Foundation

Cozy and challenging at the same time. It takes a bit of strategy and finessing to figure out. I'm still working it out, and can see that it would have a lot of playability even after completing a successful run through. The graphics are sweet and the sounds are relaxing. Options for how you want to play, I especially like that it doesn't make you fight battles in order to expand. The only downside is that it is addictive!

I'm changing my Review to "YES Recommend". But it's with strong caveats. I'm leaving my old notes below, as they are still valid. But the fact is, across the entire gaming market, this literally is the BEST city builder of all of them. Yes, even better than Manor Lords. And I can tell the Developer Spirit and intention is good, there's just still some wonkiness and bugs (but other games have it way worse). So if I would recommend any game for someone to sink their teeth into a city builder, this is it. If they don't like this, they won't like any of them. ======== <Older Review> I hate writing this as this has probably been the best city builder I’ve ever played. But as all of them end up, by the time you get to the late game, there’s too many complex systems and bugs that are breaking your playthrough. It prevents you from wanting to ever fire up a new game because you’ll know it will just end up bugged out again. - Keeping people housed is far too complex. They just say they need a house. But they don’t say why. I designate zones near where they live. But the land is too hilly I guess to build on. The same goes for Private Quarters, even though plenty exist they don’t know how to go to them. - It gets too hard to see what buildings are where. Too much micromanagement of building sub-parts and decorations to buildings, especially when I need to move them all to re-organize my layout. - It’s too hard to figure out where break-downs in production lines are occurring. Everything looks like they should be fine, and yet nothing is moving. - Villagers will become unhappy with their housing for no explained reason, then leave, then leave a gap in a production line somewhere that you don’t realize until it’s too late. And even then, you know there is a break somewhere, but have to hunt to find it like a Where’s Waldo book. - There’s a lot of time gates, like waiting for soldiers to go out, do missions, then come back. By the late game the 3x speed max is too slow. - I kept getting villagers bugged out on a bridge. So I built a second bridge. And they would get stuck on that too. Eventually this led to one of my final missions bugging out because one royal visitor got stuck and even though everyone else was 100% happy she was enough to fail the mission. I have no interest in loading this game up again.