I keep coming back to this wonderfully flawed power trip of a game. Alloyed collective update was done extremely well executed. Might not be everyone's cup of tea but absolutely worth a try if you catch it on sale.

written on 5/3/2024 (Early Access Build 0.7.955)
14.0 hours played


Gameplay: 8/10 -- To echo a few words from the developer's April 17th announcement: This game is a relaxed citybuilding and management game with some small combat mixed in. The focus is smaller than world-spanning empire management or grand strategy games, think medieval county instead of a duchy, kingdom, or empire. If you're going into this game expecting mount & blade, starcraft, total war, or crusader kings, you will be disappointed. The game is a bit bare-bones for my liking, but it is early access so that is to be expected. With all of that said - I think it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do and I am very excited to see where the developer takes this one. There is a ton of potential here.
Session time length: 9/10 -- Just like city skylines, banished, or other similar city builder games, you play at your own pace and for as long or as little as you desire.
Replay value: 7/10 -- There is only a single map and a limited number of variables that can be manually or randomly adjusted. There is no roadmap to know what features will be added so anything beyond what exists is purely speculation.
Learning Curve Ease: 8/10 -- If you've played another city-builder like city skylines then you'll be right at home here. There are some specific mechanics that are not well explained within the game but after watching a couple videos, it all makes sense in retrospect.
Balance: 8/10 -- Like most city builders, there is a surprising amount of number crunching going on behind the scenes to ensure that the verisimilitude is maintained. Because it is early access, there are some tweaks that will need to be made eventually to remove the 'objectively most efficient' lines of play but nothing too egregious.
Price & Monetary considerations: 7/10 -- $40 sticker price is a bit steep for the game in it's current state. The game presently has a -25% discount as I write this making it a $30 game and I think that is a far more appropriate cost considering just how early in development this game is.
Social / Player Interaction: N/A -- Presently a single-player game and all indications are that will not change.
Narrative / Story: N/A -- This is more or less non-existent at the moment. I am not well informed enough to know if it is a priority for the developer but I view this very much as a 'nice to have' rather than a requirement for games such as this as the narrative or story is very much what you make of it yourself.
Visual Design: 8/10 -- It is honestly impressive how good this game looks for the hard drive space it requires and how early in development it is. From a bird's eye view the game is beautiful and when you go to first person mode and walk around the town, it is perfectly adequate.
Audio / Voice acting: 8/10 -- The music is fantastic and calming. There is no voice acting of your lordly opponents, at least not yet. The many villagers do have some voice lines which are not nearly as varied as I would prefer, do fit quite well.

With future DLC and content updates, I am certain I will revise my own personal rating to that of 9 to 9.5/10. Love this game.

I've had more fun in this co-op shooter than I've had in the vast majority of my time gaming in the past 5 years (sans Baldur's Gate 3 or monster hunter titles). There is a fantastic attention to detail and it is clear a lot of thought and love went into creating everything in the game. This gives me a lot of hope for future updates to be seen for this game. It is truly impressive the range of experiences you can get in this game going from goofy shenanigans where you can practically hear the benny hill music in the background as everyone is dying of laughter to cranking up the difficulty and suddenly it is the most intense and grueling fight for your life. It is worth noting that there is zero PvP in this game at this time. I don't believe it has been mentioned that any would be added in but I would not be surprised if they added it in at a later date.

Gameplay: 9/10 -- All of the controls/inputs feel good and the gameplay is fluid. There are very few bugs/glitches where things don't work as expected. Nothing is worse than dying/losing due to the game engine working improperly or feeling like you're fighting against the game itself instead of the enemies within the game.
Session time length: 10/10 -- 10min/40min missions
Replay value: 8/10 -- solid replayability that will only get better as more enemies, items, and stratagems are added to the game over time
Learning Curve Ease: 9/10 -- Most is very straight forward but there are some important aspects the tutorial does not teach you such as adjusting fire-rate or zoom for your weapons. A savvy player can get a newbie up to speed in 5min or they can watch a youtube video of equal length explaining the same things.
Balance: 8/10 -- Arrowhead rightly prioritizes a great deal of things above balance considering this is a PvE game but it would be nice to see some things changed around on a later update so there are no objectively bad or best options to increase the variety of usable options.

Price & Monetary considerations: 8/10 -- $40 feels absolutely on-point for the cost of video games today. In no way is it overpriced. There is an optional $20 super citizen bundle which acts like a battlepass for other games, which some other reviewers have likened it to the buzzword of "micro-transactions". This is quite the unfair comparison though as the "super credits" currency which can be purchased for IRL cash is all easily earned in-game to gain access to what is within the super citizen bundle, which one can expect to take anywhere from 50-100 hours of play time. Not a required thing in any way but a nice way to support the developer or speed along your progression if you have more disposable income than you do free time. Nothing included is strictly better than everything else, they're more side-grades than upgrades or downgrades.

Social / Player Interaction: 8/10 -- While you can somewhat ignore your teammates in easier missions, the game truly does come into its own when everyone is working as a unit and that is absolutely required at higher difficulties. Hoping to see more player interaction required missions and minigame components added in the future. The ingame comms are good and the accessibility features in this game were a welcomed surprise.

Narrative / Story: 7/10 -- There is not real story-mode of sorts but there are bits of lore scattered about almost like Easter eggs for those that want to seek them out.

Visual Design: 9/10 -- The game is cinematic and truly gorgeous, even on lower settings, although there are some issues with some graphics cards (7000 series have to set settings to low to avoid crash to desktop) that will be solved by future patches.

Audio / Voice acting: 10/10 -- The voice acting in this game is hilarious and wonderful. I am very thankful to whoever these lunatics were giving their absolute all in that sound booth. Every time I hear those corny lines get belted out it always gets a smile and chuckle out of me.

Masterpiece of a game. 100% deserving of all of the praise it has received.

fantastic chill game to multi-task while watching netflix or twitch. high on RNG elements and there is some amount of synergy optimizing to scratch that itch. no-brainer of a purchase if on sale.

This game is my space-sim fix until Star Citizen beta becomes more stable or until the full game is released. While it does not have nearly the ambition of SC, the game is wonderful in what it sets out to do. I could nitpick some finer details, but honestly, this game surpassed my expectations.

9 / 10

Possibly the best game in my library to boot up for a quick game when there isn't time to set aside 30+ minutes for a gaming session.

8 / 10

There will be lulz. This game allows for some hilarious contraptions, with few limitations on what you can create. Let out diabolical laughs as you construct the perfect war machine

8.5 / 10