Eco

I really wanted to recommend ECO. I genuinely did. There are very few games out there that even come close to what ECO tries to accomplish. The player-driven economy, the reliance on others, the specialization of professions. It’s honestly one of the most unique and rewarding concepts I’ve ever experienced in gaming. When it works, it really works. You feel like part of a living world where every trade matters and every player has a role. But that’s also where the problem lies. ECO only works if everyone plays by the rules, and unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. In every server I’ve joined or even hosted, it only takes one person (or a small group) deciding to bypass the economy, freely giving away resources, skipping progression, or ignoring trade systems to completely destabilize everything. Once that happens, the economy collapses, progression becomes meaningless, and the server slowly dies. It’s frustrating because the game doesn’t have enough built-in safeguards to prevent this. There’s no real way to enforce a fair economy at a system level, so everything depends on player honesty and server moderation. And in practice, that’s just not reliable. So while ECO is an incredible idea, and one I want to love, it ends up being a fragile experience that can be ruined far too easily. I can’t recommend it in its current state, not because it’s bad, but because it relies too heavily on perfect player behavior to function the way it’s intended. If stronger guardrails or enforcement systems were added, this could easily be one of the best multiplayer experiences out there. Right now, it’s just too easy for one bad apple to spoil the entire ecosystem.

The game is not acceptable for this price. The population is basically dead and I don't feel comfortable inviting friends to buy dying game for almost 30€. I could see recommending the game for 10€ to a friend just to play with them, but 30€ is not worth the content.

I've owned this game since 2020, and I still find it unplayable as a solo player. As an elderly person, my friends have either passed away, moved to nursing homes or the hospital, or to other states with their families. So it's hard to find someone else to run a community with. And this game is obviously not centered around solo players. So, no. I don't recommend it. It also reminds me of 7-Days to Die in the respect that it seems it will never leave EA, despite any supposable plans to the contrary two years ago. I bought this game for almost 30 bucks and was not able to play it no matter how many times I tried. Feels like a complete rip-off! Edited: I AM trying to learn how to do this solo, though it is slow going. Since I am stubborn, I will not give up easily. Edited #2: If this game was meant as a co-op game, then maybe they shouldn't have put Single player at the top of the list in the specs on the store page. Because that is obviously, purposely misleading.

Used to be a good game. Use to love it. Played over 800hrs over the years, but now they INSIST on you signing in through their 'Official Server, even if you just want to play with a friend, directly through the game/Steam, without using any server. DO NOT BUY.

One of the only games I know that has gone backwards during its development phase. Microtractions added, forced play styles. What what once a great game is now going downhill fast. An inverse No Man's Sky.

