When it comes to worth, Gathering Storm is fun, but hard to justify its full paying price of nearly £35. Unlike Rise and Fall’s multiple game changes involving timelines, eras, and mandates -- which effectively turn the game from a “live in the moment” endeavour to a proper long-term tailoring experience -- this new expansions mostly gives you more things to react to. Truth is, without Rise and Fall, Civ VI is still a worse game than Civ V, and with Gathering Storm alone, it’s not even in the same league at all.

All in all, Total War: Three Kingdoms - The Furious Wild expansion was a better experiment than I expected it to be. I am never particularly excited about animal or nature-focused factions -- Air Force boy here -- but this DLC features such an interesting mix of units and mechanics that washed the bad taste of Troy away from my most recent TW palate. From angry kings with axes and fire-wielding melee units to giant elephants and devastating shock-heavy tiger units, The Furious Wild brings the full breadth of nature to bear on the Three Kingdoms period -- and China is better for it.

Flashpoint doesn’t offer anything transformative, the way XCOM 2’s War of the Chosen expansion did. Dedicated BattleTech players will want to give this a look, but with as many options as we have now for interesting strategy experiences, everyone else can consider this addition as highly optional.

In the end, Green Planet and Project Laika are interesting DLCs. Taken together, they add several gameplay and cosmetic features, and the former significantly alter playstyles if you decide to go for the terraforming. While Project Laika is cute and fits the game’s overall “feel good” vibe, I do feel Surviving Mars is consistently stripping away its identity with each of its main DLCs. Regardless, if you enjoy or the game or want to try turning a barren planet into a giant planet-wide forest, give Green Planet a shot.

Ultimately, Distant Stars is an interesting expansion that expands the game’s content without pushing any boundaries. It doesn’t increase the game’s scope but given how bare the current mid-game is and the sheer number of new anomalies added in the DLC, it is hard to pass this up.

In the end, Revelations is a fairly modest DLC. It’s no small thing to add in an entire new race and units to go by, but you also wouldn’t be completely wrong in thinking it was a fairly light expansion. Still, it’s purpose is to flesh out existing game content in ways that are meaningful and worthwhile, and in that sense it succeeds pretty well without over-complicating the scope. A quick shout out must also go towards the free patch that came with the game, which included a lot of quality of life features including ways to make navigating around large empires much easier. All in all, a pretty decent first DLC outing, and one that should be seriously considered for anyone who’s been enjoying Planetfall up till now.

It’s been a while since we felt we could say this, but if you buy Emperor on day one you (probably) won’t be disappointed. Obviously if you don’t usually play HRE YMMV but for those that do enjoy mucking around in central Europe, it’s been given a breath of new life and well worth your money.

To me this is an incongruent vision of the series where you have snake squadmates and meaningless banter instead of worldbuilding and replayability. It’s fine as a one-off, slightly fun but buggy (hopefully non-canon) entry, but if this signifies the future of the franchise, I am worried.

For me, there's really no question on whether to buy this or not. Doing a complete overhaul of the population mechanics, adding in trade as an important system, allowing you access to being megacorporations or mega-cults, throwing in a little slave trade while you're at it? For $20 US, it's a solid purchase.

Federations is one of the best expansions for Stellaris that we’ve seen and the impact is going to be felt for the rest of the life of the game, which being supported by Paradox means many years to come.

I've played a good number of video game adaptations of tabletop games over the years. I don't think I've ever played one that fully understands what its source material is fundamentally about better than BattleTech does. Heavy Metal is the extra push it needed to become the living vision of what I daydreamed about while playing with tiny plastic robots, hex maps, and firing tables decades ago.

Anno History Collection does precisely what it says on the tin - but it needs just that little bit more to justify its price.

Despite its short-comings, Sanctus Reach is one of the best turn-based strategy games around.

A valiant effort but ultimately unrewarding, especially given the competition.

Aside from the graphics that give a quality-of-life boon on modern rigs, there's little else about this remaster that excites or even excels.

Praetorians HD Remaster brings the game into the 2020s; but is ill-equipped to compete with the almost two decades of progress since.

Sadly, not nearly mechanically sound enough. This is no way to run a railroad.

And if you’re a fan of APM based RTS and other acronyms, then Bannermen might provide some enjoyment. Bizarrely, if it was early access, I would recommend it as the developers have been releasing patches every other day. But for £25, I don’t see enough here to recommend in its current state.

If you care about the British Isles, this Immersion Pack gives them a lot more flavour than the free changes alone can offer. Like most DLCs of this tier, this is far from essential.

The Broken Alliance expansion is an important one. It is to Deadlock as Brood War was to Starcraft; interesting unit additions and thoughtful writing elevate a dry but highly competent base game. Essential for Deadlock fans, and compelling for the curious. So say we all.

All in all, the Tactical Legacy Pack is a surprisingly good addition to the base game, providing smaller portions of XCOM that manage to be enticing and engaging even without the strategy layer. It is not a replacement to the main campaign in anyway whatsoever, but the deeply tactical battles and powerful squads should provide plenty of fun for any players looking for just a little bit more XCOM.

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is a pretty special game. Not only is it a great experience for fans of the show, but for tactics fiends looking to get their starship combat on, Black Lab Games have been honing and expanding the title since launch in August of last year. They've just released a new expansion, and it’s a belter.

In a situation where you have all of it, HF is going to truly shine, pulling together parts from four or five different DLC and using them together. If you don't have at least one of Sword of Islam or Rajas of India (and preferably both), you are going to run into a significant amount of frustration, especially in randomized worlds.

Space Race as an expansion is worth checking out at some point, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry. It ultimately does little to solve many of the deep-rooted problems the game still has at the mid-to-late stages. It does make the early-game a little easier, or at the very least more varied (depends on your settings), and there’s definitely some interesting stuff there. Surviving Mars still has a fair ways to go though, and it’s going to take more than small injections of personality to carry it over that hump.

If you enjoy playing in the Iberian Peninsula and you can overlook a few historical irregularities, then it would be very hard to pass up on Golden Century. If you're obsessed by pirates and can't fight off the desire to pretend to be Jack Sparrow, then this is going to be your best bet within EU4. If you're literally anyone else: While it's only $10 USD, it's not really vital to your experience and doesn't actually bring that much to the table. You might just want to wait until the next actual expansion and pick this one up on sale.

Warhammer 40K Gladius’ Tyranids DLC is the best piece of game content concerning my least favorite race I’ve seen in a while. They play well and feel authentic, which I imagine was no easy feat, and they slot into the overall narrative and structure of the game more seamlessly than I was expecting. They could have been a bit more creative, perhaps, with the use of instinctual behaviors, but it’s a great effort, none the less.

Overall, Retribution is a capable expansion for fans of the franchise, bringing in new gameplay options and two specialist races to round off an already well-developed roster. The expansion will not change the mind of anyone who already likes or dislikes the series, but it’s worth a shot if you like the game. GalCiv III might not have taken off the way Stardock intended, but the company’s decision to stick with it turned the game into a tailored experience virtually unmatched by any other sci-fi 4X on the market.

After Anabasis cleverly effected the Second Cylon War via the original's setting, Sin & Sacrifice might seem somewhat conservative. However, Black Lab Games continue their tradition of tight, tactical mission design, and as a farewell to this chapter of the First Cylon War, it's a solid one.