As much as I like the base-game, it's severely limited in the late-game sections of it and it quickly becomes untenable for players to maintain huge (500+) populations in it without this DLC. Now, I'm not saying the devs knew this from the get-go and deliberately made this DLC to sort that issue out, but... okay, actually, that's not far from the truth, but bear with me on this one, k? So the thing was that the devs *did* sorta know that the late-game aspects of the base-game kinda sucked for huge populations, and they *did* fix a few of these issues with just regular ol' content patches, but for true veterans of EZ:AWA, Prosperity really is a must-have to add some proper late-game content. Just the visual upgrades to your settlement are a pure freakin' delight when you get up to the top-tier stuff, but their upgraded functionality is so damn nice to boot, all o' which gives you this awesome sense of "Hell yeah, I'm the king of the wasteland, baby!" But it also gives you a nice set of new challenges, like the new resources you gotta manage (concrete, glass, etc.) and so on. So all in all, I'd say this is one of those DLCs that reach the way too rare heights of quality, like "Gods & Kings" and "Brave New World" (Civilization 5) and "Green Planet" (Surviving Mars), the kind that adds a whole lot more to the game for a reasonable enough price.
Yeah, I know a lotta people like Banished for some bloody reason, but I've always found it to be a horribly dry and dull proof-of-concept masquerading as a game. So what EZ:AWA does is take the parts about Banished that works (the labour system, the aging mechanics, the extensive resource management and the raw, basic gameplay) and add some actual goddamned FLAVOUR to it. For instance, not all buildings are unlocked from the word "GO!" in EZ:AWA and instead requires you to research them, giving you a decent sense of actually freakin' *progressing* in the game, whereas in Banished you just had every from the start. Additionally, kids aren't useless meatbags that just wander around and steal all your pies (which they literally were and did in Banished), but actually fulfill the role of carrying goods home for their families when they're not in school. Oh yeah, and that's also a thing in EZ:AWA: kids actually go to school *during their childhood years*, like they're freakin' supposed to! So you no longer have the idiotic "choice" Banished had about having to "weigh the pros and cons" with educating your young adults before allowing them to become labourers. Nope, none of that BS in this game. Kids go to school, they learn, and they become more efficient *before* reaching adulthood (ideally). There's also the fact that EZ:AWA has SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting visuals. Since it's post-nuclear apocalypse-themed, you'll start out building crappy li'l shacks and other buildings using chunks of wood and scrap metal, but you'll eventually progress up to building... well, still kinda junky-looking structures out of wood 'n' metal, but at least they're bigger and sturdier, so they can weather the storms that affect your settlement. Oh yeah, and that's also new: disasters in EZ:AWA are WAY more fair than the ones in Banished, as they rarely catch you by surprise and screw up half your town in one stupid go. I'd write more about the game, but I'm already at the symbol limit.
