TLDR: buy only if heavely dicoounted and you like survival games. Pros: - music. The soundtrack is really pleasant. - classic apocalypse survival with some new twists Cons: - verly unbalanced. You have reached the stock limit for water, there are no changes in water usage (no new survivors, no buildings using water etc.), you make no changes in water production (no new prodcution building, nor destroyed, nor have workers removed), next moment your storage is empty and people are dyuing out of thirst, even though your added new water source in the meantime. - bugged: explorations got stuck; people dying of starvation even though the stock is full (yes, it's the same district) - some building can be dismantled, some not, so often you got stuck on a big, already explored island, that you cannot make use of cause there's no buildable space. - big map, but you are limited to only one exploration team, unnecessarry prolonging the game
I have played for about 12 hours last week, game crashed few times, but in general it was working ok (it's normal that after release many games need hot fixes, so few crashes here and there are fully accpetable). After the hot fix today, it crashes right after logos, I cant even see the menu, so it's fullly unplayable. Regarding the game itself: very dissapointing. Frostpunk was a great city builder, mixed with survival, exploration, and elements of political management. Micromanagement of resource and workforce in early game stages was sometimes annoying, but that was what made the game demanding and simple at the same time, and also so versatile and addictive. Frostpunk 2 is closer to Anno series than to first Forstpunk, where you have your main city and manage the colonies and political relations between the parties. There is much less 'acting against all odds', less race against the clock, the overwhelming frost has lost its terryfing power... "Oh... 200 people froze to death... But 1600 people are joining your city...". In Frostpunk people were valued, even if you considered them just as a workforce or a resource you needed, they were very important. In Frostpunk 2 you don't care about them anymore, as every 'true' politician you want their votes but don't care about their lives... The UI is totally NOT intuitive (after 10 hours I still had to sometimes think twice where to click, I can't recall last time I had such issue with any game interface ...), there are multiple glitches (you want to read one thing, so you hover mouse over the icon, stats are showing up, but then a 'help' bubble pops up as well covering teh stats you wanted to read...). I hope for many more bug fixes... The only thing left from the first game is the name...
Regarding gameplay, Dawn of Man goes in line with titles like Banished, Foundation or Farthest Frontier, however, it has much less options, buldings, technologies, which makes it very repetitive. Basically, after you played it once, to get used to mechanics, you will play it for the second time, to build your settlement 'properly', and that's it. After that there's nothing new you can make differently. There are multiple features that have potential, but were apparently abandond during the development process, e. g. people and animals can get sick, but there's no way to cure them, no herbs, no medicines or technologies linked to 'medicine'; there are storms that slow down your gameplay speed as if something dangerous is approaching, but the only thing they can do is hit one of your people with lightning (killing them instantly), but there's nothing you can do against it... Neither order people to hide in their homes nor build lightning rods... You just speed the gampleay up and keep playing. From more technical point of view, you have flour in granaries, ovens filled with fuel and idle villagers, yet nobody is baking bread, and soon the villagers will be starving. I'm not sure if path settings are incorrect and a villager very far away is being chosen to bring the flour to the oven, or there's a cooldown in the oven... I had a feeling that 90% of the time the oven was out of use even when there was flour in the granary. I can recommend to buy it, chek, and return within 2 days (you're not gonna need more time than that), or buy on a sale for maximum of 5€, but there's no point of paying full price.
Pros: - I really like the idea of floating city and the way it has been implemented - wonderful music - graphics are a bit edgy, but overall are very pleasant - very chill amd relaxing but at the same time you can't leave the city on it's own - it needs your management Cons: - repetetive - once you get the idea which techniologies and building to prioritise, it becomes very easy