Having almost beaten the game solo on 0.25x cost and beaten the game with a group of buddies (4 total, 3 decent playtime, and me and one other doing most of the work) on 0.5x cost. (These reduced costs might sound like a cop out but trust me, if your playing it without a fairly sizable group 1x costs are going to take easily over 200 hours to beat, our run was about 75 to 100 hours of PT from our top 2 performers) The game was a SLOG, the early game wasn't to terrible with some friends, while terribly slow solo. The system behind the inventory management is fine, but the UI presented to the player makes the system terrible, you are likely to be moving HUNDREDS upon hundreds of stacks of items, and on the 1080p menu I saw a few times would have been even worse than on the 1440p menu where you can see alot more different inventories at once. The systems are really neat, needing to tech up and build newer tiered buildings using new materials is neat, but getting to some of those tiers are just a slog. Like why do we need lvl 3 milling to make the stuff needed for lumber? Most other important items for progression is lvl 1 or lvl 2 at most, that added an extra 4 hours to unlocking lumber a VERY vital tier 3 material that blocks you out from alot of neat things. There are also many different tiers of really neat vehicles you can unlock, but the most significant upgrades are the excavators and the skid steer, that are locked so far behind progression (needing electronics, the highest tech in the game for shorter runs like ours) you get them, then they are basically useless because of how long you have them for, by the time we got them we had enough materials in most fields that we really didn't need them. The game doesn't explain ANYTHING about plenty of mechanics and there are a bunch of things that are just not given to you until AFTER you build something, the game has basically an inbuilt wiki, but NOWHERE in that wiki does it tell you that you need a computer lab AND 4 lasers, not just one. Making it quite the suprise upon finally placing down a fairly expensive laser to learn that you need 3 more and a Computer lab. Lucky for us we already knew about this requirement. So it wasn't that big of a deal outside of just making us wait longer for all 4 lasers to craft. You can build things and be suprised when they require things that you didn't even know about, the game doesn't TELL you that some vehicles require burnable fuel(solid only fuel basically), while some require liquid fuel(so basically gasoline, the other liquid fuel is made by a nearly useless profession otherwise), in the tooltip, you will only learn of these specifcs when placing it down, luckily its not hard to PRESUME this if you have been paying attention to the progression, but the UI has so much information already, but there are plenty of times I placed something down to be annoyed about some unlisted requirement it needs. The oil drilling system is also kinda sad, its just a workstation you put labor into and get barrels of oil, the game already has a fluid system it could have easily been something more. Again the inventory UI is AWFUL for the SHEER NUMBER of items you will move in a playthrough, our community had Tier 2 to tier 4 industry related stuff like mining production and ore smelting to the laser crafting stuff, all around the same few stockpiles, so that reduced the grind of moving ♥♥♥♥ around ALOT, but it was still terrible. There is no way to select multiple things when drag moving, a cart can easily hold like 10 stacks of something if not more, so each stack is MANUALLY MOVED, and you will be moving HUNDREDS of carts of various materials, wood, metals, rocks, dirt. There is also little use for dirt in the game, and since many of our larger construction projects netting hundreds upon hundreds of dirt, it stocked up quickly with nothing to do with it but just store it in stupid large piles everywhere. In our playthrough making many duplicate stations was also needed, and the game is nice in the fact that stations just produce things from and into nearby storage buildings automatically, but actually MANAGING more than like 2 stations becauses a chore, especially if you want only certain types of something to be used in a recipe, great example of this is asphalt: asphalt uses ANY crushed rock, while crushed limestone and crushed shale are needed for various other recipies, so I would like to be able to just filter out the tables from using those two types of rock. But not, you will have to make it have its OWN stockpile holding ONLY the materials you want it to use, which then becomes ANOTHER inventory chore of moving ♥♥♥♥ around, which remember is one stack at a time, you will need ALOT of stacks of crushed rock to make any significant amount of road. Stuff like above show how the game just is not respecting your time, I don't mind long games with a hard progression curve, factorio is a great game, vintage story is another amazing title in the funny block game style, but this game DOES NOT respect the time you put into it, you will be wanting to quit long before you beat the meteor just because of inventory management carpal tunnel. Being able to select multiple stacks at once with a drag highlight would help with that but wouldn't change that the UI itself is bad. Your scroll wheel and left click AND right click better be in damn good condition before playing this game, they won't be after you beat it. The progression trees should be looked into and the ingame "Tech tree" UI either needs to be updated or removed, it suggested that cooking was a tier 1 tech, but a cooking stove (the needed building to USE cooking), is locked behind lumber, which is a TIER 2 TECH, so sure its "researchable during tier 1" but entirely a noob trap, not being usable until AFTER iron processing and lumber, a mid level miller, all things that come much later than being able to research cooking. Its like in minecraft finding diamond ore before an iron pick, something pretty and nice to look forward to but you got alot in the way, except multiply the time it takes to get the iron pick in our analogy by like 100x. Also many of the better tools, just aren't upgrades, the tier 1 wooden shovel can only collect and hold 1 dirt at a time, while the tier 2 iron shovel can collect 1 and hold 3, this is all the shovels really ever get, collecting more before needing to deposit in a stockpile. Most other tools are quite literally just damage buffs, which for plenty of things isn't you time bottleneck, sure you can cut down a tree 1 or 2 hits faster, but most of the time is spent collecting the wood, which NEVER gets any better. Anyways I am tired of typing more but you get the idea, the game can be great, but it needs to respect player time more, to actually KEEP PLAYERS to make the systems that would be fun having many players around, even just the 3 of us was hard to keep around, I can't imagine the 16 or more needed to create the larger government systems. Never got into that part of the game much, seems neat but not really worth it, unless that is your thing. ADDITION So, better solidifying this review. My major complains are the UI sucks, making playing solo an awful experience because all of the crafting tasks relying on you, and the UI for that in such bulk becomes a major chore. The UI still sucks in coop but this problem is masked by having a bigger group due to the simple idea of more monkeys in the kitchen, less each monkey needs to do. My complaints about the tools sucking and their upgrades being mid are like, proven by a comment that mentions that servers commonly install a mod to buff the shovels, which proves my point. The tools suck, and their upgrades are not significant enough. Notice how I am not complaining about the balance, the devs already handled that with the inagme modifiers, you can change the settings you need to make it possible solo. The UI/UX Suck

