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This is the review I tried to post for this game, but apparently it's "too long". I post it here more as a warning to those considering buying this game. I'm not saying don't buy it, just consider the things that fans of this game don't tell you.

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(1 out of 5 stars)
OK, my attempt at a REVIEW rather than an OPINION.

PROS

- probably fun if you like to watch virtual people doing virtual things. I suggest looking out of a window instead.
- Music is OK but repetitive.
- Graphics are pretty good, but don't blend nearly as well as those in equivalent non-3d games.
- I did smile inwardly when I saw a Libyan raider running off across the desert with a stolen monkey. That was the highlight of the game for me.

CONS

- Worst for me are the game-stopping bugs/flaws.
Raiders getting stuck and becoming unkillable while still causing villagers who come near to flee. Villagers don't have the AI to move around them and a queue of screaming people builds up and eventually the city grinds to a halt.
Barge landings that don't work on some maps. On the first expansion map I built a landing at every possible location, had barges available and 12 labourer huts and 2 overseers on each side of the river. Still "materials are blocked by water" and 18 or 19 of the labourers sat at home doing nothing.
- Repetetiveness. You get all the game mechanics, such as there are, in the tutorial at the beginning. This means that every map after that is just 'rinse and repeat'. The game Pharaoh and Cleopatra (PaC, also on GOG) introduced new mechanics in each map, so half the game was like playing an ever-expanding tutorial and you had something new to look forward to as you played through the game.
- Too much watching, not enough playing, even with game speed at max. 2.5x. This is made worse in later/higher difficulty maps as the only difficulty factor introduced is poor fertility and failed floods. This means you sit and watch or go and do some housework for several game-years while the city recovers and buildings get a stock of food built up again.
- Pointlessly 3-D graphics mean you often have to rotate the camera to click on what you want to select, then return it to its default view. This is exacerbated by people who sit on their roofs, so you click on them instead of the building and have to try again. Unnecessarily tedious.
- Atrocious pathing. People frequently leave their houses and head off in the opposite direction to their destination. They then bounce around off buildings like it's a game of pinball. Then they get stuck on the corners of buildings. And this isn't just cosmetic. You can put 2 bakeries right by a home but by the time Mrs Scribe (scribe and overseers wives seem to be the worst) has gone on her surreal tour to the baker's someone else has taken the bread and she ends up in a pinball/go-home/pinball/go-home loop until her emaciated, pissed-off husband leaves the city.
And front doors? You carefully rotate your buildings to face a road and 9/10 times the occupant leaves on whichever sides DON'T have a road adjacent, usually out the back door.
- General comparison with PaC. I didn't review PaC because I didn't finish it, I got stuck on the final map. In that game you had to micromanage incredible detail, like ensuring water supplies and preventing fires. All that rich detail is stripped from this game and replaced with prestige. Not once did prestige become a challenge for me as all you have to do is build plenty of brickmakers/layers and then just keep adding brick-only tombs and monuments. It really is rather pointless.
- And on the subject of 'pointless' there is literally no goal to the game. The main game consists of 5 world maps and 3 difficulty levels. So you play through the 5 world maps 3 times. The maps aren't related in anyway, each on is 'stand-alone' When you complete a set of 5 and the final 15th map you just get a 'quit' option and move on to the next map.
- Frequent crashes on some maps. Sometimes these were related to problems like a mass of people building up because one got stuck, other times it just seemed to be because I played for too long, crashing predictably after an hour or so.

Overall, if you like to watch more than play, try this. If you like to play more than watch, go for Pharaoh and Cleopatra.
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Wayrest: Barge landings that don't work on some maps. On the first expansion map I built a landing at every possible location, had barges available and 12 labourer huts and 2 overseers on each side of the river. Still "materials are blocked by water" and 18 or 19 of the labourers sat at home doing nothing.
It took me a while to figure this one out. Barge landings need to be built into DEEP water. It's possible to build them into shallow water, but they won't work. I think they also don't work if you build them too close together, although I haven't played it long enough to confirm that yet.