nice

As a true and loyal TC1 player I tested this game in beta, didnt felt it at that time. Apparently now that TC1 got terminated and I cant come back to it ever again I had to give this one here another shot. I started, tabbed out to lower volume and.......... never got back in :)

- They say they "[...] are still commited to The Crew [...]" and with the same announcement they want us all to pay 1€ for the sequel of the game they terminated from our all gaming library?
- And then.... it crashes once you tab out?

That has to be satire!? Right? .......... Right?

On a real note: The very least thing they could've done was to give away TC2 for FREE to those who had TC1.
Im not a fan of saying things like that, but Im praying for their downfall. They don't deserve anyone playing anything from their games. Im sorry to all the hard working devs and artistis who spend their time into making good games just for a stupid management throwing everything right into the trashbin.. again.. and again.

- Car models look amazing for this type of style.
- Overall graphics look good. I'd love if there'd be some more difference between sweden and kenyia roads...
- Braking feels too rapid, not sure if this game even has physics at all lol.
- All smaller cars feel like a gum ball: You turn, they oversteer the hell out of you.
--> You can adjust braking and steering intesity in the settings menu; Still i struggled to get friends with smaller cars.
- Bigger cars feel comfy in both steering and grip level
- Some collisions are extremely annoying: Crash barrier keeps you stuck, often. Just don't touch it at all cost lol
- China rallys are more annoying than enjoyable. But i expected it, so i kinda enjoyed it lol
- Track signs are lacking timing and accuracy: The game throws a U-turn sign at you way to late, just for you to figure out its more a 90° turn.

You can really tell that it does sound like a lot is going wrong, but surprisingly the overall gameplay is fun and exactly what it promised to be: An old school rally game. The dev is actively working on it, collecting feedback, fixing stuff and adding content. The price is super fair and I really enjoyed playing it.
If you can deal with some old school car feel: Go for it, you gonna have fun!

There was a nostalgic desire in me to play the next "real" Settler game, so i bought PioneersOfPagonia(PoP). Played a good 40 hours, and had fun. I'm all here for new ideas and gave it a shot. Further here are some pro's and con's. And at the end you can find why I keep giving thumbs down for this game in its current state.
updated review can be found at the end.

- EA launch with a roadmap, even if small
- regular updates, including new features from the roadmap and quality of life
- i didnt experienced any crashes
- game works fine, some things just take time; however, there is a x5 and x1 gamespeed option to switch on/off as you prefer
- general art style is awesome, especially the artworks look awesome. You can really tell they have a vision for this.
- Introduction/Tutorial feels ok and helps you through every step of the game, if needed.
- Current challenges/assignments of the missions have fair difficulty.
- Main menu looks good
- Mapgenerator works fine; you got a lot of options to choose from and set up the game/map as you prefer
- Way-system and building-placement allow for almost all possible options to structurize your village
- Bustle and hustle of your pioneers is awesome to watch
- Production chains are kept simple but still have some depth.
- General mechanics are great, period. Pioneers do what you set them up to do; Priority works fine; Way system works well if you get behind it; Building restrictions are balanced and are challening when having minimal resources, as it should be.


