Recent reviews by Noranum

Normally I allow myself more time before even thinking about a review. But in this case, I just don’t want to play it anymore. It has a great mix of design and ideas. It’s just no fun in it’s current state.
Towers of Aghasba tries to be a mix of ecological restoration, city building, survival, and role play game. While it contains some interesting concepts like the part where you have to balance your actions in order to get what you need while making sure that the ecosystem remains healthy, the game sadly is underwhelming in most parts and outright frustrating in some others.

But let’s begin with the nice things.


The Good

It looks rather fine. At least for me, there weren’t any visual issues other than that I failed to spot any fish to throw my spear at. They managed to create “that tribal vibe” without blandly copying existing cultures. Which is nice.

I really like the concept of giving and taking. In order to restore life, you need to plant seeds and care for animals, to amass something called Amity. Whenever you kill animals or plants, you lose some of this. Usually less than what you gain, so staying in the green (haha, pun, nature is green) isn’t that difficult, but it gives you a sense of the fact that actions have impact, and you need to make up for what you do.

And… I think that’s it. Honestly, I am surprised myself, since I usually really try to find good portions to point out.


The Meh

Most of the game seems as if many people with decent ideas tried to smash all this together without much consideration about long-term fun. There’s so far nothing that binds the different aspects together, beside “yeah so the ancestors of the humans did a boo-boo and now you alone have to clean up the mess have fun”. While humanity surely has the ability to destroy nature, it seems unlikely that we are also the sole solution to all problems. Oh yeah there is some story about your lost capital or something.

The main character is a child or at least teenager. You can’t change anything about them beside clothes and the mask they wear. Which they just wear so that the devs don’t need to give you a character creator. Honestly, I am so done with being forced to play children. Twenty years of Pokémon simply have spoiled this experience somehow.

Even tho the game is (partially?) about restoring natural life, said natural life is rather… I don’t know. Weird? They fused different animals together. Which is fun-ish at first. But seeing those patchwork animals roam a landscape of randomly placed stuff dotted with the plants that you sowed… dunno. Not convincing. So far animals just run around. Sometimes they eat what you throw down for them. They poop. A lot. Some try to eat you. I think I can mount some of them, later on. Meh.

The city building aspect seems interesting at first, but I quickly had to accept that regardless of what you build, it’s just decorative. While the objects are nice to look at, nothing is interactable. NPCs roam around, ignoring each bench I put down. Since the landscape itself can’t be changed, either you have to plaster everything with foundations, or you have stuff like rocks and ancient walls and whatnot clip through your stuff. Doesn’t matter tho, nobody cares as long as you can reach the crafting slots. Sadly, I don’t see any point trying to make it pretty.

NPCs are purely decorative right now. I had the master huntress watch me being killed right in front of her. Trice. I like their designs, but they are just so meh.
Nobody really reacts.
“Oh yeah you grew that giant tree over there and now there’s life blooming around it? Who cares, please bring me the missing two fibers.”
Some pop up asking for stuff I have no idea about. Gold dust. Dude, I am here, gathering poop for the tree, do I look like I know how to get gold dust? I don’t even know if the townies will EVER be useful. Like, if they work the farming plots. Or gather stuff. I fear that, in the end, it will be me doing all the stuff. Ugh.


The Ugly

Not that much, honestly. It has been mentioned before, the inventory is so insanely small for a game that has you gather so much stuff. I don’t know if you can expand it. Half of it is filled with your tools and weapons. And stuff you need to make new ones. Add some health items (you’re a kid, you’re squishy), and ta-daa, you have four slots left for gathering stuff. Chests exist, but they are not magical, and you need to remember what you put where. Having a building project far away is an odyssey, since your journal doesn’t tell you what a quest needs. And since there’s so little room in your pockets… you get the idea.

Managing your stuff is one thing, interacting with the UI the other. At least to me, it’s very clear that console players were the original main target. Buttons. We have a hot bar, but putting your spear into that requires that you select it, press a button, and then the number you want it to be on. Picking it up and trying to drop it onto the quick bar will simply drop it on the ground. Believe me, I lost more spears on this than on actual fighting.
Sadly, there also is little consistency regarding buttons. Sometimes, ESC closes a window, sometimes it’s E. Q and E are – like in many games – used for rotation. But when selecting the amount of stuff you want to craft, it suddenly is Q and T?

Lastly: Many things take so much time. Build the farm. You get 3 farm plots. “Craft” lettuce. One lettuce costs three seeds. Takes I don’t know five minutes? Other things take ten. The tree that I have to grow to make the other tree happy enough to grow some more needs a full hour to progress. Add the fact that you die often and can’t carry much, the whole resource gathering is an exhausting and time consuming mess.


Summary

It has potential. But it feels like it has been thrown onto the market far too early. I won’t refund it, but wait a little longer to see if things improve. For now, I would like to give a solid “Meh” vote, but since Steam doesn’t have those, it’s thumbs down. Sorry, folks, but it really needs much more cooking.

Aloft is an interesting new approach about sailing and exploration. There is no ocean, or solid land. You sail an endless sky, traveling from one cluster of floating island to the next. While you can use your glider to make it from island to island, longer travels need a more solid way to travel: an air ship. Or, more accurately: an island with sails. That’s right, you can turn almost any island into your home, putting sails and a helm on, and sail it towards the horizon. Combine this with a solid building mode, add some charming graphics and pretty landscaping, and you’ll get Aloft.


