- Fun, addictive gameplay blends city-building and survival.
- Impressive polish and depth for Early Access.
- Unique gods/faith mechanic adds strategic element.
- Strategic resource management offers a challenge.
- Deeper city management features are needed.
- Immersion broken by visual and functional issues.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 98% ¡ Negative 2%. Score: 2 / 100
Positives:
- The game is praised for its engaging and intuitive gameplay, often compared favorably to other titles in the genre. Reviewers highlight its addictiveness, relaxing nature, and the satisfying balance it strikes between complexity and accessibility, making it enjoyable for both casual and hardcore players. The game also has quality of life features, smooth controls, and is beginner-friendly.
- The game successfully blends city-building with survival elements in a Roman setting, drawing comparisons to games like Caesar, Frostpunk, and ANNO. Players must balance resource management, citizen happiness, and defense against barbarians, making every decision impactful. The game combines elements from various games into one cohesive experience.
- Many reviewers are impressed with the level of polish and content available in the early access release, especially considering it's from a solo developer. This has led to positive sentiment and support for the developer's efforts. The game has great potential.
- The game incorporates a 'gods/faith' mechanic where players must appease deities to gain favors, adding a unique layer to the gameplay. This feature is well-received and distinguishes the game from other city builders.
- Despite potentially appearing generic at first, the game offers a surprising amount of depth and quality of life features. It strikes a good balance between depth and accessibility, providing a refined experience without being overwhelming. The game has a lot of content.
Negatives:
- The game lacks depth in city management mechanics. Players desire more control over resource allocation, worker prioritization, and strategic decisions like edicts, similar to those found in other city-building games like Frostpunk, to enhance engagement and strategic depth.
- Several reviews mention missing or unpolished visual and functional elements. This includes a lack of building animations, the absence of bridges, awkward aqueduct placement, and an aesthetically unappealing water distribution system, detracting from the overall immersion and user experience.
- Army formations are ineffective, with archers mispositioned and units breaking formation during combat. This leads to undesirable min-maxing behavior and a less strategic combat experience, as units devolve into individual skirmishes rather than coordinated maneuvers.
- The game's balance is fragile, with a single attack or demolition causing widespread issues. This makes it difficult for players to recover from setbacks and maintain a stable city.
- The game's political system is shallow, with limited options beyond festivals and taxes. Players are looking for more depth and complexity in political interactions and decision-making to enhance the strategic layer of the game.
Gameplay:
- The game uniquely blends city-building with tower defense elements, requiring players to defend against increasingly challenging waves of enemies by strategically building defenses and raising an army. Combat incorporates a 'rock, paper, scissors' dynamic, rewarding careful preparation and tactical decision-making.
- Praying to gods is a feature that provides blessings and curses based on favor. However, the gods are fairly easy to keep happy, limiting the impact of this mechanic.
- The game's production lines and upkeep system create a constant challenge to balance surplus, expansion, and progression. This makes the player feel like they are constantly on the edge of falling behind.
- Maps are procedurally generated using seeds, allowing players to customize resource availability and overall difficulty. This adds replayability and allows for tailored experiences.
- The game incorporates a complex management system, requiring players to balance religion, health, food, security, bedding and entertainment. This creates a multifaceted challenge for players.
Performance:
- The game exhibits solid performance and stability, with players reporting smooth gameplay and high frame rates on various hardware configurations. This is a significant advantage, especially when compared to similar titles known for performance issues.
- Some players have noted that the game's visual quality appears jagged and of poor quality. This suggests potential issues with aliasing, texture resolution, or other graphical settings that detract from the overall visual experience.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers highly recommend the game, praising its solid foundation, addictive gameplay, and potential for the future, especially for fans of city-building and strategy genres. Some suggest waiting for updates before purchasing, but overall, there's excitement for the game's development and future content.
- Reviewers appreciate the developer's work, especially noting it's often a solo effort. The responsiveness of the developer is seen as a positive sign for the game's future.
- Some players find the medium difficulty too easy and recommend playing on the highest difficulty setting for a more challenging experience.
- A few reviewers feel that the addition of co-op would elevate the game to a masterpiece.
Miscellaneous:
- Some players have discovered and are exploiting a 'cheese' strategy, which may unbalance the gameplay and require developer attention to re-balance the game.
- The music in the game is considered adequate but lacks variety and memorability, suggesting an area for potential improvement to enhance the overall gaming experience.
- The game's production is currently basic, but the developers have plans to expand upon it, indicating potential for future content and feature additions.
