I am a big fan of The Settlers type games so I thought this would be straight down my street. On some levels it seems simpler than The Settlers (version 2 is my comparison), especially in the economic / production area. So I imagined I'd play the game for a little while but it might not hold my attention long term. I was wrong on that. A couple of months later and I am still playing it every now and again. I even spent 8 hours on it one Sunday, which is not something I'd do. My one issue with the game is lack of saving in multiplayer. This makes, in my opinion, multiplayer somewhat useless. I just can't set aside that many hours in one go (apart from that Sunday above!) and can't expect others I'm playing to either.
I've just had a great couple of hours playing this. Gets very intense at times but still seems fair at the moment. The WASD movement that works with actual direction takes a bit of time to get used to (e.g. up moves you up the screen instead of moving you forward depending on where your character is looking), but it's not frustrating, which I guess means I'm getting the hang of it.
It's a very polished game with great in game mechanics and nice smooth graphics, but after a playing it for a while and getting the basics going... there's just not enough in it to keep me interested long term. I found myself setting the game speed to max or near it for a lot of the time and that's not something that one should be doing in a strategy game. Maybe it needs some sort of combat or more production elements. I would love to see a Banished 2 with more gameplay added as it is a good game just not a great one.