The Good

Well, the idea of floating islands might not be new, but being able to slap some sails onto one and turn it into a rocky air skip surely is! It reminds me much of Project Nomads from ages ago, but granting you much more freedom in what island to chose and what to put where. Want a small, quick boat? Just use a itsy-bitsy island, basically a floating sanddollar, cover it with walls and flooring, and you’ll get as close to an actual ship as possible. Or just pick the largest, most complex island available and build a floating fortress. Your choice. While there are some islands - mostly story relevant ones – that are “too heavy” to be moved, all the others are free to pick. Its also completely up to you what you do on these islands. They need sails, floaters, rudders, and a helm to move, and in order to move over biome borders, you need better versions of sails. But everything else is optional.
Which is hopefully build upon, I really would like to see more stuff and pretty little details. But even like it is right now, Aloft has more stuff to build than other, finished games of this type.

The overall style is very pleasant. While a little bit toony, it fits the feeling the game gives me perfectly. Wind is all around you, at any time, and seeing it rustling through the trees and combing the grass really feels calming.
So far there are three distinct biomes, with verdant, temperate woodland being the first, autumn themed, pumpkin-bearing forests the second, and finally, scorching desert climate with either cactus theme or more designed like a Savannah with acacia trees. If you want, you could uproot every single plant and remove all the soil, leaving behind a dead rock. The other way around, you can plant seeds and trees wherever you want. Something you even need to do, since many island have a disturbed ecosystem that needs to be restored before you can gather any resources there.

I can imagine that playing together with friends would be fun and rewarding. If you have friends of course. Unlike me, who has none. But luckily, external help is not needed, since you can freely adjust most aspects of the game, turning it simpler or harder. You even can do this for existing games, should you feel like something doesn’t fit your needs, or just want to start a larger building project and don’t want to farm tress forever.

An other, huge bonus in my opinion: whatever recipe you managed to find out in the wild stays with you, even if you put your character into another world. In fact, you even can take your entire home island with you, spawning it on servers, or placing it in newly created worlds! Sure, this means that servers will be full of islands that have the best of the best, on the same time, it means you will never have to start all over again. Unless you chose to do right that, of course.
Yet another plus: you can share your creations via Steam’s workshop, or explore things other players made.


The Meh

As nice as the game is, there are a couple of things that could need some work in my opinion.

Island always come in clusters, and the entire world might have a hundred or so islands. When playing, you will quickly find that there are just a dozen or so specific patterns, per biome, that can and will repeat. The challenge might be different – some might need to be eco-restored, others cleaned from shrooms, others need both – and the same layout might hold different ruins and treasures, but after playing some hours, you know them, and don’t tend do look around anymore. Land, clear the threat, loot the stuff, leave. Feels sad, really. I wish there was something else to do, yet I can’t come up with something.

I do hope that we will get NPCs someday. Being a Lonely McNofriends means I spend my time alone, and it always creeps me out to be the single human in a world. While I don’t think that we will get an actual settlement-system, at least some passengers would be nice. (alpacas are cute and all, but they always tell the same old llama jokes!).

Building pieces and decorations need to be found in the world and you need to draft them into your notebook before you can use them. That means, even if you found a clay wall, you won’t know how to make a windowed wall until you see one. There is no way to tell how many possible objects the game offers in total, so I always run around pressing the draft button like a madman. It would be so nice to have a checklist, maybe let an island tell me if it offers something new on the map screen, or maybe let me experiment. Like if I know about clay walls and windowed stone walls, let me spend some paper to come up with windowed clay walls?

Combat exists. And sadly, right now, they put it in just to have it. Moving during combat can be very troublesome. Enemies often sweep you off the island, or grab you, and there is little you can do. Dodging exists somehow, but I can’t get it to work. Which means, combat becomes a swoop-in, don’t get hit, kill as quick as possible maneuver.
The overall choice of weapons is… well, you have a sword, and a bow. And a digging thingy that can be used as a spear.


The Ugly

There isn’t much that I dislike, most things are cosmetically and not really game-breaking. Still, there are two major points that I need to mention:

The animations really need some work. Most of the player movement feels like they used freeware, especially combat movement is clunky and turns fighting into a game of chance a la “do I land a hit or does the shroomy push me off the island?”. Better have no combat at all than having some that feels this sluggish.

Crafting Recipes need to be found in the world, as said. That means, there’s the possibility that your world doesn’t spawn all things that could be drafted. Special recipes like the saw mill are tied to specific, unique islands that appear to have non-fixed locations. I found myself soft-locked during my first game, since I needed planks in order to progress, but none of the islands I could reach offered the recipe to me. I don’t know if this was fixed by now, or if I just had luck during my second game, but as long as not all recipes are guaranteed to be reachable, this complaint remains here.


Summary

Overall, this game is charming and fun, and I see much potential to become great, maybe even inspire a new line of sky-sailing games. Most of what I mentioned as Meh or Ugly can be easily fixed or improved, and the rest just will need more content. If you like the idea of sailing a floating island, or like the overall design, Aloft really could be something for you.

Giving thumbs down to this took some thinking. I might change it later.
Overall it appears to be a promising game with interesting ideas and some new approaches, for example that you, the player, are actually an ancient, self-aware high-tech mask, which guides (haunts?) the people in your group.


The Good

The major plus I see within this game is the tribe system. Your NPC companions actually do something. You can (and should) set up automated work schedules, ensuring that production and agriculture run smoothly. Since some of your folk might be better at something than your main character, you should look for people that fill specific roles. Diversity and teamwork are the keys here, and you are discouraged from turning your starting character into a jack-of-all-trades one-man-army. Additionally, it simulates a sense of community. Something that this type of game usually only offers in form of multiplayer. As someone who avoids multiplayer like the plague, I really like this.

The design and artstyle are nice, and even tho the mesoamerican influence is clearly visible, the style is not a mere copy-paste of actual real-world cultures.


The Meh

The developers are from East Asia, which on its own is of course not a downside, but sadly there are a number of things that make it show.

First of all, you should expect weird word choices, wonky translations, and inconsistency. I really hope that the developers will invest in some high-quality English writing talent before the release of the game. Since I am not a native English speaker, the text presented can be even more confusing.

