This used to be one of the most enjoyable tower defense city builders in the game. Then Update 2 came out and added faith mechanics to the game while also adding more realistic moving of the villagers. Sounds great? In practice, it is horrendous. 1. Before update 2, the player gained energy to perform miracles by mainly villagers burning a refined resource. It was labor intensive, but it worked. Now, energy is gained through your occultist villagers praying. The problem is... when they want to pray, which can end up being never. Bad game design relying on RNG for something so essential to gameplay. This also comes with an additional problem in #2. 2. Gaining energy in update 2 is far more villager intensive than before update 2. As I said, energy gained before only required the villagers to refine crystals to crystallum, which were burned in the energy collectors. That process was far less labor intensive than Occultists in update 2 as if Occultists didn't do anything but pray, they'd be only for energy, while Crystallers (the refiners) refining crystals is useful for many other applications like upgrading buildings. Again, it is a bad game design change. 3. Faith sounds good on paper: Your maximum energy pool resolves around how much faith your villagers have in you (mostly). However, in practice, it's a terrible mechanic. The villagers are extremely wish washy in their faith. So, your maximum energy will wildly vary, which is extremely annoying and broken. 4. The worst change is the realistic villager movement. This causes the villagers to drop and pick up every resource one at a time instead of all at once with an animation. This GREATLY slows down the game, which makes it feel like a slog all the time. Update 2 was a terrible decision, and I regret updating my game to that version. I hope that one day GoG allows me to revert to before update 2 so I can enjoy my game again.
This game is a fun game that has some actual depth. If you like games involving logistical factory issues, then you will like this game. That is, until you run into the save error bug. I've had three playthroughs break because of this error. It revolves around using logic blocks for belts and chutes. Also, once you experience it that map is corrupted. Even if you delete the block and successfully save, that save is still corrupted if you try to reload. The only way around is loading an older save that has never been exposed to this error. So, again, be extremely wary of the logic blocks because they might break your game.
First, this game has promise of being a great 2D colony builder focused on Dwarves and them building stuff to sell to the other races on the overworld. However, as we've seen with a ton of other games, "promise" means nothing. The Good: 1. The game looks decent & sounds really good. 2. There is a tech tree and progression system in the game. 3. There are customization options at the start of the game for a more custom game. 4. There is a system that allows you to customize jobs for each of your Dwarves to make them more focused on certain skills. The Bad: 1. The AI is really bad. The latest patch fixed some of those issues, but the AI can still be brain dead when transporting materials to chests and job sites, and in doing other jobs like mining. 2. Some resources are extremely rare, like wood, if the player doesn't get a map with mushrooms that can be chopped down for wood or overworld villages that sell wood. That severely hampers the progression of the game as wood is used for the houses of the Dwarves that are required so they can grow their greed & store their coins. 3. Certain computers have a hard time playing this game and crashes a lot due to video issues. Sometimes those crashes require the player to kill the program via the Windows task manager as it won't close normally. 4. The devs have stated that they are done with the game. That means it is abandoned. I would normally give this a pass IF the game was in a good state. Based on the negatives, it clearly isn't. So, all of the issues above will never be solved. So, especially due to my last statement, with this game being in it's current state, I cannot recommend anyone buy it.
Double Fine has a dubious record for completion of games. Spacebase DF-9 was their largest debacle. Promised as an easier to understand version of Dwarf Fortress with better graphics, the only thing that was actually true was the graphics. After delaying the game and letting it flounder on Steam's Early Access, when it was finally released it was a complete mess full of bugs and crashes with it nothing being like Dwarf Fortress at all. Instead of fixing the game, Double Fine abandoned it for their next scam. When you hear "Double Fine" always remember Spacebase DF-9.
This game is very mixed. First, the good. It does a fairly good job explaining what happened in between Baldurs Gate 1 & 2. Some of the voice acting is quite good. Also, there's epic army battles in this game. It also boosts your character to be stronger for BG2. Finally, there's some good new portraits for your characters. Now, the bad. 1. It's linear. Like, "on-the-rails" linear. You get maybe 1 to 2 side areas to explore per part of the quest. However, once you complete the part of the main quest, you are forced to the next area of the main quest and can never go back to those old areas. I understand why they did it this way, but I still find it terrible design. 2. Voice acting is all over the place. As I stated above, some of it is quite good. However, more of it sounds like the characters are talking into a cup. Also, Neera (BG1 EE new char) sounds like a different actress voiced her compared to BG1&2 EE). 3. Extremely poor scenario design decisions. Certain battles have things that happen that should never happen that can totally destroy the rest of your game. Example, the final siege. There is no ability to rest after that battle to go forward to the final part of the game. Also, if the only healer npc dies in the siege, you can't even buy heals or resurrects, which is needed due to the sheer chaos and caster enemies in the final siege (holds and charms galore). I played through it once and that was enough for me. The downsides faaaar outstrips the positives of this game. I would recommend reading a spoiler on the storyline instead of buying this DLC.
