Expansion Reviews on Big Download

[ledshok]

http://news.bigdownload.com/2011/04/13/reviews-ai-war-expansions/

Three 'Must Own' verdicts - can't argue with that! 

[x4000]

Yeah, I thought that was pretty awesome!

[Invelios]

Nice to see 3 Must-Have reviews, but there are a few things in the review that where off. Mainly he stated that guardians for the AI where part of the Spire expansion, even though they where an update to the base game. I guess it could kind of seem that way if you don't pay close attention to the changes in each version, especially if the reviewer bought the spire and updated to 4.0+ at the same time.

[x4000]

There actually were quite a few difficult guardians that were new in LotS -- in terms of his main point, about it affecting the overall difficulty of the game, I think that was pretty valid.  The ones in the base game are less challenging than some of the specific ones that he highlighted that were part of LotS.

That said, the wording was unclear, and it could definitely be read the way you were saying.  I don't think that's what he meant, though, as he's been following AI War pretty closely and is abnormally familiar with the game as far as reviewers go.  But you never know!

[Sunshine!]

Regarding the difficulty, I completely agree with the reviewer.  Zenith Remnant increased difficulty a little, CoN by a little bit more (if you enabled the minor factions/Hybrid Hives... *shudder*), but both were manageable.  Enabling Light of the Spire just ended up with me getting roflstomped over and over, even when there aren't any spire fleetships involved.  Among other things, I certainly learned my lesson the first time I lost a fortress planet to an EMP guardian... or got a wave warped in to my home planet at 200 AIP by a lone warp gate guardian when my fleet was elsewhere (statswise, those things really need to be toned down...).  The change to having Spirecraft and Golem exogalactic waves hit at the same time certainly didn't help matters