I'm enjoying the game a lot at the moment, but I can definitely already see that this "everything can be everything and combined with everything else" approach will definitely get old and limit replayability in the end.
It's a lot of fun when you start out, so I can understand the good ratings ... as well as why lots of people seem to stop playing around the 50-60 hour mark. That's around the time when the magic of full customizability wears off and you start seeing the cracks.
I truly believe that less races, but actually making them distinct, would have benefitted the game so much more than making races purely cosmetic, while making the "culture" the distinctive part (except not really because it's all fluid in the game anyway).
Early- and mid-game I enjoy the most, but end game just turns into this extremely weird thing where every round devolves into a complete mess of 10+ effects all going off at the same time. And trying to figure out what is actually happening on a single unit is impossible in battle unless you want to spend A LOT OF TIME in the unit screen.
AOW4 shows lots of promise in concepts of it's systems, but just fails miserably in execution, crushed underneath all the bugs.
I wouldn't say it fails
miserably. Games that fail miserably don't usually manage to make me play for 50+ hours.
Definitely more enjoyable than I found Planetfall.
But I would agree that it does fail to tie all of its systems up in a coherent way. The video does indeed make a lot of good points.
You can really see things falling apart the longer you play.
IMO a lot would already be achieved with a general balance overhaul. Some units, spells and abilities are just worthless compared to others.
Bug-wise I honestly haven't noticed any - unless you count the terrible performance as a bug.
