This is more like it! I think this is an 8.5+ game. Definitely. Logged 31 hours so far. No interest in stopping!!

Great review. I love how despite the volume of complaints in the review there is still an excellent score and positive tone throughout. Sounds like many fans here!

That is how I feel about the game, there is ample room for improvement in many of the areas listed and more, but there is no other game in this genre that is even close to this good. That is why I hope they go all in for another expansion, this game has sweep-everyone-off-their-feet potential so close to the surface, but people get stuck on some complaints, and it is too easy to miss how awesome the whole is. This game is a few fun-tweaks and some expansion material from being big-time blockbuster, which is probably only possible for a TBS game that is also an rpg hybrid.

Metacritic is only showing 4 reviews and averaging at 77% I believe this game is a solid 8.5-9

There is a bad review from a site I never heard of.  I read it and it pretty much says "I hate sandbox games".  It's a poorly done review.

That is no joke. In the comments the reviewer said he felt an average game should be 5 instead of 7, which goes against game-buyer expectations. People see a 5 and they think game disaster, because that is how every other review site reviews games. He also stated he hasn't played many TBS games and apparently didn't play this one much (there is practically no substance to his criticisms).

It looks like that site is going to do a new review, an editor wasn't happy with it either and the comments show a lot of unhappy people with it.  

Unfortunately, metacritic only ever records the first value assigned to a product by the reviewer. They ignore any changes.

It's true.  http://kotaku.com/5960657/metacritic-refuses-to-pull-negative-review-that-gamespot-admits-was-factually-inaccurate

So why hasn't the review been replaced? I asked Metacritic head Marc Doyle, who told me that they have a one-shot policy for all reviews and all gaming outlets. (Kotaku is not listed on Metacritic, as we do not use review scores.)

"Yes, the critics we track know—and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week - that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game," Doyle told me in an e-mail. "I'm explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It's a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure."

The saving grace here is that Metacritic obviously gives very little weight to that site's reviews.  I'm imagining that most gaming sites are giving their reviewers a little extra time to publish since it's a sandbox turn-based TBS.  In a week, the MC score will be 85 and this review will be buried and forgotten.

I had read that Metacritc weighted the scores by the prestige of the review outlet, but apparently Thunderbolt may be on par with IGN, because (88+87+80+50)/4 = 76.25 which is roughly the 77 posted. But it could also just mean that Thunderbolt is on par with the other two places, and IGN's 80 didn't move it much from the overall average. I would hope for the latter, because it is crazy that a volunteer outfit has the same weight as a premeir gaming website.

I hope they make a full on expansion for this game with more of everything.  As long as they continue to improve the AI and add more content I think this will be a classic.

I totally agree with you!

I give LH a 8.5 also. Since it's release I have been very impressed with it and I am looking forward to some exciting DLC's in the future!