A very basic concept you need to understand from the earliest beginning: humans are replaceable. The main plot revolves around that mysterious mask, which basically is a homage to the fact that the game is a game, and the mask/player will possess the NPCs and make them do things. You have a starting character, yes, but that one is basically just the failsafe for the mask to return to, should all the others die. While I personally like this idea and concept, it is difficult for a western audience to move away from playing “hero” and towards the more wholesome concept of playing a community with different people that can all become “the chosen one” should the mask take control over them.

The game rarely tells you the reasons behind happenings. Some information are not given, or lost in translation, so you have to look around, pressing buttons, to see what they do. For example, you can “scan” the world around you, highlighting mobs and resources around you. But when you hold the scan-button down, you’ll enter a detailed, zoomed, scan mode which offers crucial information about enemies, their classes, rarity etc. This function, however, is only mentioned at the side.

There’s too little animals around. Most of them are either a threat (in case of anacondas even a frustrating one), or prey/potential livestock. Which seems weird since tropical rainforests in real life are hot spots of biodiversity teeming with life. So I do hope there will be more ambiance in the future.


The Ugly

The major point I decided to give thumbs down is the grindines of tasks. Once you established your base, you will go back and forth to resource nodes or NPC camps hoping to find good recruits.

While I DO in fact like the idea behind the mask and its innermost willpower, the way it is realized right now is simply frustrating.
Before entering an enemy camp, you need to scan around, trying to find good people. Then, during combat, it is extremely hard to keep those promising enemies alive while killing the others (and prevent them from killing you). Since all potential recruits need to be “deterred” (still don’t know what that word really means, but basically you make them weak by hitting them, then the mask will put itself into the enemy’s mind, slowly overwriting it), and they are in coma while slowly turning into your allies, you need to carry them away. One at a time, except when you have mounts to put them on. There’s so much that can go wrong while hauling half dead people around, so even when you managed to not slaughter them on spot, it still might turn into a failure. Not only that, but in order to get the better recipes for armor, you need to seek specific types of enemies, manage to not-kill them, deter them, and hope that the god of random numbers graces you with this specific recipe you tried to get for the last four hours. Hint: it won’t.
Since there is nothing else to do right now but becoming stronger, this all is a major time sink in my opinion.

Beside this major point there’s some more:
Wobbling breasts. It’s always an issue.
Extremely limited character customization. You can’t change the look of your starting character or anyone else beside hair and some warpaint.
Almost no décor. While there are plenty of things like totems, huts, tents, etc. to be found in enemy locations, none are available to the player.
Hard to find a suitable location for building. There’s ruins, camps, animal dens everywhere, and portions of flat land are hard to come by. Don’t wanna know how this is in multiplayer.

And lastly: No story. There are pieces of general lore, but there is no larger plot knitting the game together. It’s just “go there kill that, make better armor, kill some more” - very typical for Asian games, in my experience, and so much wasted potential in this case.


Conclusion

Overall there are new ideas in here, and there is potential. The developers just need to decide what they want the game to become ultimately, and in order to make in on the western market, they will need to put in some things like consistent story, quests, and diverse cosmetics.

This game made me very, very sad.
It reminds me that all resources are limited, that no matter how much you try not everyone can be helped or cared for, that some need to be left behind, and ultimately, the game is a reminder of the inescapability of Death.

Sounds pretty dark for a game that appears to be a colorful farming game, huh?
Let me quickly break it down.
This game has you stranded alone in a desert full of ruins and long dead plantlife.
Your goal: Survive, and care for the single spring you started next to, plant seeds to gradually turn the dead sand into soil. As you make progress, you uncover the story of the devastated world. While gods and magic make it sound like a far away place, the more you learn, the more you notice that the troubles that let to the current state of this world sound very familiar.
I won’t spoil the story for you, but this game offers much to think about, sadly there is no real happy end. The end of the story is just that. An End.

Water is your foundation. You can enhance your spring, find new ones, but these springs, and the bottle you carry with you, are the sole source of water, so nature completely depends on your work. While you can dig irrigation systems, ultimately, the size of desert you are able to revive is limited to how far you can make the water flow. There will be dead plants out of your reach, which feels even more bad since at night, an eerie ghostly glow surrounds plants and some parts of the ground, showing you how it looked like when they were alive.
Seriously, this game exhausted me emotionally.


The Good

It is not difficult to play and doesn’t need experience or special skills. When you enjoy planting stuff and planing waterways, but also like traveling now and then looking for new seeds, Wildmender might interest you. The story, while quite straight forward, does not force you to act. You can take as much time as you want, and progress when ready.
The number of plants you can grow is small, but each species has at least a hand full of different breeds which you can collect, and some hybrids you can breed. There are four biomes (plus desert) which are suited for different plants, most plants have a variant for most biomes.
There is fighting. Mostly during the story, but you will also encounter hostiles during your travels. The combat is as simple as it can be. You have one default weapon, which shoots energy, offers a reflecting block, and, if upgraded, a stun. You can also use your scythe for melee, and the story will grant you fire magic and other utilities which might come in handy. There are some simple defenses, since your home garden will be attacked by hostiles now and then. Overall, the combat part is easy to manage, and thankfully you can adjust the difficulty. While you won’t be able to remove all hostiles from the game, you can make them weak and deactivate the random attacks, which is really nice.


