Really want to love this game and it has brought me back a few times but there are two major flaws for me. FIrstly the good. Solid graphics for this type of game, very immersive art style and great music and soundscape. It definitely feels well thought out on concept and style and high quality. The basic mechanics are easy to get to grips with and the tutorial elements are supportive without being excessive. The first issue however is the replayability with it being the same linear story with the same events. You know exactly what will happen when you go to the gloomy cave and its an a or b choice, even worse sometimes you get a single choice and no option. You have to feel it was a missed opportunity not to add further story branching or maybe more random order of events to keep it feeling fresh. You do certainly feel for the plight but at times it can get depressing with bad event after bad event. The second issue is something that seems to plague modern builders, the difficulty curve means that sometimes all logic is thrown out of the window. A coal mine, that was previously producing in abundance, suddenly fails to generate enough even though you haven't altered anything, a bountiful supply of coal suddenly and mysteriously vanishes and the generator turns off. Its hard to call these bugs as they seem more designed to facilitate story events (e.g. the Londoners) and so it seems to glitch whereby you suddenly find everything failing at once. It was the main issue with a recent attempt to revive a classic hospital themed sim builder game or a recent big franchise star exploration game whereby developers just seem to struggle to hit the difficulty curve like they used to and the game ends up doing strange things. I don't get a lot of time for games and as I feel like time has been stolen the last two times I have played this I probably won't go back and that was after optimistically buying the expansions. Definitely seems like a missed opportunity.
