All the charm of Frostpunk 1, watching the workers trudge through the snow, the immersion, the vibe, the little touches all gone. Giant tractors materialise out of thin air to construct and vanish back into it. You're so zoomed out, the sectors are just tiles, time goes so much faster that people are just a resource number and time just about timers, not story or simulation. All the pretenses are stripped away, everything that made the first game more than it's mechanics. The game also gives you very little information and reasoning to why anything is happened, the whole game is macro, viewed out and that includes not counting the information you'd need to make decisions worth telling you. Streamlined, empty and obscure. With all the immersion, feel and tone gone, you're left with a streamlined puzzle strategy game that, is nothing special. An ok-ish tile placement and points managements game. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first game, if you really love tile placements games and timers? sure but, board games do that better.
I've been playing this game for a year on steam, and the thing about it is there's always more to discover. Constantly realizing you can do stuff or reading what other players are getting up to and thinking 'Who would even think of this, let alone code it in. SUPER SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION You effectively run a wizard school, but chinese martial arts wizard, think Legend of the Condor Heroes, Monkey King, DBZ, Avatar:TLA. You have inner circle who sit around all day training, cultivating their magical energies and preparing themselves for the tribulations (Tests that drain their QI energy so you need to have them high enough QI, or environments that recharge their QI fast enough to keep them alive.), the more tribulations the more powerful wizards they become on the next tier. The more your school achieves the more powerful rivals and bandits (and demons) attack you. Also if you upset the local dragon, you can get dragon-ed. So you need powerful wizards/cultivators. Then the outer circle characters, who are DF dwarves/Rimworld colonists/etc they build, farm, clean, do the jobs that keep your cultivators alive and happy. The game has a full feng shui system which effects how plants grow, the happiness rooms create and how your cultivators can develop. 5 elements to balance, a world to travel and do quests on, good and evil system, artifacts to create, talismans to learn. SO MUCH ALCHEMY and crafting and systems that look simple but have so many conditional variations and combinations it's endlessly complicated so that I'm still learning. Oh and you can also have disciples who are demons who have to face tribulations just to stay 'human' if you want a harder game. If you love DF, Rimworld, or the genre of Chinese Cultivation fantasy, then this game is for you. It's brilliant. You're not going to master it in a week and move on, as there's just so much depth here. Also it's kinda pretty.
Fantastic gameplay, the management/simulation side remains brilliant, but as with the first it's trapped in a visual novel of completely awful writing. You're even stuck playing the same character as the old game with the new sheriff relegated to basically your secretary for all she gets the cover image. The game is trying to desperately to the 'mature' and edgy. fulfill every juvenile fantasy about dirty cops movies under the guise of critique that it drains all possibility of being enjoying. If they made it so you could play the game without the story. answering callouts, managing staff and equipment it would pretty much be a perfect game. But trapped in the story and with these characters, it's just intolerable. For a plus, the game side of it, is leagues of improvement. The tactical combat is fantastic and gives you a wide range of options, the management is great and it all looks good and runs well. But it all comes to nothing when you have to endure boyd and his story to get to it.
It's almost a very good game. It's a fantastic police simulation game, running the callouts, managing staff, it all plays and feels great but, it's trapped in the most awful, immature and just intolerable visual novel imaginable. It's so hard on dark and edgy™ and taking mature to mean r18 or got 12 year old boys with no female friends to write it. It could be brilliant, apparently there is a version of it which is good, just the simulation and police game without the story, other people have mentioned it, but because you'd have to get through the story to unlock it no way would that be worth it.
The game is good art. The narrative is fantastic, while its a bit hard to get a grip on the protagonist, the supporting characters are brilliant, and all very well written, Lincoln is too, he's just what he is. Lies so often to other characters you're not always sure what his truth actually is. The Documentary framing narrative is interesting and really well done, and reflects the choices you make along the way, especially with one of the ending choices. The best thing is the Soundtrack. The game has the best soundtrack of any game I've ever played, and not just the choice of songs or the variety of them, but they are the original music are used exceptionally well. Get things to feel the way they should. The writing, the music and the setting all tie into the themes as well, which are well handled and interestingly done. Really justifies the setting by exploring it and using it to tell a perspective, not just as a pretty backdrop and excuse for songs. Everything works together to tell the story. Game-play wise, It's a good game. The quests get a bit repeaty and you soon run out of things to do that ain't close to what you've already been doing, but there's way more variation in the repeating quests than most games give you. But they aren't to the point of being frustrating and usually everything while challenging enough to be rewarding are doable on the first try, if you're careful anyway. But really, I'd say this game is all about the narrative, and it does that very well. The expansions/DLC are also brilliant and fun as well. (Have a weeks worth of hours on it in Steam where it came out first)
I've played just over 2 hours of it, not having played any previous Guild games. And its fun, its got the foundations and alot to do, seems completely playable. but when something goes wrong, who knows why. Tool tips that arent flavour, are pretty much all blank at this stage (in english anyway) and there's just not alot of information about what is happening or why. I'd like to say I didn't run into any bugs, but really who knows. I think my employees stopped working because I'm missing something obvious, but it could be a bug? There are some UI issues but, early access that's to be expected. And there seems to be only male voices for the player, with no silent option. But otherwise I can't think of any other issues. All in all, it's playable. Just fairly confusing.
