Posted on: August 27, 2024
Ramevox
Games: 650 Reviews: 68
Presentation over gameplay
Frostpunk nails presentation perfectly, and the narrative side of the game is pretty fun. The game pulls you in into its world and tries its best to keep you in. Some general gameplay loops are good (scouts and overarching story), while others are - or would be - fine, if the game was devoid of the city builder layer. Frostpunk is a really bad city builder, and if you're looking for your fix, you won't find it here. It's more of a "choose your story" type of adventure, where 99% of decisions and options presented to you equal to a Sierra style death sequence and restarting the main mission which effectively is the only campaign/scenario/mission there is in the base game. If you pick a "wrong" option, its game ending consequence will be only visible dozen minutes later in the game. To complete the game, you need to solve the puzzle the developers thought of, and if you guess one step wrong - tough luck, try again. This is to detriment of the city builder part of the game, because by default the gameplay should offer multiple different paths to success, not funnel you down a narrow game of guessing "do I press A or B now". The city builder layer is extremely basic and highly unsatisfactory on its own. Random events do give you short term goals, but sometimes a certain sequence of subsequent events will contradict each other or require to stretch your human resources too thin (so you need to ignore one to not lose completely). And this sequence can accumulate. If you guess wrong what the future requires from you - tough luck. The temperature management is cool at first, but quickly overstays its welcome, since it requires a ton of micromanagement and prioritizing certain research options first in certain (not telegraphed) moments. If you're looking for certain spin on visual novel with resource management, this can be highly enjoyable and recommendable. If you're looking for a classic building experience only - better avoid. It's not fun.
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