalleled strategic depth. Unfortunately it is hiding behind a steep learning curve, poor visuals and tedious micro-management (although less so compared to 5). Really shines in multiplayer.

glorious turn-based strategy game. capable of either randomly generated maps or maps manually built from scratch. unbalanced unique factions over 3 different era sets. Every faction has unique strengths and weaknesses. There is no simple rock, paper, scissors matchup, More of a blend of hundreds of possible different factors. magic resistance, blunt slash pierce resistance, fatigue, light level, heat level, above/below water, above/below ground, morale, disease, leadership, dominion bless, dominion bonuses, dominion negatives, attack rating, defense rating, parry rating, base equipment bonuses, base equipment negatives, special item bonuses, special item negatives, province bonuses, province negatives, the list goes on and on. Hundreds of factions, items, spells, starting units, summonable units, leaders, gods, and events (both story driven and random) effect every play through. It can get into chess like levels of move strategies, counter move strategies, spell strategies, counter spell strategies, pretender build strategies, and unit composition. Being easily modible, just adds icing to very wonderful varied cake.

The hours played is deceiving since Dom6 is often a game that I leave running on my server. SIngle player Which doesn't change the fact that this is one of my favorite game series both for single player and multiplayer and Dom6 is better than it's predecessors in pretty much every way

Fantastic game with unique and interesting mechanics A+++ Has a bit of a learning curve but a great community to learn from and play against

one of the greatest wargames ever made. one of those games where I've been playing for over a decade and am still terrible at it but really still love it.

Great, almost amazing. UI is just so clunky, and because it's "ironman mode" and small mistakes can have big consequences without the ability to 'undo,' even in single-player, I find myself spending much of the game micromanaging. Gameplay still makes it worth it though, such rich lore, strategic depth, and tactical battles.

An amazingly deep and flavorful strategy game. While there's focus on MP in the community, that same community is tiny and with the introduction of diplomacy the ST experience is better than ever.

I love this game I play it nearly every day and often nothing but it. I can't say in good conscience that I recommend it to others though simply because of how obtuse it is. I don't want it to be less complex and I certainly don't want any features to be taken away from it. What I would like is if the game explained itself and it's mechanics a little more thoroughly or how things interacted better. There's not really any good reason for how poorly written a lot of the tooltips are, or how it doesn't do something to the effect of having things like path improvements to spells multiplied in the explanation for the player. I don't like the communities standard answer to new players of read the manual, not because I don't think people should you absolutely have to in order to really grasp this game. I think that telling people to read and memorize a 500 page document is probably not a reasonable standard to entry for a game. I get that Illwinter is a passion project by two people to make something they love, and I think the series focus should remain as such. But I think maybe hiring a third person to explain what's going on in took tips a little better might be a way to maintain the feel of the series without detracting from it. Basic things like putting in blessed if they stack with units that already have those attributes (examples like invuln blesses or fire shield, barkskin explains how it stacks or doesn't why can't they?). If you asked me two months ago if I recommended this the answer would be a resounding yes, but I've tried to teach a few friends to play this and it's really interesting and fun when we use mechanics to discover new ways to play we hadn't thought about. I don't think those moments should be interfered with, I think they're the heart of the series and should be preserved at all cost. I think the game should explain itself well enough they happen more frequently. More players would be better for dominions if they were gained right. You've probably made a quarter of a million dollars on this game, I think if you hired the right technical writer you could probably make that a million and dominions would be better for all of us, and it would give the devs more time to focus on the parts of the game they clearly enjoy more. Tldr hire lucid tactics or something you'd probably make money in the long run. Best game ever made thumbs down!