When they messed up the latest Sim City Game I thought I was never going to have to resort to a prior game in the series. I loved Age of Empires but the war part turned me off of the series. And while I liked Settlers, it was too cutesy and it had it war aspect also. Actually the reason I liked Sim City was because you could turn off disasters and just build the city of your dreams. "Banished" comes the closest to how I like to play my city management games. It's not perfect yet, but this is only the first game into hopefully a continuing series. One additional thing that could be added to the game to create some conflict would be to have the king find this little settlement and then nab some of the citizens for his army. Perhaps some of the citizens could have a scout ability that sniff out the coming troops and give the citizenry a chance to hide. The player then only loses some resources instead of people and resources. In any event. I like the game as it is. And wish this developer continued success in his future games.
I played most but not all of the Ultima games. I liked them all for the most part but they were not beloved by me. As much as I liked Ultima 4, there was no way I was interested in a replay. Ultima 9 was a let down. For one, it did not run on my machine at the time and I didn't play the game for maybe 3 or 4 years later. 2. In spite of the name, I never at once felt like I was playing an Ultima game. However, the game I did play I enjoyed more than any other Ultima. It was just a funner play experience for me. Maybe at heart I like simply mechanics and simple story and simple combat. Maybe I do like vanilla more that rooty tooty. No matter, what ever. I think you'll find, that if you can ignore the games heritage and just play the game you got, you might like the game. It sure worked for me.