The Meh

You could say that after some hours, the game can be quite dull. There’s little else to do than search for stuff, plant stuff, and dig canals so the water will keep the stuff you plant alive. The building portion of this game is minuscule, there are magical sigils and utilities like a composter, and some walls to keep the baddies, sandstorms, and those pesky tumbleweeds out of your lawn. But you can’t build actual structures, in fact you don’t even have a bed for yourself, only a primitive shade cover.
Some significant things are locked behind story events, or require you going far into the skill tree. One of these late-game skill is rather important for me: it allows you to send plants into hibernation so they won’t constantly spawn seeds that litter your garden – or worse – plant themselves into the ground. Having to gather many skill points just to be able to stop the seed spam is really bothersome. If you want to make a garden that is actually pretty, you will surely plant more than just one plant of each kind, which will produce so many seeds that you have to gather or else they will lay around forever since stuff doesn’t despawn. Seeds might become spoiled or dry, but they will remain on ground. Even if you have the hibernation skill, you have to “talk” to each plant in order to make it stop throwing seeds at you.
During the story you will be able to revive land around the springs, or single plants. But since YOU are the source of all water, these plants will eventually die off again. I seriously wish there was an option to turn the watering off, or at least some rain or whatever. What points is there reviving an entire forest when you are absolutely not able to keep it alive?


The Bad

I have two major complaints.
First, performance. While the game itself runs smoothly, I face almost constantly pop-ins. Objects like plants, rocks, and buildings will randomly appear right next to you. Even when not moving quickly. This is very sad, since it not only discourages building a large garden, it also means much standing around waiting for the plants to pop up. It’s quite possible that this is an issue with my PC, but still it is frustrating since this is the sole issue I face.
Second, the map generation. The game world is randomly generated. Larger structures are scattered around the world, without any greater concept or plan. While that might sound like an aesthetic issue – a temple might sharply cut into a mountain, while the city gate stands free and faces the ocean (so not very protective) or the roads lead to nowhere – it quickly becomes an actual game issue when you think about the springs. Each region has seven or so springs you can unlock to start a garden around. You need them. No water, no garden. If these springs happen to be placed in absolute stupid locations – like in a tiny valley, a crevice, or on top of a small plateau – you can’t use them. Of course, part of the game is to get creative with the water – but water simply doesn’t flow uphill, and you can only do so much terraforming. When there is a static game object like those pesky market carts or a cliff in the way, than that’s it.


Summery

Overall an enjoyable game with solid fun. I don’t regret sinking many hours into it, and while the theme does make me sad, caring for growing gardens and gradually turning the dead desert into my personal playground is quite fun.
Sill I hope the devs will invest time to significantly smooth the terrain generation, since that is something I actually dislike about Wildmender.

Paleo Pines is a colorful and lighthearted game about goofy chirpers and cooing chonkers enjoying their days of being not extinct. That pretty much sums it up. If you came here expecting a Stardew Valley with dinos, then you are going to be disappointed. It is not an heir to the Harvest Moon series, and it doesn’t try to be. Nor does it try to follow the footsteps of games about scaly murdering machines or park managers which try to picture dinosaurs as scientifically accurate as possible.
Simply put, it is a game about having some cozy funtime with toon pets inspired by dinosaurs. If this still interests you, then keep reading, I try to write down what I think about this.

The Good

The environment is quite beautiful in my opinion. Though it looks more like a large garden or park, it still has much charm and lovely details. I personally love the animations of the cuddly dino characters, they grant them much personality and each species feels unique. The sounds they make might be not even close to what the real animals produced, but then again, I highly doubt that raptors used to be pink and purple, so these noises are as good as any, and they fit nicely within the overall style.
The Farming aspect of the game is rather small to be honest. There is a dozen or so of crops, and these can be cared for quickly in the morning, so you can spend the rest of the day exploring. All types of crop have favorite seasons and soil qualities, but they will produce even if you don’t meet any of these wants, which I think is nice. Beside selling them to earn cash, you also need to grow specific plants for quests or as treats for your dinos. Overall, you can put in more effort planing your fields and adding the right fertilizer, and are rewarded with extra yields, but you can also just throw some seeds in the dirt and water them to get a basic harvest.
Caring for your dinos is equally simple. Feed them, keep their pens clean, pet them, and you are fine. Dinos might help you on the farm, some can water, some plow the soil, others might even harvest for you. The main part of having specific dinos is, that you will need them to clear boulders or fallen logs, not only to make more room on your farm, but also in order to reach new areas in the world.
Taming wild dinos needs you to befriend them. First you play the species’ friend call, then you need to find out its favorite treat flavor by trial and error. This is a nice approach in my opinion, and encourages you to try around a little, and grow and gather different things.
There are three distinct areas with different biomes, where you will find different collectibles and dino species. The world has many secrets for you to find, so leave the path and have a look, you might find something pretty, and an area might offer something else when the seasons change, so keep exploring.
The timescale is fair for all these activities. While other games of this type barely leave you enough time to tend to your fields, Paleo Pines allows you to enjoy the world and look at all those silly dinos.
All summed up, the game creates a relaxed and playful environment which offers you an opportunity to just slow down a little and do some simple tasks, accompanied by lovable dorky dinos. I do have the feeling that the developers focused on what they wanted the game to be about, the dinos, and did not stray too far from their idea.

The Meh

That said, there are some parts of the game I think to be lacking.
Humans are basically decorative in this world. You can’t enter any house (not even your own!), and the handful characters you meet might be fleshed out and given a unique feel each, but in the end of the day, they are givers of simple quests and buy and sell stuff. Nothing more. There is a sort of “story” which has you taming the right dino to clear the path to a new area, and little stuff at the side to keep you entertained, but the social part of the game is almost non-existent. I already said that Paleo Pines does not try to follow up titles like Stardew Valley, but even then, having this little amount of interpersonal activity seems odd for a game about happiness and having a good time.
The building aspect of the game could really use some polish. You need to put down specific objects in order to make the dinos feel comfortable in their pen, but the game uses a tile-bound system for placing objects. Which means you will end up with a single object per tile, be it a large bush, or a tiny heather shrub. All neatly placed at the center of the tile. There are a couple of decorations for your human, like bookshelves and benches, but it feels odd to build a livingroom on the farm soil, and since you can’t enter your own home, this will be all you can do. Honestly, it’s not that important, and you can happily live without it, but then again, why implement bookshelves in the first place?
Last, I personally think that there are far too few customization options for the player character. Yes, the game is about dinos, I know, but then again it is advertised to allow the player to freely express themselves. Which I hardly can when none of the ten or so hairstyles speaks to me. Luckily, this can easily be helped by adding more things to choose from.
As I said, I have the feeling that dinos were always the main focus of this game, which is fine. Though in some cases, I do get the feeling that there should be more. Human characters are equipped with a personality and story, yet I can’t really socialize with them beside talking and the occasional quest.

