MikeLemmer

This damn Republican huckleberry propaganda has to end!

I would also ask her what TV/movies he's allowed to watch. Odds are GTA5 is probably tamer than most R-rated stuff. I bet you could argue it's no worse than a typical season of 24. People seem to have wildly divergent ideas of violence in medium just because one media is common and the other isn't.

Here's a fun story about a friend who was in the hospital:

His parents brought him Advance Wars to pass the time. The orderlies took it away from him, saying it was too violent for him to play. Bored, he went to the commons room instead to watch a Lifetime movie. In it, a pregnant teenager was kidnapped by her psychotic boss and chained to a bed in an isolated cottage so her boss could steal her baby once it was born. The climax involved her boss stalking her mother & the sheriff around the cabin with an ax until she got shot.

No one batted an eye about the movie, of course.

Best possible twist to this game I can think of is the "cult leader" actually being a misanthrope who started a fake religion ala L. Ron Hubbard to "fool the rubes" into being his followers and purposely inflamed both sides into stoking the embers of a new Civil War. At the end, you find out he was your Mission Control incognito the whole time, gleefully encouraging you into greater & greater acts of violence against his followers and reveling in the carnage.

"I just take all the little hatreds festering within each of you and gently... push it over the edge. Assure a man their opponents are wrong and they are right and he will do anything. And for all the hatred and spite boiling within them, you, my friend, have a higher body count than all of them combined. But it's alright, yes? Because they were wrong and you are right. And the world is a better place without them...

"Now, just imagine who else the world would be a better place without. And get to work; this was just the warm-up. Happy hunting. I'll be watching you."

It would certainly explain why everything about this cult is so over-the-top.

I've been playing Endless Space 2 since it came out on Early Access, so I might be a tad biased, but here's my two cents:

It's good. I like it better than Stellaris; rather than each species being a mash-up of different traits like Stellaris, each species has unique mechanics to it that make them play wildly differently (similar to Starcraft), and you also have to play very differently based on who your neighbors are. For instance, if you're next to the Cravers, you have to contain them & play defense until they deplete their planets' resources, but if you're next to the United Empire humans, you have to be aggressive and take out their systems before their Influence swallows your empire.

The game certainly plays much better than it did in Early Access. I had a lot of complaints about how easy it was in Early Access to produce obscene amounts of food/industry/etc and be bored because all your planets are full and you already built everything, but they must've fine-tuned the balance because now I'm making a lot of very difficult decisions about what to build with my limited industry. The main thing I would be wary of is the Influence mechanics, which lets empires press on each other's boundaries and even steal systems from each other. It was the beta testers' #1 problem with the game in Early Access and it was still being brought up as a gamebreaker mere days before release.

Combat's also decent, although note it's very hands-off (you choose some simple tactics at the start of a battle then watch it unfold without any direct control) and is heavily decided by how you prepare for it. Both types of defense (Armor and Shields) do better against certain weapons, and AI opponents will swap their ships' weapons/armor to counter yours if they view you as a threat.

I've heard from other sources the economics of the game are actually quite interesting. First, there's a galactic market you can buy/sell resources, heroes, and ships on. I often use it because you only find certain resources in certain parts of the galaxy. Second, there's a trade route system where you build trade routes between Trade HQs and Trade Subsidiaries. Each route makes bonus money for each system it passes through, but the longer the route, the more prone to blockade it is. (A route is blockaded if an enemy occupies any system along it.

Personally, it's currently one of my favorite turn-based strategy games ever. It reminds me a lot of a modernized Master of Orion.

I think 6 hours is a perfect length for this game. Made an impression, didn't outstay its welcome.

Wasn't paying much attention to this game, but after playing The Sexy Brutale, my curiosity is piqued.

The jackalope is a friend to all.

Also, is it true Montana's forests are on fire all the time?

@clintlandon: You should have just gone the Army of Darkness route with a giant geyser of blood spewing out constantly.

I am still disappointed Actraiser 2 removed the townbuilding aspect.

The bears are actually quite scarce, which makes them more special. I think I only found 3 locations they appeared at.

It's actually a nice touch. Games like Skyrim tended to splatter materials all over the map so it was (usually) really easy to find them. Zelda is like that for some materials, but others are rare or only concentrated in a few places. I recall scaling one cliff only to realize it had bird nests with eggs scattered all over it; it's the only cliff in the game I've found like that. I also recall another area at the base of a mountain that just had TONS of harvestable plants, like someone planted a garden there and forgot about it.