So far this game has been great (about to start my 4th year in game), its a really good blend between a traditional city builder and a RPG game. So far I haven't played the campaign mode, just building my village in the Oxbow region, but even in the Oxbow region, you still have some quests to complete - all optional unless you want to unlock fast travel to your village. While most of the quests in the Oxbow are simple, the dialog for the quests can be quite amusing.
Pros:
- Game seems to be generally bug free (for me, anyway). Had a couple game crashes, but its likely a system issue as I have that happen with other games too. 1 time the fertilizer I made disappeared, but other than that the only bug I encountered was my settlers kind of floating to their destination rather than walking.
- Managing settlers, buildings, and livestock is very straight forward.
- Upgrading and/or moving building is easy
- Plenty of exterior aesthetics to make your village really look like a true medieval village
- Plenty of options to change the difficulty of the game, from the resources NPCs need to XP gains, enemy/animal damage and HP to whether or not you even need to eat/drink and more
- Being able to change how many days are in a season gives you plenty of time to do building and quests in between seasons; and after like 3 days you can just skip to the next season if you want.
Cons:
- The stats you can gain are somewhat limited. There's not much you can do to increase stats relating to combat, and all level caps are fairly limited as it is. Having stats for particular weapon types would be great, as would just having more levels to earn for the stats that are already in the game.
- By default the game limits the amount of buildings to 70. While this might seem reasonable, each orchard and field for crops counts as a building, if you don't start your settlement near larger areas of open land, you can easily reach that limit. The game does allow for you to increase the amount of buildings allowed, but strongly advises against it.
- Interior decorations are a joke
- Exterior decorations of the buildings themselves are lacking, especially when it comes to buildings that aren't homes
- Maybe I just haven't progressed far enough, but when you unlock your village sign, it only allows fast travel TO your village from a game village - but you cannot travel FROM your village to others. At this point it almost just seems better to buy a donkey or horse for travel.
- Combat is boring, and with the heat/cold elements in the game, its kind of impossible to run around with armor during the summer unless you take a bunch of potions and booze to help with that. Even then, its generally boring.
All in all, this game is excellent if you enjoy city-builders in this era (such as manor lords) but want that RPG element. It feels quite immersive, the soundtrack is enjoyable (though a bit more diversity in it would be nice), all the building is fun, and the quests dialog offsets the simplicity of most quests. 8.5/10
