MEMORIAPOLIS

Interesting concept. This is a city builder where you build no roads, no housing; many portions of the game are organic. Maybe I (and others) aren't ready for a fully organic approach. The developer can do a better job of translating 'if i build here, X could happen'. Due to multi-eras and policies, the impact evolves, and causes friction for your different factions. If you try to negotate with factions, it leads to negative affects. Therefore, I don't negotiate anything and accept everything with what seems no to little impact. The areas are milestone driven. Nothing creates urgency to meet the timeline; just put the speed on high and come back when you have enough of X. Utlimately, that is what leaves me with a not recommended, the game feels meaningless.

The game is a bit dissapointing. I really want to like it, but it promisses to be more than it actually is. The whole concept of factions and political influences sounds promising, and you get a sense that your choices matter, but in reality, it means nothing, in the end, all you lose is perhaps building a particular monument, but there is no real threat that emerges if you lose favor with a faction. I would have thought that you could "lose" the game by creating some sort of rogue faction, or maybe some faction could usurp your power, but no, nothing matters. Aside from the factions not having any real impact other than flavour, the codex or guide never really concretely explains anything. Everything they tell you feels like a pitch for the game. "When a faction loses trust, they will have negative influence on the city." Like what exactly? "A faction will try to get new districts and grow." Is that a bad thing? Should I avoid that? "A faction can buy up buildings." And will I lose anything if they do? Everything is so vague. So I build up to the medival era, without really knowing what I was doing, totally ignoring the factions, and just see what would happen, so that I could get a better understanding of the whole factions situation, but nothing really happened. No coupe, no civil war, no losing the game, only the start of the next era. The game didn't even seem to be bothered by the fact that I couldn't build a monument in the antique era. It just let me continue playing without consequences. So if you like to plop down buildings, and make a pretty looking city through different stages of history, than this is the game for you. If you're looking for a challenge in city building, and make your decisions have meaning, than this game will probably just bore you.

Memoria Polis is a game that looks really good, but that's about it. I didn't run into any issues getting it to run and it seemed pretty smooth, but as a city-builder or a strategy game it feels like a city-painter with extra steps. The game is so devoid of meaning. It's not strategic enough to be interesting like a more survival focused city-builder. The tech is impressive to look at but it doesn't give you the level of control a la Cities Skylines to make it so you can experiment deeply with some kind of logistical issues or novel ideas. It's just... get the roads and attractiveness up in the areas you want and people move in, make sure you have plenty of food. I felt zero challenge on medium difficulty, but I also struggled to feel creative. Just plop down buildings that all basically do the same thing but are different colors. There's never any pressure to do ANYTHING. The biggest disappointment is the age-transition mechanic though. Maybe if it mattered it would be something to write home about, but it's as pointless as the rest of the game feels. Some of the buildings evolve and they can the bare minimum of wrinkles, but I am not being the least bit hyperbolic when I say that if you know Civilization 7, regardless if you like that game or don't, Civ 7 has a more interesting and more strategic age transition mechanic. The ancient cities losing prestige, having to be careful about your ageless buildings, but also getting overbuild older buildings and revitalize them is way better done and more engaging than Memoria Polis. Memoria Polis is basically just keep doing what you did in the first age but it's medieval flavored now. No urban renewal, no problems, no fires gutting your city. Just plopping down more and more buildings. Basically, the game is a vehicle to show off some of the painting tech behind their district system and I don't want to disparage the work of developers because I don't know the effort that went into it, but as a player, as someone who paid money, it's dull as dishwater. Who cares! The roads don't do anything, there's nothing logistical about it. There's nothing creative. The game is pretty from afar, but it's lifeless. There's no activity, there's some weather (that doesn't matter). It's a city painter. It's bereft of challenge and player creative expression. There are so many better city-builders.

