Kingdom: New Lands

This game is pretty straightforward with very few controls; you collect coins and spend them on things to build your defenses, train units, and cut down trees. This makes it very easy to play. However, it also makes it very hard to play for the same reason - how are you supposed to defend yourself if you can't command your units? What if you build your defenses on the wrong side of the map (halving your unit total)? What if you cut down one tree too many and your only available forest camp disappears? When are you supposed to upgrade your keep? I understand the lack of guidance makes for a more interesting game (for some), but for me, it was frustrating and I couldn't keep playing.

Answering to @azoltan comment: the GOG version (as of June 2018) does include Skull Island (in the main package, not as a separate DLC).

(Review based on Epic Game Store version from free giveaway; I'd like people who spend money on this to know what they're getting into.) The art and sound are actually great, but the gameplay is barely there; and what's there is unexciting and frustrating. If the game explained anything, it would have been immediately apparent how shallow it was. So instead, the game hides everything to make you "explore." The problem is, exploration in this game is fundamentally unrewarding. Since the gameplay is shallow, there is only one way to win and it's fairly obvious once you know what everything does. There are no clever solutions to be found in your exploration. You keep trying random things until you find the one thing that's obviously the best. To hide that, the game slows down how fast you can explore by giving everything a non-refundable gold cost, and making gold trick in very slowly over time. Then, to hide how slowly gold tricks in, the game gives your horse a stamina bar, making it painfully slow to move across the map and explore, so by the time you're back to your base you'll have a meaningful amount of gold to do something with. In the end, none of it worked. The early gameplay consists of arbitrarily doing random things only to find them almost completely useless, and waiting for more gold to come in while you're holding down a direction key to slowly move from one place to another. Outside of that, there is very little game left.

My experience differs a lot from the other reviews stating frustration with randomness. I've just finished the game and got into what looks like to be "new game plus" without any issue. Provided you will understand the mechanics and tactics, the game becomes super easy. The only downside is that oftentimes in the beginning of latter levels you have to wait a lot during the night, cause there's nothing to do, or you just can't due to amount of enemies. In what my experience differers from the screenshots and video (as of 2016 Oct 22), i haven't seen: deer mount, armoured horse mount, waterfalls, red blooming tree, ballista tower, statue with the sword, enemy portal activation, graveyard background, mega siege monster (i've encountered big siege monsters, but not as big). So it's either hidden in "new game +", or has vanished with the updates. Overall game is beautiful, nice and relaxing. Pleasure to play, though feels repetitive after going through all the levels.