Blacksmith Master

I really wanted to like this game .. I thoroughly enjoyed their previous game tavern master. But despite seemingly wanted to innovate they really didn't nail a good gameplay loop here. I hope they improve it would love to change the review but as of right now it just feels .. boring.

So I played nearly 5h of this and I must say I can't recommend this game right now. The first evening of me playing was fun because it was new and I had lots to do and learn. The second evening was just letting the simulation run on 3x speed and making little changes to the running system, accepting new orders and leveling up my workers when they reached a new level. The balancing in this, like in so many simulation games, is just too fragile. If I hire multiple new workers I would need to speed up the process and get to the next skillpoint or "tier" faster, I accept a huge risk of just not being able to earn eough. There is very little variation in what you can do except for "produce stuff, sell stuff" and it just got boring after only 5h. Also, I personally don't like the graphic style. I don't minde the low poly but the lightning is really bad, everything is just lit the same way, hardly any shadows and it's always super bright mid-day. It just looks bad imo.

A pesar de ser una reseña negativa, quiero aclarar que solo elegí esta opción porque no existe una calificación intermedia, algo más cercano a un "Meh". Dicho esto, vamos por partes. Si vienes de su entrega anterior, Tavern Master, es normal que al principio quedes fascinado con el juego. Incorpora numerosas mecánicas nuevas y añade logros que supondrán un verdadero reto si eres de los completistas, como yo. Sin embargo, los problemas comienzan a hacerse evidentes a medida que avanzas hacia el mid game y el late game. La obtención de recursos termina convirtiéndose en un cuello de botella, mientras que el comportamiento de los NPC deja mucho que desear. En varias ocasiones se quedan congelados o simplemente trabajan de forma ineficiente debido a sus animaciones, incluso cuando están al máximo nivel y cuentan con un entorno diseñado para optimizar su rendimiento. Como consecuencia, la curva de dificultad se siente excesivamente pronunciada y, en las etapas finales de la partida, resulta muy difícil mantener una fuente de recursos mínimamente estable. A esto se suma un problema que ya arrastraba Tavern Master: la caída de rendimiento al cargar una gran cantidad de entidades. Los problemas de FPS siguen presentes y considero que todavía existe un amplio margen de mejora en este aspecto. Ahora bien, también hay que ser conscientes de que esta sigue siendo una versión bastante temprana del juego. Sería injusto emitir una crítica excesivamente dura cuando el proyecto aún se encuentra en una etapa de desarrollo donde muchas de estas cuestiones pueden cambiar. Aun así, para quienes llegamos con las expectativas que dejó Tavern Master, es inevitable sentir que la experiencia pierde fuerza conforme avanzan las horas de juego. Desde mi más sincero aprecio por este juego y por el estudio que lo desarrolla, espero que puedan solucionar los problemas de rendimiento y replantear la curva de dificultad. Una posible alternativa sería permitir la tercerización de ciertos recursos a cambio de dinero, ofreciendo más opciones a quienes preferimos un ritmo de juego más tranquilo, disfrutando y analizando el impacto de cada mejora antes de seguir avanzando. En su estado actual, no puedo recomendarlo. Sin embargo, tengo la esperanza de que con futuras actualizaciones logre convertirse en el gran sucesor de Tavern Master que muchos esperamos. O, al menos, eso espero.

At the 20 hour mark into my first (relaxed difficulty) save file, I have unlocked every blueprint and gotten them all to at least rare, more than half to legendary. I also have 20% employee happiness. I could definitely push farther: unlocking the last few items on the mastery tree, buying more racks and keeping them full, maxing out trade routes every day, increasing ducat production, etc. However, unlocking/discovering new things is the primary reason I play games like this, and I feel like I've done all the rewarding stuff for now. I have had a lot of fun, and I recommend the game as a nice way to spend a few hours, but I'm now getting diminishing fun returns, and I'll explain why below. Some feedback for the developers: * Would be nice to have more granular control over trade route fulfillment/enablement. For example, being able to rank by priority, so that my blacksmiths will fill gold first, then clay, then gems, then birch. I know I can turn them on and off, but it's annoying having to micromanage that. I would also like to be able to focus on one type of gem, though I understand you might not want that for balance reasons. Alternatively, it would be nice to just straight up assign specific blacksmiths to specific trade routes. * The iron ore situation is pretty dire. I don't even have the fifth merchant slot unlocked and I already run out of iron on a regular basis. Iron is the one metal I can refill manually, but I want to be able to solve the problem with miners/mine improvements, not by micomanaging. I have literally filled the mine with as many rest areas as will fit and moved all of my highest level miners from copper and silver to iron, and it's still not enough, in spite of maxing that part of the tree and buying all available upgrades. I have to choose suboptimal orders to fill/racks to stock in the shop just so I don't run out. * I am really irritated that I can't prevent blacksmiths from working on items they're not proficient in. I had hoped that specifying a preference of "metal items" would mean that the blacksmith remains idle until a metal item is needed. Instead, they will start working on a pottery or wood item, even if they have 0 bars of pottery skill. If they're making a high-level item, it could take them several minutes to finish (literally close to 4 minutes), which extends the end of the day way too long. Waiting for them to finish really saps my will to keep playing, and I can't even fill the time with shop purchases, because those pause the game. The only thing I can do is hiring or changing employees' responsibilities, and I don't always have much of that to do. Maybe some players prefer this behavior, and it's okay (ish) at low levels, but the higher you go, the more annoying it is, as time to complete items rises. It would be really nice to have the option "metal items only" or "simple items only" in addition to the current behavior of "metal items first." Without this level of control, I just don't really feel like playing any more. I was planning to start a new game at a higher difficult level, but now that I've experienced the game at higher levels of play (all blueprints unlocked), I don't think I want to do that right now. If the blacksmith preferences change, I may return and try again on a higher difficulty.

просто перестали запускаться сейвы в игре которую уже начал. спасибо за проебанные 8 часов

As of right now, i couldn't recommend it. There is no interesting challenge. The higher difficulties just seem to make the margins slightly smaller, which means things simply take longer. They aren't harder. If your looking for something cozy without difficulty, this would be good for you. For difficulty, it would be interesting to see them add requests from the king/lord that are timed and must be fulfilled or you get a punishment of some type. Dynamic events that change the cost and gathering speed of ores/wood so you have to dynamically change production. It need some kind of difficulty and/or lore to keep things interesting, as right now the base loop of "upgrade-faster forward through a day-repeat" is just not that gripping.

Nice suit for my autism, enjoyed the progression enough missing workshop, MIA devs, lots of little errors, performance issues.

Ну такое. Купил игру при выходе в ранний доступ и сейчас попробовал ещё раз после перерыва. Игра довольно скучная, разнообразие товаров тут мнимое, зачем-то есть миллион товаров из базового дерева и базового слитка железа, но они абсолютно ничем не отличаются, из-за чего возникает ощущение, что у игры нет глубины. Пока болванчики сами всё производят всё игроку нечем заняться, особо налаживать цепочки производства тут вроде и не нужно. Может это всё есть дальше, но во-первых, я задушился от начала, а во-вторых я в этом очень сомневаюсь. Мне бы хотелось, чтобы в итоге получилось хорошая игра про кузницу потому что очень люблю и этот сеттинг, и похожие жанры, но не верю в это, по мне core механика просто скучная.

Very fun grindy game. All that I could ask for is that we are allowed to pick individual items to prioritize for all blacksmiths.

This game is riddled with bugs. Very frustrating to play