This game, of the Civilization lineage/style (and lead by the designer of Civs 3 and 4) is great. Every play is different. There's no single strategy that always works. The addition of families/characters is a good layer, adding to the game without becoming overwhelming -- though you can optionally disable it. The game's economic layers are deep but approachable. Everything is a trade-off with high opportunity costs. Some of the innovations are: * Orders. Your ruling class only has so much capacity to manage things per turn. If you declare a war, you might not have enough orders to keep up with your domestic works projects. This is MAJOR. * City sites. You can only build cities at map-generated spots. Early game is conquering additional sites from barbarians or small tribes so you can spread out. This fixes the "city on every square" problem of its predecessors. * Leader type succession. As your ruler dies, you'll have an heir that you've developed to be just the right set of skills your nation needs. Maybe your Scholar lead your empire to now feel ready to wage war. Make sure your heir is sent to tactics school and becomes a great general. There's a strange paradox about your units (which are "one unit per tile" rather than stacking) in this game. Simultaneously, every unit matters. But don't get attached to any of them, because any unit could fall during war. AI is decent at it. It can use naval support well (like anchoring ships to go around a coastal mountain range rather than going the long land route). The game also largely avoids the typical "rock paper scissors", with every unit type having strengths and weaknesses. It will immediately feel familiar to fans of 4X games, but definitely play through and pay attention the tutorials. It has enough new going on that you'll need them to get comfortable with the innovations. I would also be remiss for me not to mention the game's amazing sound and music, which includes some new Christopher Tin compositions too.
This is a great game. It's a shorter (about 6 hours "save game" play time to do a full clear; but much longer if you consider replaying from failed attempts and deaths, depending on your skill. But everything that is there is well done. Every boss fight felt good. Some were harder, some were easier. There is some backtracking, but not a lot. Upgrades are mostly for progressing forward. But each one has at least one bit to go back, at least a little bit, for. Visuals are top-notch. Music is really good. Enemies generally feel good to fight. And all the fighting does feel good. The traversal skills also all feel good to use. I never felt too slow, but I definitely felt faster over time. I only had a couple small frustrating spots (one required jump, late game, that's a bit too close to "perfect required"; and one timed sequence element that's a bit tight in its allowances. Replaying bosses never once felt frustrating. Most, especially the required ones, trend toward the easier side. No "RPG elements" (XP and levels, player-chosen skill tree, random drops, etc). This game is more on the Metroid side of the Metroidvania equation: find a new thing (usually related to things you've been seeing recently), and get it. As of writing, I do have a full clear to my knowledge (saved game reports 101%, and nothing seen to increase). The game does indeed have bugs (including periodic freeze-on-reload-after-death), but I'm confident they'll likely be worked out, considering how much polish the rest of the game has. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But, as-is, is definitely a good game, especially at its price point.
Not a game, but a toy. It's a virtual pet (tamagotchi/etc) with plants. Open it a couple times per day to water, spray, and "pet" the plants that need it. Decorate (unlocking more as you achieve more and more varied plants) as you want to. Plant two plants in one container of certain types to get new plants available. It doesn't require you to open on intervals or interrupt you; it will just progress time after you load according to how long since you last closed. Plants don't die, just stop growing. Tags are misleading: no puzzle elements. Just try all the seed pair combinations to get the new plants. There's no crafting or base building (just decorating from a menu).
