Games good. This is a management sim more than any of the other genres, so if you don’t already like that sort of gameplay, you won’t enjoy trying to optimize your economy for the next run. Unlocks over many runs is a good way of drip feeding choice complexity and the early game gets easier as your starting resources increase.

Eventually you have so many options that are viable and the game really opens up. The main complaint I see that is valid is there is a mid-game progression wall that can be tough to overcome, but 3 patches in 3 days look to have smoothed that out, so you probably won’t have the same trouble.

There are two kingdoms to play as with highly different gameplay mechanics, it’s like two completely different games. If you enjoy strategy engine building games, or euro type board games with a good bit of theme on top, this will probably be a good fit. The extra genre mashups feel like they enhance the formula but don’t fundamentally change the core loop.

If you play on Deck, there are some controller quirks, but these have been reported to the dev and I’m sure they’ll be on it quickly. Just know that you can scroll on outpost options with touch controls since the right stick or trackpad didn’t work. There are some informational overlays you can’t get to without a mouse it seems, but I managed to win a run just using intuition of what symbols meant, so it’s not that big of a deal. Otherwise the Deck experience is great.

Favorite game of at least modern times, maybe ever. Unforgiving and requires patience, but it's more than rewarded in the end. 10/10