And no, I'm not being the slightest bit hyperbolic about that title. This game really has some of the absolutely bloody WORST gameplay and design I have EVER seen in a city-builder game. I mean, jesus freakin' christ... what the hell made the devs think it was even remotely a good idea to make every single map look so damn cluttered that it's impossible to tell what is or isn't even a buildable area in the first place?! Adding to that, the optimization is absolute DOGCRAP. I have a high-end gaming computer built to handle some of the most demanding games out there (within reason, obviously), and despite this my GPU utilization spiked up to 97%+ and its temperature shot up to nearly the same... IN BLOODY CENTIGRADES! That's hot enough to BOIL WATER! "But how big was your city at the time, dude?" you may be asking. Yeah, see, that's the thing: I hadn't even freakin' begun building ANYTHING yet. Empty map, new save, ultra-crappy optimization with a high-end GPU. Which, by the way, never happens with ANY of the 500+ other games I own and play on this PC. ...but the crappiness of the game doesn't end there, no sir-ee! Buildings in the game have absolutely bloody atrocious ranges, so a water well can't reach more than a single "block" (i.e. 2-3 houses, or about 6-7 grid-spaces) in any direction, and the "upgraded" variety only have about twice that (so about 5-6 houses, or 10-12 grid-spaces), which is a bloody joke! If you've played Pharaoh, Zeus, or any other games in the Immortal Cities series, you'll know how bad that is. And then of course there's the bloody atrocious audio design! Ambient noises for cities consists of: 1. Somebody chomping on something EXTREMELY loudly. 2. Somebody coughing. 3. Some birds tweeting. 4. One or two other sounds. ...which combined makes for a maybe 20-30 seconds long loop of crappy ambience, which repeats ad bloody nauseam! Seriously, if you want an Egypt-themed city builder, just play Children of the Nile instead.
