Banished

I enjoyed my first few hours of Banished before it felt like a bit of grind. From a technical standpoint, I had no issues with resolution, bugs, etc. The game just plained worked and adding mods from the community was easy as well. I found the graphics good and the music pleasant and relaxing. The gameplay was initially challenge, but once I had the food production to citizen growth curve figured out, the game kind of tails off from there. Short of upgrading a house from wood to stone and trading for various seeds and livestock that you don't start with, there isn't any upward expansion in the game. The buildings you can build initially are all you get. I'm a big fan of unlocks, research, enhancements, etc and that's the only reason this game lost a star.

Excellent city sim. Provides just proper difficulty and tons of options for simulation, as flavor on top it has sort-of-unique and pretty graphic-style.

There's a reason why good designers are working for major studios and bad ones are churning out badly balanced crap like this. Avoid.

if someone actually tested this before release, but why would anyone bother with making sure the quality of their product is up to par ?

I really wanted to like Banished, as a more laid-back city-building sim. But after sinking 10+ hours in it, I can't take it any more. 1. "Build a city with any layout you want with almost no restriction on when, what, and where you build." This is an outright lie. Your starting location is a fixed random location. There may be nice locations in your random map, but no! You have to start from that uninhabitable mountain-enclosed corner. Also you can't build everywhere. Mountains are practically useless, and the mountain terrain maps unplayable. 2. You are micromanaging all the time. E.g. change farmers to foresters/woodcutters every autumn, and back to farmers every spring. But you are not allowed to actually force builders to build where you want them. And you can't reassign houses so that workers live close to their workplace. 3. Worker AI is crap. "Priority" command doesn't work. I had 4 builders trying to finish a Trader's Post that needed 8 more stone + building work. Nothing else being built. It took them something like 3 years to get the stone + 1 for the work. 4. Many buildings are useless. E.g. mines and quarries won't ever yield enough resources to warrant their use. You didn't spawn close to a stone-rich location? Bummer. You're doomed from the start. 5. On the other hand, consumption of resources is rapid. You need something like 5 miners + 1 blacksmith working fulltime in order to not run out of tools for a population of 25. Similar for the tailor. 6. The Trader's Post is presented as the way to build up your city. It isn't. It's effectiveness is extremely dependent on its location. I built one on the main river, but got no trade from it at all. So again, bad spawn location? Bummer. You're doomed. All-in-all, worst game purchase for a fair long. But more than the money spent, I regret the playtime that could have been used on something more enjoyable that actually works. And I'm really puzzled how this game could ever get its present 4.4/5.