How many times have you read a review that starts with: I really wanted to like this game, but...
And thought to yourself "No you didn't". I've read so many reviews like that, I never wanted to start a game review the same way, however here we are....
I really wanted to like this game, however there are just a few too many minor glitches with it that don't seem to have been resolved and cause the game to, well..., effectively cheat.
Let's start with the positives. The game looks nice, it seems to run smoothly, and I never had any noticeable slow downs or major graphical glitches. The audio is pleasant enough, and I do like that when you zoom in close to the towns, you can hear the "hustle and bustle" of the people moving about. It's a nice touch. Musically, it's adequate, but I usually turn off game music, as I've never really enjoyed any game music.
Now that the good part is over with, what about the negatives ? Most of these things are minor issues, but collectively they make the game a lot less fun, and bordering on the impossible.
Firstly there are the silly issues: The birds get stuck and fly in the one spot.
Then we have the control scheme which is odd. Middle mouse click / hold for rotating, and scroll wheel for zooming in and out, and WASD for movement. What ? Why not click and drag for movement ?
Tack on that some properties can't be selected, so there's no way of knowing if they can be upgraded, and some of the resources don't show properly (you can see income vs expenditure, but not food in vs food out). You've also got the issue that even if you can work out how much food you're making, the game doesn't count it properly (I wrote my own trainer to read the resource values, and food keeps going down, no matter how much food you grow).
It also doesn't seem to matter how your workers / population are distributed, you gain resources no matter what.
There's also no way of seeing what each building / square is producing. Once upgraded you have no individual information on said buildings or squares.
On top of all that, a number of the menu options don't save, so you're going to have to turn the music off every time and set the V-Sync more than once as well.
Sadly, these issues should have been rectified much earlier on in the games development, and should have been fixed by now, after a few years of being available.
Taking everything into consideration, especially a game where you can't win, because food gets used faster than it can be grown, no matter how many farms you have, it's a thumbs down for me.
