Against the Storm

I spent many hours trying to like this game now, and while it has some quailities, ultimately I can't. There are too many moving parts and constant time pressure. It seems, the game was designed to never give the player a sense of control. That's not for me. I'm talking about countless resources and production goods, many many building types, each of which offering a unique combination of 3 production "recipies", overlapping with other building types but sometimes in different efficiency grades, with many substitutable input resources. Then there's multiple population races, each with different specialization bonuses and many different demands (partly overlapping again). And on top of that there's countless bonuses, modifiers, events, and what not. And if that weren't enough, you are [b]constantly[/b] forced to make decisions about random options you get -- and which you only have vague ideas about. Your next available building types, tasks, rewards, bonuses, population newcomers, solutions to events, upgrades, etc. This is before a mission, during a mission, and after the mission. They really push that decision making over the top. Granted, this creates some excitement. During the game there's usually a new choice available before you even made up your mind about the previous choice. Once you're into it, this can get the dopamine cycle going. Hence, all the good reviews, I suppose. Also, it creates replayability. But on the other side, it's only designed to play over and over again. You're cranking out settlements under time pressure, never with much planning or feeling of control, basically improvising with all the options thrown at you and just a rough idea of what you're doing. And once you somehow managed to score sufficient reputation points, it's all over. There's no time to optimize, beautify, extend or simply enjoy the settlement you just created. That's probably my main criticism. It's all just a rush to beat the timer. Plus, I personally don't like this constant dark and rainy mood. I'd prefer a happy medieval town with sunshine and birds singing. But ok, that's subjective. I will express my respect to the development team, though. Keeping an overview about all the aforementioned elements of the game... hats off. Their diagrams must stretch across entire walls. Also, on the bright side, the game's hardware requirements are really fair. I think that speaks for good programming. On the bottom line, if you get a kick from juggling complexity under time pressure, Against the Storm may be for you. If you want a more relaxed and strategic gameplay that allows planning, improving and enjoying your settlement a little longer, I don't recommend it. I'm gonna look for a more controllable game now, Banished maybe, Farthest Frontier, or HistoriCity. I did enjoy Townsmen a lot in recent years, but that's just mobile, I think. I hope this helped. Peace and out.

it gets repetitive very fast. And the mechanic of building upgrades between maps is too grindy for me.

Обучение его тут нет, мне не надо что бы меня водили за ручку но азы хотя-бы можно было показать. Постройте лагерь дровосеков и на этом всё. Как его построить ? Разбирайся сам. Попробовал на бесплатных выходных и мне этого хватило, покупать не собираюсь.

7.10更新：仔细测试了一下，看来是我之前理解错了（游戏中的文本确实让人误解）。城市规划虽然削了，但没有削废，游戏内文本描述是“所有可居住房屋加起来最多16位”，但游戏内的实际效果，应该参考更新日志的内容，也就是“单栋房屋或庇护所的最大居住容量上限（来自辅助技能、升级与基石的加成）从 20 降至 16。”，我在游戏中测试了一下，结论来说，在拥有24栋可居住房屋的情况下，在点了基石“城市规划”并完成10条贸易路线之后，每一栋可居住房屋都增加了一个居住容量，换言之，并非“所有房屋总共加起来只有额外16个居住容量”，而是单个房屋吃满所有加成之后，最多有16个居住位。这个算是下调，但还不至于算是砍废了，之前言重了，改为好评以示歉意。不过仍然，这个改动并不受欢迎，如果之后真正出现了重大削弱，还是会改为差评。 ———分割线——— 游戏很不错，我也很喜欢，游戏时间显示只有不到两百小时，是因为我经常离线模式玩，如果算上离线时间，保守估计500小时起步。这里说明一下，我的玩法比较特殊，我并不注重每一局快速拿满声望的过程，而是享受在拿满声望之后，继续建设定居点的Endgame玩法，我往往会使用CE来强化游戏过程的稳定性（主要是刷基石和蓝图），尤其确保定居点有足够的可再生资源，从而可以搭配一些强大的基石来产生巨额产能，比如“香料”基石搭配雨水磨坊搭配饼干配方从而产生巨额的根茎、香草、饼干产能，然后搭配基石与配方，利用巨额根茎产能来获得巨额焚香，或利用巨额的香草产能来获得巨额的成包供给品。 总之，这个游戏给了我很多乐趣，从抢先发行时期一直玩到现在，建设繁盛的定居点是很有成就感的事情，整体来说我很喜欢，但这次我还是要给差评是因为，我发现制作组喜欢削东西，这种行为我实在难以认同。 今天刚更新一波到1.10.3R版本，刚进游戏就看到基石“城市规划”被彻底砍废了，这原本是我非常喜欢用的一个传奇基石。说真的，传奇基石中很多废物，和它们的名字“传奇基石”完全不符，很多时候不如史诗基石好用。城市规划是为数不多真正有强度的传奇基石，在Endgame中也是非常有用的。然后就看到它被砍了，甚至可以说，被砍废了。乃至甚至“拥挤的房子”这种本来就强度不高的基石也被砍了。 首先，这是个单机游戏，单机游戏应该是致力于服务玩家的游戏体验的，这不是PVP，也没有天梯榜。其次，这是个Roguelike游戏，是有随机性的，没有什么办法去稳定地获取这些基石，有时候重抽次数用完了，也只能拿到没什么用的基石。基石之间强度有参差，可以理解，Roguelike游戏嘛，玩家对不同基石有不同的看法，也很正常，比如“双重运输系统”，我就从来不点，这玩意儿没什么用，还不如多安排几个搬运工，“搬运车”较之都有用得多了。 但是今天看到制作组砍了城市规划，我不免开始担心，如果制作组开始琢磨游戏平衡性的问题——尽管这完全没有必要，而且瞎平衡往往削弱玩家的体验——那实在有太多东西可以砍了。“香料”可以砍，“真菌指南”可以砍，“搬运车”可以砍，“蒸汽烹饪”可以砍。我可以列一大堆东西，理论上能够达成“超模”效果，但这就是Roguelike的乐趣所在呀。Roguelike游戏，玩起来本来就是有难度的，一个不小心就会累积挫败感，在这种情况下，还要对玩家进行削弱，实乃下策，归根结底，“教玩家玩游戏”是很要不得的思路，《Slay the Spire 2》前车之鉴，何必效仿呢？

