Recent reviews by VulpusTumultum

A good successor to Banished, especially now that people disinterested in raiders can turn them off independent of turning off hostile animals, since I'm more often ok with the latter in a game, even when not in the mood at all for army combat.

The crop rotation system is nicely robust, and the industry chain is satisfying.

It's a game that feels less about sprawling across the map, compared to upgrading the environment around house so the houses themselves get upgraded to higher population capacity, many of the non residential buildings upgrade as well, based on availability of resources or population, rather than relying on building more individual structures for every bump up in production.

The graphics are quite nice, and on my somewhat middle-of-the-road gaming computer, I don't have performance issues, even having bumped population cap up to 1000. Maybe not my absolute favorite city builder/resource management game I've been watching and playing for the past few years, but it's definitely up there and I feel it was worth the purchase as I keep it in my game rotation.

I haven't gotten far into the main quest because all these hours I'm playing I'm just trying out different mutations and making new characters and then abandoning them around level 16 when I get a new idea for another combo to try.

Current game I'm playing a mutant scholar with burrowing claws, and absent-mindedly left burrowing on when I visited the big bazaar and temple of the Six Day Stilt and auto-explored. So far no NPCs are angry that I am absolutely destroying walls and just tearing up the temple and tents taking the shortest routes anywhere.

This is not helping me actually get to the NPC's I need though, because there's some kind of pilgrim creature who is leaving huge pools of acid in their wake, so if I want to visit the library my level 10 low-HP dude is going to basically have nubs for legs by the time I get to the librarian.

10/10 absolute chaos

I've enjoyed every DA game and I enjoy this one. I nearly didn't play it because so much negativity was around it in my online circles pre-launch claiming it 'wasn't like Dragon Age' and 'wasn't an RPG anymore' and while I'm only midway through the game, the people claiming that have very different memories of what the prior 3 DA games were like than me. This is very like Inquisition, but without an overly large open world map full of boring quests and a more Mass Effect-ish combat system.

It is NOT a "Baldur's Gate" level of RPG/Choice complexity, but no DA game, not even Origins, has ever been. The game picks out a background for you based on what faction you choose, giving you a canon life story, but every single DA game has also done that, just previously they based it on race rather than a faction you're part of, so for me, that's a non-issue. You can't play an evil character, but also couldn't really in previous games, and while maybe it's harder in this game to make a companion really dislike you, if like me, you like them liking you, then it should be fine that it's easier to get them to like your Rook?

I am a story-not-combat gamer, and I am really enjoying the writing of this game so far. I love all of the companions, I'm happy with the few cameos from prev games we get and that they aren't overdoing it. I find the Crow faction to be the biggest change from how things were portrayed in previous games, but I like the companion for them and the storyline enough that for me that wound up being a non-issue.

Combat took a while to get sorted on keyboard and mouse, and may be easier via controller, but I find it satisfyingly challenging on harder modes, and satisfyingly face-melting on the easiest difficulty modes.

But again- I play Dragon Age games for the companions and the stories, and in my opinion they've done a very good job with both in Veilguard. I like the companions so much I'm behind all my friends in the story because I kept changing my mind about who to romance FIRST and made a couple of Rooks before settling on one.

The changes to looting and 'crafting' from DAI and so on are also big, but the only gripe I have is it's hard to get the gear you really WANT to go up in quality from common to epic etc since there's some RNG involved in how the upgrades work. This is not a major problem for me, since at least on the easier difficulties I play it on, gear quality isn't a major issue.

I can't say for sure until I do finish the game, but it may now be one of my favorite Dragon Age games, right up there with DAO, for all that yes, there's some major aesthetic and mechanic differences. I just really like where the writing is going in this, and I like the general gameplay a lot.

I've enjoyed it enough to say I recommend it with a few caveats- I do feel that for what is implemented at this phase of early access, the $40 price point feels high to me. I do believe it will eventually live more up to that price point if the dev keeps plugging away at it, a couple of my most recommended and favorite other sandbox 'banished-like' games are also driven by single devs wanting to get things right, and I salute all of them for their ambitions, and hope they reach their goals.

That being said- I have also at this point only played the prosperity campaign, on challenging difficulties with maybe bandit camps, but no real military events because I simply have not been in the mood to really mess with combat, which is always my least favorite part of these games. A lot of the mechanics are promising, but still need some tweaking, and it's going to be a while before Manor Lords has as many of my hours into it as Ostriv, Clanfolk, Lords and Villeins, or even Going Medieval.

I can say I think this game is onto something with how it uses the house level ups and additions/upgrades, but I'm not a fan of how it's handling crop fertility, at least until trading between settlements one controls or setting up all new settlements is easier. I appreciated the learning curve trying to start new prosperity games in different seasons, with fewer or no starting supplies, but for many tries I was very frustrated when it seemed time to start a secondary settlement on the map.

If you already know you like what I'm calling Banished-like games, you'll probably like Manor Lords. If you have the disposable income to where $40 is a fair amount for fifty or so hours of play, it's a pretty good call, and I do truly look forward to further developments in this game.

I got it on sale since I already had part of the bundle it's offered in, so I'm pretty happy with it for the $30 I spent, but I would have been upset with myself if I'd spent a whole $40 at this current development stage, since I have very limited funds for new games every few months.

