Recent reviews by Arlie

very wholesome

past a certain point you're likely to get a LOUD "welcome" and a pop-up saying you're a cheater every time you load a save if you engage a particular enemy due to a bug the devs have said they'd fix "in a few days" in FEBRUARY 2019
it's the end of july now
also, the game lacks complexity and once you understood the very basics there is nothing left to learn or perfect
it's a budget xcom with real-time walking/sneaking around

I'm reviewing the game as it is right now in early access and I'm ignoring its potential further development

good:
very enjoyable difficulty - about 50 hours in I am still figuring out ways to optimize basic things
engaging micromanagement - be rewarded for finding magic on the map and clicking on it or resurrecting villagers at night if you find them
balances personal intervention and macromanagement by "confusing" villagers if you do god stuff near them
varied maps and you can start on any of them, "campaign" progression is entirely up to the player

bad:
I'd like more building variety
and useful spells, while I'm at it
some systems are not sufficiently explained
villagers sometimes make infuriating decisions like walking around the entire map (and through enemies) to pick up 1 piece of wood on the other side of my wall

It's an okay RTS, but it doesn't really do anything special and it isn't challenging in the slightest. Once you've figured out how to achieve a winning position there is no nuance left to it. Played the campaign on the highest difficulty, got bored around the halfway point, mainly because it is also extremely slow.

tried to play during a free weekend, wouldn't let me
ergo cannot recommend

I got this from the humble monthly it was in and thought that's nice since I played Dungeons 2 and it had so much room for improvement, surely they would have done a better job with Dungeons 3.

They didn't. One annoyance is gone and that is the 3 evil factions are now combined into one. Other than that it is still an extremely inane waiting game until you have a strong party, then you head out and mindlessly wipe out camp after camp and sometimes you have to retreat back and wait a bit longer. I am playing on the highest difficulty and I do not feel challenged in the slightest.

The attempt to increase the amount of perceived content by unlocking new units 1 by 1 with every new level falls flat because these new units add nothing new. I could still be running around with melee units plus healers and it would make exactly zero difference to me, because I literally do not have to utilize anything special to win.

SOME levels have mechanics in place that force you to progress. Like an earthquake every so often that damages your dungeon heart. Like: Go out and take out the earthquake machines.
I was really taking it slow. I had the flu and I was playing on the highest difficulty and I had one arm under my blanket because I was cold from fever, so playing one-handed. I was nowhere near slow enough for my dungeon heart to be in any danger despite all this. There's just no challenge in this game, even when you're forced to go out "early".

And then there's the "humor" in this which is literally just reference after reference after reference plus something like the narrator discussing whether when the script says "laugh" he should say "laugh" or actually laugh. Haha, get it? You're playing a video game!
I understand we're living in a time where to many memes and image macros are the peak of funny. Even relative to that the writing in this game is just not funny. It's as if whoever wrote this tested the jokes on a bunch of tweens. I'm an adult and any time I see a joke coming up in this game I die a bit inside.

If this game is new to you, you've been missing out.
For the past 10 or so years this was always one of the first things I installed on a fresh OS and now that it's on Steam I no longer have to update manually. It's beautiful.

Edit: Still excellent.

It's free, give it a try.

It's fairly bad and only got worse in recent years, though.

I think this game has the potential to be truly great and become a huge timesink for me, it has a long way to go, though. There are systems in place that are non-ideal and the content is lacking as of now. After a single full play through I felt like I had nothing left to do and let it rest for a while. Now that a new update has hit that addressed a few issues I feel like playing it again. I can see this process repeating a few times before I can get constant enjoyment out of it, but I can already see the potential.
I also like the attitude of the developer and you should vote with your money even if you shy away from actually engaging with early access titles before they are released.

A bit unpolished, but potentially your greatest time sink if you are into medieval games/sandboxes/RTS.
Just do yourself a favor and install a mod that appeals to you right away or at least don't plan to stick until the end with a vanilla character. The game is good in vanilla, but it's so much better with mods.
I would recommend Floris, it sticks with the setting but improves everything about the game it touches.

...except for the cringe-worthy self-insert character named Floris.