The Bad

This might be highly personal, but I am absolutely creeped out by the basic human model. To me, the characters, especially the player, look like animated baby dolls, which I am really not enjoying since I have Pediophobia (I’m afraid of human-like models, especially if they are moving). Usually I cope with this putting a headgear on that covers the entire face of the player character, and skipping cut scenes, but since there are no such headcovers in this game, I’m having a hard time. I do understand that in a world full of happy pastel dinos and colorful flowers the playermodel needs to be cute and simplified, but I don’t want to be a toddler.


Summary

I like it. I followed the developers for a couple of years, from the first sketches to the finished game. I personally feel that they stayed true to their original intention, and did not experiment with stuff that was too far away from what they wanted. This is fine, even though some people complain about the game lacking something, we need to remember that just because a game has farming in it, it doesn’t need to be the same as Harvest Moon. Same for the art style. Yes it’s cheerful and toony, but even an adult can enjoy this kind of thing now and then. Just because the dinos are not the primal monsters other games present you, the game is not automatically meant to be for children. And if it is okay for other games to picture a dog like a bean with legs, then what is wrong about having a dinosaur looking like pink playdough?
If you are looking for something to put a little bit of cute into your day, Paleo pines might be for you.

Hammerting is a colony building simulation, allowing you to dig a dwarven dwelling into a mountain. It is a charming little game, although is does have some rough edges.

Nice things:

I do like the looks of the game. It is colorful, stylized, yet clearly fitting a Scandinavian vision of dwarves (which is actually where they come from, and not Scotland). The style is a pleasant mix of fantasy and comic, and the level of details is quite nice, but without being too much. Caves are randomly generated, and cluttered with little things like grass and mushrooms. There’s much glowy, shiny stuff to be found in the mountain, and the buildings you create are clearly of dwarven making (which means they are huge. Compensation?)

The music is enjoyable as well, even if it can be a little bit gloomy now and then.

The game itself is nice to play, good to fill some hours but without putting any stress on me. I can leave the screen for some minutes, letting the dwarves work. The game focuses heavily on exploration and mercantilism. You have to dig for resources or grow some plants, mainly because you need to craft tools and armors and other things you can sell to the surface races. This is the only way to get coin, which you need to pay your dwarves and hire new ones. So, instead of building and army and killing all the things dead, you get to explore another aspect of dwarves: being a shrewd trader, playing the neutral part in a regional death-match, selling and buying, hopefully making a profit, while still having an influence on how things turn out.
The total amount of things to gather and build is okay. It does have some production chains, but that is mostly foodstuff, and nothing you absolutely need. Dwarves are hardy, and won’t whine when they have to go some days without food, or when they have to sleep on the ground. I havn’t tried harder difficulties, so it might be that keeping them alive could become troublesome, but only if you want to.
There are a couple of ways to win the game, depending of how you like to play. You can focus on your colony, amassing coins. Or you can try to subjugate the entire surface, basically buying them out. But winning is not really the whole point, in my opinion. I like to build a nice, cozy, but also efficient mountain home for my dwarves, sending them out so get new stuff to sell, new ore to smelt, new gold to put onto the walls. Unfortunately, the game is not deep enough to pass as a city-builder. Dwarves do have a need called “greed” which is basically their need to be paid and put into a comfortable dwelling. Coins tend to vanish when not safely stored away, you know? Beside this, and some random chatter between them, there isn’t much passing as actual society, not even decorative objects or actual furniture beside the bed they sleep on (or not).

If you like to keep it simple, focusing on the gathering and fine-tuning your railroad network, then this is the game for you.



It does have some downsides, though:

My major point is the AI. It is dumb. A dwarf gets up to gather a piece of granite to put into a building. He travels all the way to the storehouse, picking up what he needs, walks back to the construction side to drop the stuff. Then the dwarf notices that the blueprint next to this one also needs granite. And he walks back and forth again, and again only delivering what this single building needs. If you wonder why some rock takes ages to be mined: it’s probably because a miner on the other side of the map decided to dig at it, managed to get a single tile done, then realizes that he is hungry and travels back, which means some other dwarf needs to fill in, traveling all the way again… and. So. Forth. I knew that dwarves could be single-minded, but THIS is bothering me. The larger the map, the bigger your colony grows, the longer the ways will become, and your people will spend most of their time traveling, unable to work on more than one order at the same time. It would be so great if the haulers and builders would check if any other building around their destination need some stuff as well. Or if they would check if they can finish a job before running low on food. Little things like these would help so much reducing travel time. But no.

Second thing: Some resources are gated. Since the mountain has different biomes, it may take some time before you find what you need. Some few things can be bought at the surface, but you need to find wild fibre-plants before you can start growing your own, and these are only generated in one biome. Monster drops are also something I have troubles finding. I have so far not understood the mechanics behind the spawning of monsters, but I guess there is a total max number of active monsters. There are monster nests which spawn them, but they also pop up randomly in caves outside of your viewing range. I tried to not destroy some nests, hoping they would continue to make more monsters, but I had no luck so far. They tend to dry out, and the random spawning is not predictable at all, and in the end I am cut off from basic things like meat, leather, or jelly, which are needed for many things. It would be nice if you had at least some control on where enemies spawn, or even better: tame some of them to gain a steady supply of crucial stuff like hides.