I've played Eco off and on over the years. Even though my overall recomendation is negative, I'm going to explain what Eco does really well and what it doesn't. Eco works amazingly well at balancing an economy, even though some might see it as cutthroat at times, the economy is dynamic and even though there's "professions" its so dynamic that you can offer other services in game like building someone a house, doing politics, and my personal favorite, being a trade merchant. Another thing this game does really well is bring people to be social with one another, thats the other thing that this game does well which is "collaboration" and you'll read alot of comments about how thats led to bad expierences in game, but your interacting with real people where some interactions go well or poorly. Few veteran players can deny that the collaboration effect is there though and makes for a dynamic and unpredictable level of gameplay and immersion into a real economy. Lastly, another thing it does really well is make new online friends. This is the only game I've ever made online friendships that have lasted years. So, now for the bad. Eco presents itself as a game that is meant to take a balance between "Economy" and "Ecology", hence "Eco". Your industrializing efforts are supposedly hurting the planet via pollution while striving to industrialize to shoot down the impending meteor. As much as players will say "don't do this" or "don't do that" to protect the planet, MOST (not all) servers have too big of a world and too small of a player count to make this a real effect in the world. This is strange because its what the game was designed around in the first place. Now, I understand why this is done. IF the meteor actually hits you or if you pollute you planet, it's game over. WHY is there only the extremes of game over? There's little to no in betweens that having any meaningful effect in game. Another thing it does VERY poorly is this game requires an insane amount of real life hours. Many Eco veterans will say things like "the devs added the exhaust mechanic to prevent that, its there if you want it". This was a good step but just made people not play on those servers, at least not in the higher population level thats fun for most people. Next, this game is not friendly to new players unless you have good players taking them under their wing to help them. There's a tutorial, but its too minimal to teach you even 5% of the game. This is probably my biggest sticking point: this has been in early access for YEARS and ALOT has been told to us, alot has changed direction, and thats okay, but communication has decreased over time which gives you this feeling of being excited for trains, animal husbandry, or selective star systems, but not having any communication which makes you feel like you were lied to even though development changed over time but that part is never communicated well. I've followed the discord and their suggestions wiki, but overall you get the feeling that the development team is mostly arguing with the player base and being extremely defensive which heightens the estrangement you feel to the game. So in summary if your willing to fall in love with a great economic simulator, make some great friends, but also put up with the difficulty of learning the game, always being excited for the next update but not ever being sure what it is or where it's going or if they'll even do the things they said they would, being in early access forever, and also it being an EXTREMELY time demanding and grindy game, then this one is for you. I will absolutely change my review if the wiki, discord, suggestions page, and overall direction of the game is made clear to us as the player base again without empty promises or we simply wrap up the game for everything that was promised into a full release of the game. But overall if you're deciding whether to purchase the game, I hope this genuinely helps those to have some insight as to what to be prepared for.

Its a fun game and a really cool concept for the most part. However, every time I come back to the game the developer is always seemingly going in a direction that is not what the community wants. This game could have trains, logistics, and other game modes. Instead there’s dinner parties and innumerable balance changes. Also seems to be pretty poorly optimized in more built up areas of a world and the game doesn’t seem to be using my system resources (im averaging about 30-40% load when frames are chugging) If dev does better ill definitely recommend. Until then id wait. Especially at $30