u/Kriegschwein

I am playing Mankind Divided for the first time, after playing DX 1 for the first time a few weeks ago + replaying Human Revolution (Yes, HR - DX 1 - MD is a weird way in the series, but oh well), and while playing MD it dawned on me a bit.

Sure, Prague is very detailed, one of the best cities made in a video game, it is most likely where a good chunk of dev time was spent, but... was it really worth it?

On like 10th apartment I burglarized I just thought to myself "Wouldn't be dev time spent on detailing a room of random NPC better spent on making proper level?".

There is fun in jumping around and breaking into apartments and garages. But in both DX1 and HR it was a very small part of the game, a fraction of things for you to do. You can basically clear all of Detroit's side content in couple of hours. And that is okay.

I personally would have sacrificed a few bits of city detalization for the sake of level encounter propers, like ARC section of Ulutek Complex.

Yes, in perfect world Eidos would have been able to put the same about of leg work into Prague hub AND traditional levels, but reality is different. I just don't think Eidos at the time had enough ability to fulfill the ambition, so to speak.

Although not trying to pursue ambition and playing itself can be damning on itself. Not sure about it.

Difficulty: Very Hard*

Gameplay style: Wide, aggressive playstyle, but with opportunity to stop expanding once you secure Bahar and most of Northern Bulwar

Formable/Preformable: Preformable

Has Formable?: Has access to Harpylen

Length of play: Took me into 1600, but can be done a few decades earlier

Hytiranyalen is a harpy nation focused on mixing magic and artificery, as well as one of the few non-Serpentspine nations which can have value from holds (Surface holds in particular).

Its starts is pretty ruthless - you are vassal of Ayrallen, and you are asked to fight independence war against them as your first mission. It is hard mostly because your Overlord start with ruler which they promplty make a war wizard, while you don't nearly have the same advantage.

I think more experienced EU4 and Anbennar players will love this start - an underdog position, pretty disadvantages, but MT gives you just enough tools to dig yourself out. So it isn't as soul crushing as Great Ording while still being something you can challenge yourself.

But there is a reason why I put "*" to difficulty section. Start and initial two decades are very hard indeed - but once you get PU from MT and survive until Samartal, difficulty curve goes so rapidly down it is a bit sad.

It isn't even really issue of Hytiranyalen specifically, but of Bulwar itself - nations in Bulwar which don't engage in Samartal incident are frankly in too advantageous position. This incident trivializes your position in the region, eliminating all alliance blocks here.

And Hytiranyalen doesn't really having anything to offset this - no debuffs (Though I would argue mixed mode is a debuff, but that is my opinion), no unique disasters. Difficulty is frontloaded for this playthrough, and heavily, to a point I can't recommend this MT for a new player, but a lot of experienced players may find themselves a bit bored already in 1500-1510s.

As for unique content and MT itself? For one, I need to say I didn't like forced mixed mage/artificery mode. Early artificery is nice and all, but I think this MT hightlights how mixed mode doesn't *feel* good to play and use - you end up with such bad magic research and mana generation that new magic system doesn't breath, but limited artificer capacity makes your artificery builds very limited. Unique artificer advancements of Hytiranyalen are nice, but are they worth forced mixed mode? I will say no. I would prefer an option to focus on either magic or artificery, or to stay mixed if you really want.

One of more confusing parts of MT are vassals and PU - MT forces you to release one nation as a vassal and to make one nation a PU. Releasing vassal isn't for negotiation.

Which isn't ban at a glance, but nation doesn't really havy any good tools for vassal play - NIs don't have anything to help with vassals, and there are no unique modifiers to get from MT either. More so, you will be later asked to dev capital of vassal you realize, as well as to build monument there, which makes it keeping as vassal even more pointless.

As for PU - to iherit your PU via MT, you need to keep PU in question bellow 25 provinces. If you feed your PU with too much provinces, you will have to do inheritance manually, and you can't progress MT without inhereting PU.

So MT asks you to have vassal + PU, but it doesn't actually encourage to use them as usual (As in - feeding them provinces for coring for you). Which just feels awkward. It kinda prepares you for Harpylen (Because it has a mission asking for subject dev!), but not really.

But for good parts - this MT has at least 5 optional missions, which aren't required to reach capstone! I like it when MT have side tasks you can opt in or opt out. A good game is when you can make good choice, and this is one of them!

Another aspect I really like is narrative and mechanical integration of goblins into harpy narrative - for example, one of mission gives you a switchable modifier which changes depending if you fight outside Serpentspine or not! Overall this MT feels like "Usual Harpy business with drop of Goblin shenanigans", which is nice and cool.

Another a bit awkward moment of MT - it requires a lot of money and a lot of dev to progress. A lot of time will be spent just to... wait until you have enough mana to dev. To a point that if your target is to complete MT, it is more reasonable to just sit and do nothing when engage in wars and spend mana there. You can't really do a lot to improve this downtime.