Third point: The behavior of the surface people. Ar first it was amusing that the people up there seem to be caught in an endless war for no apparent reason, while the thrifty dwarves profit from this. But having played some hours, I sadly have to say that the campaign is ridiculous at best. Nothing you can do has really any lasting impact. While the idea that you favor one party and booster their economy is nice, nothing like this happens. Delivering food and weapons will regenerate some stats like might or fortification, which in turn means a surface location can send out new troops or withstand longer. A location that is damaged won’t produce anything for you to buy, and they need granite blocks to rebuild, which are also your own basic material, and always needed. So you might want to keep them “alive”, right?
In the long run it doesn’t matter.
I started a couple of games, playing some five hours, and each time it was completely random which faction would manage to conquer enemy locations. Sadly, for me, the surface just got a coin farm. I can spend weeks not caring to look up, then I sell some gear and hope to find one undamaged hunting cabin to sell me bones, or leather! And then I go back to mine. Maybe I haven’t figured it out yet, but I dare to say that the overworld politics are nuts. You can even spend lots of trade lore to improve how one faction sees an other, but does it mean they won’t fight? Nope.
It is really sad that this part of the game behaves so weirdly, because it more or less is the whole point you are playing. As I said, there isn’t enough content for a city-builder or social simulation, and it isn’t a fighting game either. But the mercantile part is far too random, too unrewarding to be any fun.

And Last but not Least: The Water. There are outlets all around the mountain, which spew out endless amounts of water. I have yet to learn how they realize when to stop. Most times, they don’t until a cave is full. The water isn’t a real obstacle, since dwarves don’t drown? But still, having the stuff everywhere while you try to dig deeper is really frustrating, since thanks to the water holes, you can’t just dig a tunnel for the water to flow into another cave, no, the damn thing just spits out more water. So unless you spend time and resources to put some walls around the outlet, you will stay wet.

It isn't totally bad, and still, it failed to catch me like other titles of this kind.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: It is NOT a clone of Civilizations. Sure, it does draw some inspiration from that one, but still, it is fundamentally different.

So why the thumbs down?
I think it is a gathering of small but still annoying things.
But let’s start with the nice things:


+ I do like the graphics. It’s a nice mix of realism and comic. You can actually see people walking the streets, little wagons delivering goods to the cities, and animals running over plains.

+ The music and ambiance is nice, the storyteller is decent - both his voice and the jokes he makes.

+ Character creation! Finally I don’t have to play some historically inaccurately portrayed war chief king or whatever. While this has zero effect on the actual game, it does feel nice!

+ They tried to include cultures from the whole world, even lesser known ones. A double plus: Units change according to your chosen culture.

+ Tutorials are plentiful and allow you an easy start, even if this is your first time playing a game like this. If not, you can choose little or even no help.

+ Your journey through time is not tied to passed years, but rather achievements. Each epoch has a number of stars you need to earn, and offers different ways to get these, meaning you can build your way towards the next age, or simply farm and increase your numbers, or fight. One way often enough doesn’t grant you enough stars, so you have to get creative. Overall, this is a nice idea and means you won’t just sit around waiting for the next age to waltz in.

+ You can combine units into a regiment, which, while limited, still allows you to make a decent and versatile troop. In combat, you may position these units, so the archers are behind your swordsmen.

+ Each land unit may found an outpost, which may be turned into a city. So as long as you have a single unit left, you may get back on your feet.


Now the not so nice things:


- Culture is simply a piece you can put into your strategy. They are tied to a certain time window, and while this is somewhat true given the fact that Mayans never developed iron forging and are therefor not a true “medieval” culture, they also did not appear 2000 years before the Romans. Since they are tiered, you have to pick a new one for each epoch. Yes, you may “transcend” and keep an old culture, but you will miss newer, better units, and the yields from old special districts are low.
This basically turns a culture into a tool that can be thrown away in exchange for a better one. Which is, is fact, pretty well seen in your avatar: They simply change clothes.
I see that the game wants you to explore “Humankind” but seriously, someone starting with the Olmecs and decides they want to be Celts in the next epoch is ridiculous, and harmful to those cultures that still are around and see themselves used as an advantage.

- Micromanagement of the cities and surrounding outposts can be troublesome, especially since the “territories” are predefined and can’t be changed at all. You can link an outpost to a city, but this brings more trouble than benefits, at least in my view.

- Stability. Adding a district like farmer quarters to your city reduces its stability. Each major addition takes 10 points, with a maximum of 100 this can become unstable rather quickly, especially since outposts alone may only gather resources, but nothing else. I fail to see what this system is trying to achieve or prevent. For me, it’s pure annoyance, since there is little you can do for raising stability. Some city buildings like canalization, or the commons district, World Wonders, but that’s it.

- Limited number of cities you can safely handle at a time. This increases with research, but combined with the stability issues, I feel it’s hard to keep up with the AI.

- Ah yes, the AI. I find it horrible. I watched my auto-exploring hunters running back and forth between the same two tiles for an entire epoch.
Worse are AI empires. They can’t be predicted. I actually played with easier ones, and still the first thing they did when I met them was attacking me, and then, next turn, demanding the handover of a city I just added to my Empire. Diplomacy is a tangle of demands and griefs, and I find myself on the losing side, every time, since little of what I can do actually seems to have an effect of how they treat me. They offer non-aggression, take it back three turns later, just to re-offer it again, and I am just wondering what exactly causes this decision. And I play on the second easiest mode, so I don’t want to know how they are on harder settings. Not to talk about them nilly-willy picking cultures and wonders and generally being a huge nuisance in every regard.
Worst are the independent people. These are akin to city states, but oh boy. They are beyond bothersome. And apparently don’t need any resources. I run high and low to find a second iron deposit so I may upgrade my units, just to met an independent city without even a single resource, but still able to throw a full regiment of ironclad units at me. Just for the lolz since they are aggressive, and then they go and plunder my outposts because lol.