If you feel it may not be worth $40 at this juncture, it is at least worth wishlisting and watching the development to see when it will reach that point.

Call me a filthy casual, but I probably would play a lot less dwarf fortress without DFHack. It's a flexible toolkit and fixer-upper for the game that can remove some of the most micro-management-y elements and adds some UI commands and so on- some of them are definitely cheats that can take away challenge and turn DF into a very chill buildy game, but a nice thing about DFHack is it is very tune-able, and you only need to enable what fits your play style. If you *like* to personally track the inventory of crop seeds or fishing catch inventory you can still do that and ignore those features.

And if you like regular workshop mods, DFHack lets you save mod loadout lists and even make one default so that you aren't having to remember to put them in manually every time you create a world. This alone has been handy for me, since there IS at least one workshop mod I don't like playing without, and before I got DFHack and discovered that function, I'd sometimes create a 500 year world only to realize after setting up embark I'd left some mods out and would have to just go on out and wait through another world creation.

Because it does so much, you will probably find yourself having to check its wiki to find out how the heck to do some settings or commands, it can seem a little daunting (does to me sometimes at least,) but in my opinion it's worth learning how flexible it is.

I've enjoyed watching other people play DF for about a decade, and had dabbled myself with the ASCII original, but found the UI just too unfriendly for me, having to relearn it every time I put the game away and came back to it by rewatching tutorials (Yo, shoutout to Nookrium and Kruggsmash).

The Steam version is still hellaciously complex compared to my other games that were often inspired at least in part by Dwarf Fortress, but the GUI is so much more friendly that yeah- I can play this and pick it up and put it down much more handily as I cycle through game interests.

That being said, I definitely suggest watching someone play a little on YT if you are totally unfamiliar with it somehow and don't know if it's for you- if the complicated bowl of soup that is DF looks good watching a let's play, then you're more likely to be hooked on playing yourself. This is the story generator that helped launch RimWorld and dozens of other newer games, it's been built on and growing since mid 2000's, so yeah, it is WILD. Buckle in. And the modding community is ginormous and growing.

Some people may struggle with there being no 'win scenario' besides 'the fort lasts until you get tired of it or reach some role-play challenge type personal goals' and even I do now and then, but yeah- DF is one of my favorite games to get back to about once a year for a couple of months. And I'm writing this before Adventure Mode is even out yet on the Steam release, so there's quite a bit more depth coming.

If you love RimWorld, Gnomeria (or the new freeware version I forget what it's called lol) or other 'story generator' games where you dig and craft and watch your little citizens go completely bonkers because you got carried away and forgot some need they have or didn't notice a noble decreed a crafting mandate, then this game is definitely (probably maybe) for you.

RimWorld is one of my 'if you could only take one game with you to a deserted island' games. I always get back to it eventually, even if I take a break to play other things for a few months.

There's a complex web of ways to play it, whether vanilla or increasingly with all the amazing mods in the workshop, so different playthroughs can truly have different vibes, and you can make it almost as easy as you'd like for one play, or extremely hard to suit one's mood.

Want a farming simulator? You can do that. Hardcore colony survival? That's the 'usual' game. Want lots of fighting or want to turn off violent events? Be altruistic good guys or commit fictional war crimes? There's not one 'right' way to play and I greatly appreciate its scope.

The number of hours it says I played are a lie- I actually bought AtS on That Other Game Store when it first hit early access, after watching a few streamers play it, because it looked right up my alley.

It proved so far up my alley it's actually a boulevard, and I bought it when it came out on Steam because it was the only game I even had on That Other Store, and it just seemed really lonely in that library.

I love colony management games of the Banished-like variety immensely, but sometimes they do lose me in the later game as things tick along. This game doesn't really just tick along for long, it is perpetually that really fun period where you're still just trying to set up the supply chains, at increasing difficulties and with the roguelike unlocks that help along the way.

Absolutely stellar game, I'm glad to have played it during its entire journey from the first early access version to the full release it hit here on Steam.

Complicated and ever evolving, as of my reviewing, the game is still being developed. The dev really has big ambitions, and seems like he may live up to them. If you like Dwarf Fortress, that would be the game I would most compare it to, except with more varied fantasy races and somewhat more complex dynamics between them baked in. It also is on a much grander scale, and is a bit of an ant farm simulator, because your cities can grow to have thousands of citizens in them rather than a few hundred.

It is regularly updated, and I already find it quite satisfying to have on my game rotation, playing maybe a dozen hours after any really major update, and a bit in between them as well.

Theme Park by Bullfrog Games was one of my first management sims I ever owned as a teen, and of course I moved on to Roller Coaster Tycoon- but I think Parkitect gets the *vibe* of the original Theme Park game best (compared to Planet Coaster) if there are fellow middle-aged or old people out there looking for some nostalgia. I do actively hope there may be some more expansions to this game to add a few more rides and styles.

The management sim is very in depth, and satisfying to deal with, I really like the back-path and underground methods of delivering goods to stores- and I have enjoyed coming up with some scenarios to share in the Workshop.

The multiplayer aspect also is maybe surprisingly fun, trying to coordinate or just letting chaos reign with a friend is delightful.