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Originally Posted by GrantDawg
Just been playing around with it. I do feel like I'm going to get hooked, but I have to get over the hump of the early challenges.
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So after playing with this one a bit, it definitely has the bones of a great game but I’m very skeptical given the dev comments that it’s ever going to get there
It’s certainly a beautiful game with a ton of care and attention put into it and a really well thought out theme. The way plots are built board by board is a really nice touch and some of the way things have been implemented feel realistic and are innovative for a game this size (e.g. you have one ox and villagers can’t just magic a massive log of timber halfway across the map, so you can’t build 17 houses, a church and 3 industries at once)
With that being said, it is definitely slow. Which is nice given the overall feel of the game, but when a month takes so long in game and you are basically hard capped to possibly getting one family per month (an entire family can only be assigned to one job) it might not be for everyone. At the start you are basically limited to “doing” 4 things (5 families but one has to be assigned to construction and the oxen or everything falls apart) and some jobs you can’t even chop and change as you lose the market stall that family runs.
For me worse than the pace though is it’s really quite shallow. The idea of the marketplace is nicely done but realistically things end up at a clothing stall or a food stall. There are a few crops but realistically they all end up at bread or beer. Clay goes to tiles etc… you get a bonus for having different food types or clothing stalls but it’s miles from the nuanced and interesting industry chains that a game like Banished or Farthest Frontier has. Haven’t got to the militia/bandit phase yet but from reading those two have, it’s also very rudimentary and arguably far from what was hyped.
Which brings me to the next point, I’m not sure I have any faith it gets significantly deeper. Game wasn’t even supposed to be Early Access, dev has said the first few months will be bugfixes/patches and he’s not comfortable putting a roadmap out there. If you look at the tech tree it’s maybe only half complete and the rest are supposedly EA. Hope I’m wrong, but I think there’s a significant chance we look back in 18 months and this one doesn’t live up to the hype cycle.