My final verdict - solid MT with a few hiccups. It still offers one of the best starting experiences in the mod, and localization is fantastic for both events and missions. It isn't a tag I would recommend to check out new magic though, so if you are looking for magic-focused playtrhough - Hytiranyalen isn't for you. But it is great if you were looking for a Bulwari Harpy playthrough but don't want too easy of a start like Ayarallen!

8 out 10 Gobbo husbands

Difficulty: Hard

Gameplay style: Wide, aggressive playstyle, with minimum diplomacy, but with reliable ways to improve your heartlands

Formable/Preformable: Preformable

Has Formable?: Has access to both Castanor and Black Demesne, but if you if you complete all of Esthil missions it will lock you into BD after a certain point.

Length of play: Took me into 1620s, but can be done far faster depending how good your Escann game is

I will preface the review by saying that I didn't play old Esthil - so while I can't comment on particular changes between the two, I can confidently say I don't have a bias here, it was truly first Esthil run for me.

New Esthil is one of the most focused magical nations in new update - not only they have unique magical project, they have obcene numbers of bonuses to magical research and mana generation.

If you want just mage maxx, this is a tag for you - by 1650, you can have access to most school on Renowed and even Legendary level. There is even great project which is upgraded by having 4 legendary schools learned by your ruler!

And here special goodies don't stop - because Esthil have necronomics, a special magical project.

It is a gov. bar you can spend in 4 ways: to build stuff (Bonus to cost and construction time), to dev stuff, to improve mining and to improve farmlands. First 2 are active, last 2 are passives.

But, all 4 actions require souls to work - you gain souls purging Orcs and Goblins (later gaining ability to receive souls by purging any race), a monthly allowance of souls is given to you based on your dev and you will be able to gain souls from battles later on.

Which is why my personal recommendation is to actually focus on transmutation magic, as well as to grab infastructure ideas whenever you are able to - Esthil government mechanics are surpisingly tied not to help conquests directly, but in improving what you already have. You can play it tall, to a degree - MT itself ends when you conquer all of Escann, it doesn't ask you to own anything outside of that, which is neat.

Amazing access to magic, several ways to imrove your economy and outscale Command dev-wise just by improving your lands and several unique great projects.

Well, what is the catch?

The catch is that everyone hates you.

You won't have allies most of the time. Your Aggressive Expansion will be ridicolous. Everyone will try to hugbox around you.

And then you have unique disaster-war - war of the black tower. It happens in the middle of the MT, even before you unlock army of the dead (It is locked from you until you start the disaster).

See, I think there are 2 types of disaster wars in Anbennar : first type forces certain tags to attack you (See Luciande).

Second type spawns a nation to attack you, usually from your own province (Insubordination for Command, Rianvisa).

Well, War of the Black Tower is both - it spawns Corintar and Blademarches inside all of your owned South Castanor provinces + a small, but strong Magisteirum Expedition. On top of that, every Escanni tag + Grombar + Gawed will dec on you.

It also has a shitton of scripted events, and scripted rebels stacks, and scripted occupations of your provinces. Oh, and it gives free war wizards to your enemies.

Honestly, I didn't like this event series very much - mostly because how scripted nation, Corintar and Blademarches, work. First Corintar is spawned, and then, a few years later, Blademarches pops out of it. The thing is, if you already were on your way of conquering Corintar, when Blademarches spawns it takes control from your already occupied lands, and it obviously comes with troops and manpower to match it all.

Oh, and it also gives Galindal, the gleaming blade bonuses to all war participants.

In my opinion, it is a bit too scripted here - I think it would be fine if only Corintar or Blademarches spawned, with the respective blade to boot. Both spawns, together with other war participants turns a fun series of events into a bit of a slog, even when you are given first 2 army of the dead update tiers for free + troops.

But after beating this, it is all smooth sailing from here (Well, depending on your world state*) - you unearth a dragon corpse to raise, you build a giant magical fortress to dominate everyone. You can move it arond from province to province for measly mana price - and it is really mobile fortress, with fort levels. It also gives CCR in 3-province radius around it, so it is a great conquering tool.

Do note that building flying fortress blocks you from forming Castanor.

Overall, I liked this MT more than not - it has a goal to tell a story of witch king (queen) hated by everyone, with dark wizard with cartoon vibes (We build a literal Skull Keep to keep dissidents inside). Thematically, it fulfills its goal, buuuut... only if you play it suboptimally.

The thing is, you will have much easier time to cheesing a lot of stuff - for example, not clicking Black Tower war mission until you consolidate all of Escann and balkanized Gawed. You also have easier time as long as you don't become lich - since being lich gives 40%+ AE, it is just far less headache to eat everyone before becoming one.