Сразу хочется сказать, что игра вполне [b]неплохая[/b], атмосферка мира с постоянным дождём и оформление доставляют, и даже удовольствие от неё можно получать, но... Игра заявлена как "Градостроительный симулятор с элементами рогалика". Моя проблема в том, что это наоборот, рогалик с элементами градостроилки. И если случайно генерирующийся уровень, к условиям которого надо подстроиться, у меня не вызывает каких-то проблем, и даже к таймеру я готов был привыкнуть, то вот вся якобы "сложность" возникает из-за того, что все задания, жителей и выдаваемые пачками здания на выбор игра может тебе нароллить так, что только за голову остаётся хвататься. Так, последний город для закрытия печати едва не был слит, ведь для двух заданий из трёх игра просто не заспавнила мне ресурсов и не выдала мне нужное производственное здание, а для третьего мне пришлось перерубить половину леса в поисках нужных ивентов, в процессе слив половину таймера и накопив враждебности леса. Боюсь представлять, что там на сложностях выше творится. При этом от местной мета-прогрессии вообще не ощущается какого-то удовлетворения, ведь за один полный цикл (~6 часов и четыре города), за который я закрыл первую печать, я смог открыть буквально три-четыре бессмысленных апгрейда из серии "+2% к тому, что лесоруб сегодня зычно пёрнет", и в этом тонко размазанном потоке мусора надо вылавливать по всей ветке прокачки всякие QOL-апгрейды на возможность рероллить задания и прочее. В общем, спасибо бесплатным выходным за то, что я смог опробовать игру, и может когда-нибудь я её куплю по скидке -90%, закрою на платину и переосмыслю этот обзор, но пока игра закинута в долгий ящик. P.S. А ещё странно, что к игре выпустили уже два ДЛС, но разработчики так и не догадались сделать режим с отстройкой одного отдельного взятого города на огромном участке леса, на развитие которого тебе выдан один целый цикл (условно игровые 20-30 лет), с последующей эвакуацией под стены столицы при приближении Бури, а-ля Винтерхоум из Frostpunk с наградами и прочим. Жаль.

This is really mixed feeling, the thing is, game is really good for first 25-50 hours, but then you realize what level of grind many unlockables are. How you have to heavily optimize your gamestyle into this tight meta-sweat to fight against time instead of Queen's Impatiance to get past Gold Seals and beyond, how you have to increase prestige difficulty five times to get one more shard and keep trying to beat every settlement under 5 years to match the requirements. It simply stops being fun. It's wierd to consider that the game respects your time with these quick games, but heavily disrespects your time in sense of whole game progression.

I usually like these kinds of games and though I don't exactly hate this game, it didn't scratch any itches. The sound track is great, relaxing, and the sound of rain is a nice touch, that's about it for me. It felt like RNG had more of a say in if i was going to win or not. In the 3 games i played i felt like i was racing the clock to meet my objectives and then boom, it just ended. 2 of the times I didn't even notice i was close to winning my session, it just ended... Yipee? The game really boils down to a race against time and hoping you can get the right requirements (resources) at the right time to fulfill contracts. There are a lot of different resources and structures that allow you to gather said resources, as well as structures to further craft the resources into more complex resources. The maps are randomly generated so which resources will be available to gather is inconsistent. This offers replay value, making every session feel a little different (this is a good thing). Overall i think think this works, but the UI isn't the best and it didn't really help me with the upkeep managing process. I would often over consume a resource, have idling workers waiting on resources to produce other resources, or build a structure for a resource node, only to have 2-3 of those nodes through my entire session. There are a decent amount of structures in this game but not all are available to you each play through. You will reach certain milestones that allow you to pick from 2-3 random blueprints of structures, so there is rng that you have navigate in hopes of winning. The queen will give you a choice of 2 random "Orders" to complete in order to get more blueprints. These contracts are random and will ask for things like "get X amount of resources", "Have 8 of a certain race type", "search X amount of nodes in the forest". You must complete these contracts in order to get enough points to win your current session. These contracts will somewhat dictate what buildings you need to gather resources to progress and fulfill them, but since the offered blueprints are random you will have to hope you get the right building in order to gather the right resource. On top of this you'll have to hope you find the right resource node and enough of it. Otherwise you'll be looking for other ways to obtain the needed resource, hoping those ways are available as well. There is no combat and that's okay, but the mechanics of what i was doing felt repetitive. The flow was: Find resource, build structure to gather resource (if available), use resource to make other resource or structure to craft more resources. There were rarely moments where i was deciding on gathering one resource vs another. For the most part i wanted any and every resource that popped up. I'm sure at higher difficulties you have to be more decisive, but it wasn't like there was an abundance of resource nodes for me to decide between anyway. I also didn't feel that tackling a harder difficulty would be rewarding since it relies heavily on rng. Good: Music was solid and relaxing. A decent amount of variables. A cool progression system. Bad: The UI isn't great. Resource management wasn't fun for me. Too much rng for the variables and requirements and sometimes lacking in ways to get said requirments.

累，制造路线太多且复杂。我拼死打到封印，声望满了跟我说需要找到封印，直接弃坑