I adore this game, to the point where I almost dare not open it as I will lose days of my life being absorbed into it! If you are someone who likes systems, economies, micro management, tinkering... this game is your dream. The in game economy is wonderfully complex but also it makes sense. Of course your richer inhabitants are going to want nicer products, and with affluence they want items from abroad. But abroad means longer shipping lines, and more complexity - and what if a pirate interferes and blows up your shipping lines? But you are also building, ultimately, and you get a real sense of your community you are creating than games such as Sim City. It's great as you colonise more islands and really see your world grow. The enemy characters are fun, and full of character - even if they can be maddening with their ability to turn on you at a moment's notice. My only grumble is that the game does cheat. You can isolate an enemy's island and destroy their storage, so you know they can only have a finite resource of something. But they can keep on churning out ships indefinitely. This is frustrating when you want to bring a game to a conclusion as it just protracts things. But that one grumble is nothing to dissuade me from saying this is one of the finest games ever.
I remember when I originally played this I lost interest... this time I thought it would be different as I jumped in and instantly found myself addicted again. Great music, lovely style... lots to do. It's fun. I love the base building elements and the training of my minions. I like micro management, so I'm quite happy to tinker and balance between making money, expanding, training etc. I start to remember why I lost interest, however... at a certain point the game becomes laborious. You'll go to the world stage to find 10 of your people just died... just like that. nothing you can do. Waves of enemies start hitting your base... and you get caught in a war of attrition. Constantly spending money to get new recruits, to train them, for them to die and repeat and repeat. What doesn't help is there's very little control over your minions. I'd like to stand guards and henchmen (henchpeople?) near the entrance to be on alert, but they wander off so that when something bad happens they're nowhere nearby. After spending hours today getting nowhere very quickly, I'm going to delete it... because it is addictive. And it is easy to keep going back for more. But it's ultimately futile.
I got this game because the reviews are good here and on Amazon. But I was stunned at how utterly mundane the game is. I mean really boring! You basically send your ghosts to the various rooms to scare people out. And that's it. No skill, no danger, no surprise. Brainless. You point, click... the person gets afraid and leaves the house. And you do it again and again until they leave. The presentation is nice, with good graphics and high quality sound production But this isn't a game, there's just nothing to do!
