Thriving City: Song Review Summary

Praised Chinese-inspired art style: The game's art style, particularly its Chinese historical and ink-wash influences, receives widespread acclaim. Reviewers appreciate the beautiful and delicate graphics, the visually appealing aesthetics, and the way the art style enhances the overall gaming experience. The art style is consistently mentioned as a major positive aspect.

Engaging, addictive, high replayability: The game is praised for its engaging and addictive gameplay, rich content, and high replayability. Reviewers highlight the well-balanced difficulty, user-friendly controls, and the relaxing yet challenging experience it provides. Many found it hard to stop playing, with some spending extensive time enjoying the game.

Pleasant, immersive music: The game's music and sound design are well-received, with reviewers noting that the music fits the mood, enhances immersion, and is pleasant to listen to. The relaxing music is specifically mentioned as a positive aspect of the game.

Immersive Song Dynasty setting: The game's setting in the Song Dynasty is a major draw, with reviewers appreciating the historical accuracy, integration of historical events and figures, and the immersive experience of building and managing a city in that era. Some reviewers express interest in learning more about the Song Dynasty as a result of playing the game.

Good city-building simulation: The game is compared favorably to other city-building and management games like Caesar, Pharaoh, Anno 1800, and Tropico, with some reviewers finding it more accessible or enjoyable. The game's mechanics are familiar to fans of the genre, but with its own unique charm and Chinese cultural twist.

Repetitive and lacks depth: Many reviewers found the game becomes repetitive and boring after a relatively short time, often within the first few hours or by the mid-game. This is due to a lack of content, shallow gameplay mechanics, and a lack of engaging late-game goals. The game fails to provide a compelling reason to continue playing long-term.

Poor optimization and instability: The game suffers from numerous technical issues, including frequent crashes, lag, and poor optimization, especially in the later stages. Many reviewers found the game became unplayable due to these performance problems. This significantly detracts from the overall experience and makes it difficult to enjoy the game.

Poor resource management/economy: The game suffers from poor resource management and economic balance. Reviewers noted issues such as resource scarcity, difficulty in managing resources effectively, and a lack of clear information on resource production and consumption. This leads to frustration and makes it difficult to progress.

Inflexible building placement: The game's building system is criticized for being restrictive and inflexible. Buildings can only be placed in two orientations, and cannot be moved once placed, forcing players to demolish and rebuild structures. This limits design freedom and makes city planning frustrating.

Poor tutorial and guidance: The game lacks clear guidance and explanations of its mechanics, making it difficult for new players to understand how to play effectively. The tutorial is inadequate and fails to explain many aspects of the game clearly, leading to a steep learning curve and potential frustration.

Familiar but shallow gameplay: The game blends city-building, resource management, and defense, but lacks depth and innovation. Core mechanics are familiar to city-builder fans, involving resource gathering, construction, and managing residents. However, the military aspects are simple, and the overall experience lacks surprises.

Building combos boost revenue: Certain building combinations significantly boost tourist spending and takeaway prices. Optimizing these combinations is key to maximizing revenue. The specific combinations and their effects are detailed, providing actionable information for players.

Limited population growth: Population growth relies on attracting new residents, which feels limited. Early game is difficult due to labor shortages, as new population growth depends on happiness. This creates a bottleneck in the early stages of the game.

Underdeveloped examination system: The civil service examination system (科举) is unbalanced and not very useful. It provides a small prestige boost, but its impact on gameplay is limited. Some reviewers suggest improvements to make the system more autonomous and useful.

Tedious tourist/rumor mechanics: Tourists behave illogically, ignoring nearby attractions and traveling long distances. Collecting 'foreigners' for the museum requires excessive housing. The rumor system is tedious due to its frequency and lack of automation.

Population growth causes severe lag: Multiple reviews report significant performance degradation (lag, frame rate drops) as population increases, even on high-end systems. The issues start around 1000-3000 population and become severe around 10,000, making late-game play difficult. This indicates optimization issues related to population size and number of active agents.

Loading crashes after update: Some players report unexplained loading crashes after a specific update, preventing them from opening the game. This indicates a potential bug introduced in the 2023.11.05 update.

Poor CPU/GPU utilization: Reviewers note that the game doesn't fully utilize the CPU or GPU, suggesting potential optimization bottlenecks. This could explain why performance suffers even on powerful hardware.

Stone mine production bug: There is a bug where stone mine production repeatedly increases, reaching over 4000. This is a specific bug that can affect gameplay balance.

Failure unlocks achievements: Completing the story mode with a failure still unlocks achievements and new levels. This raises the question of whether simply experiencing the content is sufficient.

Purchase during sale recommended: A common suggestion is to purchase the game only when it's on sale, as the full price may not be justified by the current content and quality. Some reviewers suggest waiting for a deeper discount before buying. Trying the demo is also recommended.

Generally enjoyable with future potential: Many reviewers recommend the game and express overall enjoyment, while acknowledging existing flaws. They appreciate the developers' commitment and look forward to future updates and improvements. Some reviewers are updating their reviews to positive ones.

Desire for more content/free DLC: Many reviewers hope for continued support, more content, and free DLC in future updates. They are willing to be patient and wait for the development team to address the game's shortcomings and expand upon its features.

Support for domestic developers: Some reviewers support domestic products and hope the game gets better with updates. They recommend the game for those who want to support the developers and the Chinese art style.

Improve localisation/add languages: Some reviewers hope the developers will improve the localisation and add more languages. The localisation hinders replayability and should be improved.

Balance county needs vs. emperor: The game requires players to balance the needs of their county with the demands of the emperor, often forcing strategic trade-offs. Meeting the emperor's demands can sometimes lead to negative consequences, such as decreased reputation among the local population, creating a challenging dynamic.

Repetitive credits, city naming issue: The game shows the credits after completing each story mission, which can become repetitive. Additionally, city names should default to the mission name to help players differentiate between cities, as city names cannot be changed.

Small scale, limited content: The game is on a small scale, and the content and scale are limited, which is understandable given the price.

Developer support and response: The reviewer wishes the developers well, and the developer responded to the review and requested the save file to investigate the issue.

Inconsistent textile mill location: The location of the textile mill is inconsistent, listed under 'Baigong' in the construction menu but under 'Shi Jing' in the workforce allocation list, which may cause confusion for players.