The game is pretty but lacks meaningful choice. On the surface, the game gives you a lot of choices. There's a permanent buff you select at the start of an age, knowledge cards you can slot in starting in the second age (think simplified Civ 6 civics card), and factions with varying personalities that sometimes compete with each other. However, the consequences of these choices are too small for them to matter. I'm told to not let a faction grow too powerful, but even the warlike factions aren't an annoyance, and the misers that hoard gold still pay roughly the same in taxes. There's a council formed out of the two most powerful factions and every now and then they'll propose a law change on their own which costs you political capital to oppose, but... most of the laws are okay. Even if they don't propose my first-choice law, they're all just a question of "which city buff do you want" so there's not a major downside to simply agreeing. The political decrees are also both too expensive to bother with (at least in the first two ages), have questionable AI weights (you require a building permit to build a faction's monument, but said faction only mildly cares), and bribing them to your side costs 100 gold whether their trust score is -1 or -30 from what you need. So if there are any actual consequences to just letting factions grow, I haven't encountered them, and if they only kick in at age 3+ that's too late for a player to strategize around. On the micro level, the main challenge of the game is dealing with the constant stream of migrants to your city (outside of a decree, you do not control the rate you expand, unlike most city builders) and ensuring there's enough service supply for the five services. There are six lines of buildings to provide services, one for each faction, with five of them primarily specializing in a specific service while sometimes offering secondary services of your choice. You choose which buildings to build and where to place them, but this doesn't really seem to matter. The flexible service slots are ironically too flexible to the point where you don't have to focus on a faction's buildings because you can get services from most of the others, so there's technically a choice there, but as there's no downside to the factions gaining power, you can just build whatever. Even then, you're encouraged to build at least one of every building in an age to unlock the technically optional monuments. They're not required to advance, but they expand your city, provide massive service boosts, and offer missable permanent bonuses to the city, so there's literally no reason not to build them all. This means every city ends up with every building, and where you put them is largely unimportant. In the end, there's a lot to the game, but it's lacking consequence. In particular, everything seems tied around balancing the factions, but you're also given so much flexibility to not engage with mechanics that it doesn't really matter. The final result is a game that looks pretty but is sadly dull.

This game deserves more positive reviews. It is visually stunning, and the idea of building a single city through several ages is great. Seeing the city grow is beautiful, and I personally love the cultural evolutions - that is, whenever a building from an earlier age "merges" with one from a later age. This is exactly what happened historically, and it is great to see it reflected here. It is true that some of the mechanics are still a bit janky. Faction negotiations are a bit of a hassle - they keep popping up but 99% of the time I just approve them, it does not seem to be particularly worth it to tweak them. However, the devs have really listened to feedback and have significantly reworked the game with the latest update (at the time of writing), Banners & Wonders. I played the first version - now it is quite different. There is more freedom, some unclear mechanics (looking at you, Collection) were scrapped, and factions are more streamlined (although not perfect - but most city-builder and strategy games have lacking internal politics simulations). All in all, this game deserves more love. It is beautiful, has an original vision, and its devs are still actively working to improve it and expand it. I would recommend it to city-builder fans looking for a more historical and relaxing experience

What it boils down to is that there simply isn't enough to make this a unique city building experience. I like the concept, but everything feels very hollow. All I'm doing at any given time is waiting so that I can click the next level-up button, but I'm faced with 0 consequences along the way. Factions feel like decorations, not essential parts of the game. In truth, most of the things in this game feel like decorations - there never feel like any real challenges to overcome or unique ways to replay.

It's just too .. boring .. and confusing .. there's a lot of emphesis on politics but it doesn't really add anything other than a source of annoyance ..

DO FACTIONS CONTROL THE GAME OR THE PLAYER? Want to like this game.....there's some good ideas...but The game has potential but as it sits, I found the faction system my least favorite mechanic without direct and immediate control over them. They seem to run the show in this game. It felt like I was babysitting kids or something. They also take a lot of resources. Why can't we just expel annoying factions, benefit and be a powerful ruler over the city? That would be fun IMO. IS THE CITY ALIVE? There could be some better indication that your city is alive. Right now it looks more like the city buildings, roads, ramparts etc are being painted magically on the screen. All very chill but not really that engaging as a city builder. Perhaps that is a mechanic the devs were going for though. DO YOU LIKE COWS? There's a irritating cow sound that repeats over and over and over. Turning off ALL the environment sounds removed that one sound but I didn't want to have to turn them ALL off. There could be a fun game here especially if we the player had more control over everything and felt like a ruler but I didn't find it before my refund window. Lower the price a lot and it's probably worth a revisit in the future.