- Religion and background story-telling is too western centered for my taste. Apparently each and every faith on Earth had a holy script. And went through the same cultural clashes like good old Europe, regarding social development and the brawl between clergy, nobility, and later on, science. There are tries to lighten this up, but for me these actually make it worse. One turn I read about interpretation of the holy script my shamanism apparently has, and the next turn it’s something about eunuchs. Which my Mayans apparently also had, beside the good book of course.


As said, it is not a bad game on itself. I am not “disappointed” or “mad” or something, but these little mehs pile up, and ultimately I don’t want to put this high on my list of games I want to go through. It’s enjoyable for a couple of hours, mainly at the beginning, but middle to endgame just makes me want to quit.
This is of course all highly personal, and surely many pure strategy fans will enjoy the randomness and insignificant of things like culture, but I am not a pure strategist.
I am more of a role player, I like to tell stories. And so far, my stories were that of transcended Mayans desperately looking for iron while discussing their holy book and having constant squabbles with the Mongols who used to be Greeks and a random city that apparently can turn dust into iron for their units, but won’t share this secret with me.

This game is so-so. Okay, with potential to become much more, but a little bit plain here and there.


It has a solid base, including everything you would expect from a farming game: Crop care and shipping, animals, building relationships with villagers, little erands to earn some money on the side, and foraging. The main systems work well and so far I have not seen any bug or major upsetting.

One of the main points is the three villages you may live in. Each has a different climate, which means you will be able to grow some crops only in certain villages, while basic stuff like grain is cosmopolitan. The total number of crops to grow is okay, and you get a monthly list of what you should ship. It's not a must, but encourages you to grow different kinds of crops, with some extra cash when you fullfill the quota.

The apparent main part of the game - while not exactly deep enough to be called a story - is the museum. You need to fill it with insects, fish, plants, and fossils gathered from all around the island, and you need to do this within a set time. Else, a major corporation will build a factory on the island which will have a heavy, negative impact on the environment, reducing fertility and growth speed, and mybe more. I read that this whole feature is not yet implemented. While this is a nice long-term goal, it also means you will have to set aside time for foraging. There is a quick-travel system, but you need to find the different destinations first before you can travel to them.
The villages have moderate size. They are bigger than what is common for this type of game, and each person has a bed to sleep in (which is a topic that's probably only bothering me). There's friend groups, random quests to earn friendship, and all people have a little edge which sets them appart from the others, without being too much out of line. Beside them running around, standing and holding some tools, or sitting in front of drinks and foods, there is not much life or interaction. There's no children, no larger family beside some siblings, and I have yet to find out why I should bother with dating and marriage. There is no advice I could give in this case. When I think about Stardew Valley, there's guys I was in love with pretty much instantly. No such a thing here, unfortunately, but maybe that's just me?

Anyway, here comes why I called it a so-so game.
For something that litterally forces you out of your farm into the wild to gather insects and plants, the landscape is not very nice. There are routes and places that are really pleasant, you can walk through flower fields or stroll along the beach. But overall, I'd say the world needs smoothening. There's sharp edges and cuts everywhere, floating rocks and trees, and large stretches without anything but plain textured landscape - actually it reminds me on my first Morrowind mods from *mumbleIAMOLDmumble* years ago. I understand that the main systems have priority, the game needs to work before you can polish it. I do hope this polishing will come, if not, that would be sad, since the vegetation is really lovely designed.
The often critized movement is something you get used to. Yes it is a little bit wonky, but I've seen worse, so I'd say it doesn't bother me as much as badly placed bridges or rivers that look like the little canals kids dig at the beach. The developers seem to be nice and open, so I really do hope they give this game some love and beautification.

But hey, that is cosmetics. The game itself works like it should, so maybe you could give it a try.

RimWorld is a rather odd mix of different things. At the first glance it appears to be just another survival game, and indeed, that is some core mechanic.
You will play a bunch of random people who happen to strand on a rather hostile planet. The rest is up to you. Build, farm, research, expand, try to get new people, survive the winter, manage your ressources, have an eye on temperature and weather, and have your way with different factions - trading or raiding. Unlike other games of this type, there are no raging zombie hordes. Okay, RimWorld has giant gene-modified insects, murderous robot...insects(?), and harsh weather. But the overall challenge are the people themselves. They don't like eating without a table. They really don't like eating those insects. And when the thing that they have on their plate was once know by the name George, they are not happy either. Unless they are nuts, or cannibals. Little things add up. A little too hot outside, too dark inside, Karen won't sleep with you, your mom died, and you had to turn her skin into a chair. But still, you had to eat standing because said chair was too far away. Okay, that's it, you go berserk and kill them all. Too bad you were raised on a Glitterworld and have no idea how these green things of the field turn into food. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to kill the single dude who would be willing to build something either, because it's winter and cold and a piece of spacejunk just tore your roof down and now you're dead as well.
Sounds fun? Believe me, it is.
Which is the main point. RimWorld appears do be a survival game. But it is actually a story generator. And that is the major charme. Survival is optional, the main goal is going nuts and having fun while eating your neighbors. Of course only after you sold their organs. Or maybe you are a more peacefull tribe, enjoying the plantlife. Smoking it. And trying to survive the onslaught of those rabbid raiders by fleeing and starting a new settlement in the swamp. Just to be murdered by man-eating chinchillas.
Okay, start again, maybe this time you could load up some mods - there's plenty! - and start a colony of bunny people, or insect folks who like to eat humans, oh hey why don't add on the psychology part of the game, and while we're at it, some new furniture would be nice, oooh wow is that a mod that adds dinosaurs - why does the game take 10 minutes to load, i only have 233 mod- oh.
Yes, that is a major point why I play this game like a madman. MODS. So many things. So much to try, to build, to care for, RimWorld is a great base to build on! Of course, the game itself is cool and charming and full of lovingly stupid people who eat other people.
But the mods! Excuse me, I need to sort my loadorder or else the whole thing will break down.