- I like games with roadmaps as it paths a way in what ppl can expect. Still the roadmao of this game had just very few steps and to bring it directly to the point: It doesn't feel finished, even if all roadmap goals are reached.
- The game has sometimes trouble handling performance well; you should expect some lower framerates here and there. Usually nothing to worry about in an EA game, but I feel like it claims too much resources for what you get. Still, it didn't crash a single time in the 40 hours I played.
- One might think that switching from x1 to x5 speed is a good solution to keep it fresh, but in reality it just shows that some of the core elements lack developement and testing time. If I'd compare it to one of the settlers games -and that is, without a doubt, their direct competitor in this genre, although they want to keep distance to it- Pioneers Of Pagonia takes too much time. I can remember sessions in The Settlers where it took you an good hour or two, or even 3 to finish a map/mission. In PoP it's nothing unusual to be just halfway through by already having 3 hours on the clock or more. This has to be adjusted and reworked in order to make it not too tiring or even boring. It won't be an easy fix and there are many options to adjust; From fixing some proportions of the map/scale to fixing and adjusting production chains. Tho, im just a player and don't have the insight what it would take to fix it properly.
- I said that the general art style is awesome and god bless, it is true! Artworks, 3d models, especially the buildings look in great shape and color combination. However, I can't quite understand why it looks so plastic and generated ingame; is it the lighting? the procedural textures/materials? the shading as a whole? It's hard to tell, but I feel like the game would look a lot better if there would be more contrast and a less "low poly unity look". The general art style is far from "low poly unity look" and I'm a bit sad it has this disparity.
- Unit control feels not well integrated. It wants to be a big part of the game, but apparently it's not. Not yet? Doesn't want to be that at all? . . .
- Now to the biggest question: What does this game want to be? Answer: It doesn't know! And it seems they don't know either... Although you have units and can fight against thieves/scavs and magical creatures like werewolves and ghosts it totally misses a key direction, a mission. While in The Settlers you were able to conquer enemy territory your only goal in PoP is to clean the map from scavs/magical creatures. And unfortunately I can not see this getting any "better" when they continue spawning new creatures or even give it all a mission to "fight against the magic creatures". Most ppl bought this game to get that "soft RTS vibe" The Settlers once offered some time ago: You build up your prod chains and explore the area to prepare for conquering territory with your units. Like, it seems their current plans for PoP are to avoid going in that direction at all cost. And instead build a highly diplomatic focused citybuilder with small PvE elements to "give the player smth to do". Im not here to say this couldn't find success, but it'd need a ton more than just some PvE elements to make this game fullfilling. With all the procedural map generation and so forth it'd make more sense to go into that soft RTS direction i mentioned earlier. However, if they tend to go into full fantasy mode with ghosts/werewolves they need to add proper rpg and storytelling in combination with hand crafted map designs to give this a 90° turn in terms of gameplay. Else it could look even more splitted and unfinished than it is right now.

Sorry, but I would simply not recommend anyone to buy this game until it's path is clear to avoid ppl getting disappointed.
And no, Im not giving a thumbs down because the 40hours weren't fun, but because the game feels empty and the overall communication about the main mission remains hidden; and probably they themselves still don't know what to do with what they got so far. It's a critical point and as long as this path isn't clear I won't recommend buying it.

Best case scenario: They add real enemy villages; conquer other villages; Online PvP. work on gamespeed problem. Rework grpahics.



- new magic update makes the game feel even more strange and random than it was before. Best example for that: Scavs and other entities were added randomly on the maps generated. Werewolves and ghosts were added the same way.. making it already feel very cheap integrated. Not enough? Ok let's bring on the big magic update: Magical creatures were added the same way. Wonderful! So now we've got scavs, ghosts, werewolves, magic creatures to put on .. and now: LETS ROLL THE DICE! . . . It's just not good.. like, not at all.

- Performance issues widened: quick saves now have my game fully freez for 2-3 seconds; once i increase gamespeed it starts lagging, it then eventually calms down after half a minute.
Im hearing my gpu clearly all the time, which indicates the game really has some serious stuff to do?!

- Graphics: Although i get the idea behind the newly added fire/light shaders they struggle to inscrease the crispness; the overall look of the game hasnt improved at all. My example of how this game could possibly look: There is a pretty new game called "Europa", it does transfer a whole different graphic vibe, graphics feel crisp, colours are nice, nothing looks super flat, it has good contrast, looks simply lovely... Unfortunately PoP doesnt even come close to that.

Hate me for it but Im gonna be honest when I say: The further this developement goes, the more i can feel mobile-game visual look and game design in general finding its place in a well structurized production chain-citybuilder. It just doesnt feel good at all. New magic stuff feels super random and just feels "smacked on" a proper working core game part(productionchain-citybuilder). Im sad this had to happen, but im not surprised as i've mentioned before: The game doesnt know what it wants to be.

If you wanna have fun for a couple hours you can buy it, but as someone who loves coming back to games be warned: You won't enjoy it.

As always, Im keeping this review updated. Let's hope the best!

Once upon a time there were free content updates.
It's pure irony when they release a map editor and then start selling map-packs as DLC sometime later.
Almost every update since then was a new DLC announcement.

A shame because the basegame is hella fun...

a couple dudes created something better than multiple combined studios at EA.
its a great game, worth spending your hours in. 15 bucks for solid mass battle gameply in comparision to an super unfinished over-hyped triple A franchise, no matter the title lol

get in, have fun, it's sometimes that easy, yes!

give this game a bit more time and maybe a prepared relaunch marketing- and ad-wise.
lotta potential here

me describing Cubeworld and its developer in one sentence:

what comes around goes around :)