Imperator has long suffered from a distinct lack of identity and poorly developed game mechanics which, in combination, made the game frustrating and not particularly fun to play. As an avid fan of all things Roman I was immensely disappointed that I could not in good conscience recommend the game to anyone, even romanophiles or fans of other Paradox games. However, today that changes. I am proud to proclaim that with the release of the 2.0 Marius update the game is now in a state in which I can heartily recommend it. There have been too many changes to discuss here without this review becoming akin to a short story. Suffice to say that the large majority of the changes to the game are exceedingly welcome and improve upon the previous version in nearly every way. While the game is still not perfect but with the love that has been put into this update I am confident that as time progresses it will only become an even better experience overall.
Stardew Valley is a breath of fresh air into the genre of what can only be described as "farm life" sims. First pioneered by the Harvest Moon series and later continued and expanded upon with the Rune Factory series, this genre of games is among the most relaxing and laid back genres on the market. Stardew Valley takes this genre to a new level by introducing new mechanics and choices into the realm while maintaining the overall feel that made this style of game so wonderful. Prepare to farm, fish, ranch, forage, and mine your way to success as a farmer while building relationships with the local townsfolk and even marrying the guy or gal of your choice after romancing them. Stardew Valley is without a doubt the current pinnacle of the genre's evolution and will continue to be so for quite some time thanks to the selfless efforts of the one man dev team, ConcernedApe. SIDE NOTE - A word of caution though about purchasing this game on GOG. I prefer, whenever possible, to purchase my games on GOG rather than Steam due to their much more consumer friendly practices; however, there are a couple of issues which are causing concern among those who have purchased the GOG version. Those being the inability of developers to get updates published on the platform over the weekend and the agonizingly slow publishing of uploaded updates on normal weekdays, The game's developer, Concernedape, has been working tirelessly since release to squash bugs and address community concerns with numerous updates coming out in short order only to be in essence, exclusive to Steam users for a quite some time due to these concerns. This is not a marring on the game but rather on GOG's policies which I hope to see resolved quickly.
