Recent reviews by Karaya (Michael)

Almost 10 years since Civ VI and somehow it's still the same thing but worse. What a waste. The developers should be ashamed of themselves. Horrible game.

I didn't expect this game to be as good as the Witcher 3, but I didn't expect it to be as poor as it is. I don't recall the last time I experienced such a let down. I didn't get my hopes up after the Witcher, because companies don't always live up to previous games. This game achieved a new level of mediocrity. I feel a number of things. I feel like I am walking around the movie Idiocracy with a gun. Cutscenes with dialogue options remind me of Dora the Explorer, where no matter what I say the plot has been decided years in advance. Every "innovative" thing in this game was done on the N64, whether in Ocarina of Time or Goldeneye. Ultimately, when playing this game I feel like I am driving to work, and when the cutscenes start, I am stuck in traffic. The driving system is awful. The AI is awful. The combat/hacking system is mediocre. The inventory management, leveling, skill trees and UI have not changed since 2005 games. The mini challenges (braindancing?) are tedious and stupid. The dialogue and the story are awful. It's like watching a John Wycke movie where enemies can take 11 headshots before dying and the only option you have is crawl forward.

I'm not a fan of this style of world building, but the world is well done and looks good. It feels "Cyberpunk."

I don't often leave reviews, but this game proved truly atrocious. I can't believe I pre-ordered this. The chief developers ought to be ashamed.

Nothing like Grand Ages: Rome, which is basically what I expected the game to be like.
Very in depth global economy, which is not at all what I was looking for.
I won't go so far as to say this is a bad game, but if you're looking for Grand Ages: Rome with a medieval theme, this is not even close.
I get economics, I wanted to build a cool medieval town.

Early Access Review

In short, if there was a strategy game where you built and managed the towns/cities in Fable, this would be the game.

As of writing this review, the game has a very solid foundation of chains and development. It took me about 3 hours to wipe out all the creep camps on the Easy map, have one of each production chain maxxed out, and about 100 villagers. After that, there was really nothing to do (I couldn't build more units, move to a new territory, craft better gear, etc.) However, if I could have kept upgrading/expanind, I definitely would have. Granted, I haven't played any more difficult maps, so there could be a greater level of depth already built into this pre-release.

Overall Mechanics: Economy is similiar to Banished with a bit more depth. You construct a town that provides for typical basic needs of any citizens in an RTS, as well as gold/stone/iron etc. While you can assign villagers to different jobs, they essentially do the rest from there (you have the option to micro manage, but why bother). You can upgrade buildings to allow a greater workforce, as well as research technologies for each building. (Level 1 building = 4 workers, lvl 2 = 8, lvl 3 = 12; each building has 3-8 technologies that basically increase the gather range or add xx% to production). Right now, the most in depth production chain is about three buildings/layers deep (wheat farm [wheat] -> windmill [flour] -> bakery [bread]). Once you build a barracks, you can train archers or halberdiers (ranged or melee units) and use the blacksmith to outfit them with equipment. You can research recipes at the blacksmith and find better ones in the wild. Basic resources come from your organic production, whereas the more advanced ones are found after clearing creep camps.

Glitches: I did experience a few crashes, but they only seemed to occur as I was exiting back to windows anyway, so it didn't matter. There were some issues when I'd craft/find an item, it would show up in my inventory as a blank box that I could not inspect or equip. The only villager AI isues I came across so far was when I was building the advanced walls, they would sit there and "construct" for the rest of the game, which meant my production buildings would not longer recruit them since this never-ending-construction seemed to take them out of the available labor pool. Clicking on the mini-map would direct me to a random place on the map, which was annoying. Overall, very minor issues that I am sure can be easiliy fixed.

Balancing Issues: stockpiling stone/planks/iron/gold was fairly simple and quick, but I continuously had a problem keeping enough of the consumables on hand. Even when the bread production chain was fully upgraded/maxxed out (36 villagers in a population of about 90), I constantly ran out of bread. I was also constantly out of meat, fish, and vegetables. While not so much a balancing issue, I could not find a "find idle worker" button. This would have been handy when I wanted to specifically recruit only archers, as the auto-recruit for the barracks produces a mix of archers and halberdiers.

Overall, this was a pretty fun game. I think it has a decent amount of potential. It has a great environment (again - it reminds me of Fable, specifically Oakvale) The devs have clearly made a solid foundation from which to continue to add depth. I look forward to future updates.