It is hard to compare this game to others, mostly because it was already around when the term MMO had been shaped, and its influence on the further development of this type of game can't be denied. You might find things that other online games did better, and things that EQ2 did better than stuff that came later.

Nice things first.
It is a rather charming game, despite the old graphics. Quests are plenty to have, and even if they tend to be get-this-kill-that, the writing and overall structure makes most of them unique. The world is vast and zones are diverse, there’s hidden places and nice details all over. You can spend hours roaming the landscapes, solving quests and exploring caves or ruins, or, if you are brave, enter a dungeon. These come in two versions: Public ones, and more difficult instances which tend to contain boss monsters.
Another thing that I personally like are the different races. Despite being more or less cosmetic in nature, each one has a unique feel and history to explore, and the NPCs you meet will all add to the feeling you get for each of the species, playable or not. With so many races to chose from, one tends to overlook that each race has only a hand full of customization options like hair, horns, or so. From a roleplaying perspective, having so much variety is awesome, even more so since the races EverQuest offers are not only humans with strange ears, but truly something different. You can be a valorous frog, an ugly troll, a dwarf, a vampire, some dragon-human-hybrid, or a ratman. And not only that! Even when you start as an “evil” race like, you have the option to betray your faction and switch sides. That is really something I’d wish all faction-based games would offer (yes I am looking at you, WoW).
Next thing: Houses! There are many different housings available, each city has different options, cheap or pricy, big or cozy. You can clutter your home with stuff of all kind, many quests reward you with furniture, but you can also craft it yourself, if you chose to become a carpenter. You can even allow other people to visit your home, or stuff it full of pets. Your choice!
The classes EQ2 offers are varied, which ensures that most types of players will find something that matches their preference, both in play style and aesthetics. They are sorted into four archetypes: Mages, Priests, Scouts, and Fighters, which all have several subtypes. Most of these come in two versions. For example, you can chose to become a classical wizard, wielding frost and fire, or you can be the darker counterpart of the wizard, a warlock, which fills the same roll, but uses dark magic like curses and poison. All races can become any class, and even if some start out to be better mages or fighters than others, these advantages will smooth down over time. Still, some classes are alignment-locked. A necromancer can only be evil, while its counterpart, the conjurer, can only be good.
The game offers mercenaries, hired NPCs with a hand full of abilities borrowed from a player class. They will level with you, fight for you, can be trained and equiped to become better. When you play alone, these are very handy. Sadly, they are premade, so you have to take what you get, even if you don’t want a human paladin. Choices are rather slim, and while you will find all classes and roles present, you will probably never get what you really want.


These are, so far, the most notable things I like on the game.
Now to the not-so-great things.


One thing you should be aware:
EverQuest II is an old game. Most of the players are old. Since me beginning to play in June 2020, I didn't find a single one who hadn't been playing for years, some are there since the very beginning. Unfortunately, the game is not beginner-friendly. My guess is, that the developers could only chose between keeping the already low number of veteran players, or trying to attract new ones. They decided for the first way. The game is extremely complex, has many numbers, mechanics, tricks, shortcuts, and almost nothing is explained. Without help from a senior player, you are hopelessly lost. Newbies are very rare, and most veterans focus on their main character, and maybe two or three alts, to cover the crafting. Low-level regions are empty. You will not find a group for dungeons. The players still active usually grind through high-end stuff, and honestly, most loot my guild mates are after don’t make any sense to me, since I still have my problems understanding end-game mechanics, and them numbers are already so high that I fail to recognize the different. One weapon does 123,239.29 damage, the other 123,329.29, which one is better? I don’t even know if these numbers are an actual representation of high-end stuff. My brain just sees “big number” and “another big number”. Which is bad, since you need these numbers. The main goal is to raises your stats. That’s basically all this game is about, sadly. Numbers. Stats. It has so much lore, which is nowhere to be seen. The guides and wikis only cover strategies, if at all. Players I met often don’t even care about stories. No, it’s stats. Always. Get the best, have the best, be the best. People sit on their mounts all the time, because they give buffs. Better mounts equal better buffs. And don’t think about buying something. While there is some sort of marketplace called the broker, the prices are insane, and almost all interesting items are not tradeable.
Which brings me to the major point for my thumbs down.
Getting somewhere in this game more or less requires that you have access to rare loot, or something that was a goody ages ago. Mounts, mercenaries, even some mechanics like reforging (I don’t know what this is supposed to do but it seems to be important!). These things were either pre-order rewards for earlier expansions, or part of collectors editions and so on. Weren’t around in 2011 when something nice was available? Too bad, you will never get it. Yes, the basic expansions are all included in the free-to-play version, you only have to buy the latest addon. That is nice, really, but please, let me get older stuff as well! Yes, you can go on without these things. A portion is really just prestige. Some others, like mounts, are not, since what you can get ingame is far from what people who own some collectors edition have. Sure, it was supposed to be a goody. A reward for being a year-long veteran player who preordered all of the deluxe editions.
If you are not, don’t dare setting a foot into high-level content, you will need infused fabled super-rare stuff trice reforged, not to talk about some legendary mount trained to the max and that mercenary that is a reward for 10 years of playing. Yes, some things I mentioned are available at the ingame store for real money. Many things are not. I do understand why most players focus on a single character: Going through the process to get all the things necessary to be a decent player is a pain, if not outright impossible.

For a game that offer so many interesting things to try and play, this approach is an absolute no-go, and the reason that I won’t recommend anyone starting this. You will need much, much time, and money. But even then, you will not be able to get all this game has to offer. You, like me, simply came too late.