It is quite a conundrum - tag and MT gives you a lot of amazing tools, but they are here to mitigate your inherite lack of diplomatic layer which you lose bit by bit the further you go down MT(No allies and vassals). Masked Butcher does the same - you don't do much diplomacy there either. But I think MB gives stronger tools in exchange for losing diplo layer - Esthil's ones are good, but I didn't find them *that* good.

My recommendation would be to do your playthrough vibe based, not efficiency based - you will have far better and memorable time this way. Optimization is a thing for later.

If you are an experienced Anbennar player and wanted to test new magic in unsafe environment - this is the best one really! This tag will force you to think with magic, bc otherwise you will be overwhelmed. It really does a good job of forcing you to learn your magical toolkit.

Final verdict: 10 deadstock out of 10

Edit: Some spelling and grammar. Not all

Difficulty: Very Easy

Gameplay style: Relatively small conquest scope + trade focus + small amount of colonization

Formable/Preformable: Preformable

Has Formable?: Yes, but not MT for formable

Length of play: Took me into 1540s, but can be done far faster, even in 1490s.

Lelanan is another addition to Halflings MTs! So far they were far more lucky than their Cannorian brethren in that regard - just the sheer amount of Love this region receives is insane.

First thing that comes to your mind is probably "How OPM start can be easy?"

The answer - MT gives you two very easy, defensive wars, where attacker doesn't call allies in, while you do. So it is very trivial to overpower two biggest starting rivals for you, and then literally no one in the region will be a threat to you.

Plotwise, it is all due Paladin of Lel - paladins of Love, and one of these, Kyola, is a PoV character for this MT and tag events.

I won't spoil the actual plot and love that our Paladin find, but I will admit it was a bit hard for me to follow because each event and mission is written like a poem. Which is "me" problem, not a con of MT, I will just freely admit I might have missed something plot-wise.

After securing your starting areas, MT will guide you in three directions 1) Retaking Halfling mainland territories 2) Taking the rest of Halfling isles 3) Colonization of Fangaula + Turtleback isle

For 1 and 2 objective, we have a powerful tool given to us - special mercenary company, Paladins of Lel. They. Are. Cracked. Virtually nothing in the region at this stage can do anything to them. A bit of regular troops together with them and you will take coastal provinces from hummies in no time.

But then comes a second biggest mechanical gun in Lelanan arsenal - its special government mechanic, Love.

It works like this - mercenary company of Paladins put a modifier in a province, then several types of rituals affect provinces with the modifier.

While very powerful and with very notable bonuses, frankly speaking, I wish it was tied to special province buttons - moving the paladin company around to set modifier is a lot of busy work, especially with considering that your country is all over the place on different island.

The process of "Check provinces which don't have modifiers - send company there - then click ritual button when you put modifier into enough provinces" is a bit of a headache. Even for a medium size country managing it isn't very convenient.

Another part of this mechanic is "Tales of Halann love" - when you improve relations with certain tags which meet criteria, you receive an event, tale of Love, and a new minority in your capital + husband-city of your capital. Which is neat!

Except... did you know that each intregrated minority increases monthly autonomy? It is usually isn't problem bc for most tags which may face this issue, like Anbenncost, it is usually a capital. But here, it made my husband-city stuck at 90%+ autonomy due to ungodly amount of racial pops there.

One of ritual buttons in gov.mechanics does decrease monthly autonomy, but you can press it only once per 10 years, so it will take a while to offset the debuff you gain from racial pops. Still, it isn't that big of a deal, just to keep in mind.

Colonization - it is fine, MT gives you a colonist + frontiers, but I will still suggest taking expansion ideas. Why? Because Cannorians can and, given opportunity, will block you from certain zones you want. Colonizing faster than them is just more convenient.

And a word about magic - yeah, so MT asks you to have at least "Renowned" in Transmutation. You straight up can't complete the MT if you don't have that, which caused the second biggest delays for me. So focus your magical research in Transmutation, then before with others.

Another big hiccup you may face is mission asking you to have 75% trade power in Sea of Lel. In my game, Rayaz some how had a good chunk of trade power there, so I had to trade war them to take their trade power to complete the mission. Otherwise, I was constantly stuck at 71%.

Except from magic and trade hiccups, all other missions flow very well without much of an issue. It is a very nice, relaxed playthrough, which tells you about Love. It is a great playthrough for 2-3 eveninings if you don't have a lot of time to play, and just want to bring Love to Sarhal via a bit violent means.

That actually was kinda a surprise for me - despite being themed about love and quite a lot of diplo bonuses, this tag isn't really vassal focused. You can use them, but you won't get that much from them really.

Overall - highly recommend this MT, especially for players who don't play that much in this part of Halann. It is a great opener-tag for the region, making you interact with most important areas here while not demanding much from you.