Recent reviews by bege

Picked it up during Summer Sale, being a long while on my wish list. I tend to avoid early access games until they are released, since you usually get a half-done game which falls short on the content and buggy. But this game feels polished and definitively playable!

TLDR: If you like resource management/builder games, but don't want to spend time on mapping roads/houses and micromanage everything, but still like SOME customization here and there: Get it :)

Disclaimer: I have not tried any mods yet, so this review is only on the base game.

After ~12h, this is what I have to say:
+/- Type of game: I REALLY liked the old Settlers 2 game, due to the focus on resources and building, with a mix of very light warfare. This game has the same kind of vibes, but with a bit more resource management, which I like.
+ Content: Plenty of content to keep you busy, I just hope the devs will not stop adding content, since I really like the base game. It already feels like a full game though. There is support of mods though, so that could add community content.
+ Building: I like the mix of not having to place roads (they are automatically mapped by the population) and houses (you can paint areas where houses are allowed and you people will place them), but then being able to place workshops, farms (and where they farm), etc. Imo., it's the perfect mix of not having to micromanage everything, but still being able to steer the design of your kingdom in the way you want to. The roads/houses also get a natural feel to them, since I usually tend to do some kind grid system "let's add all houses in a perfect row here and draw straight roads everywhere". So you get a nice realistic looking kingdom out of the box. You can also customized some buildings (churches, monasteries, manors, etc.), which is not really my thing, but a nice feature though.
+ Resource management: There are plenty of resources to keep an eye out on and sell to your peasants, but they are paced really nicely, so you get introduced to them at a nice pace and you can offer different resources to cater for e.g. "luxury". So you don't have to hunt too badly for specific resources.
+ Graphics/sounds/music: It has nice clean looking graphics. The music and natural sounds (bird singing, water etc.) puts a very pleasant vibe to the game overall.
- It would be nice with some more disasters (there are already storms, but they just decrease food output basically) to add some more challenge to the game: Maybe storms causing building to collapse, flooding or a fires, where some building are destroyed/needs repair, then you have to put in some effort to recover.
- The military mission system could use a bit of polishing, it gets a bit boring with the same few missions all the time. It would also be nice to get more types of soldiers and missions requiring e.g. catapult to finish (siege some city). Maybe it would be possible to have some map with different missions on it and alliance system to make it a bit more fleshed out and interesting? I think the base is good though: choose which soldiers based on exp to send and add a mix of random reward/risk/etc. No direct steering combat etc., you send them off and they send reports back about the progress and come back with loot (if you won the battle).
- There are also mini-missions "deliver 10 fish", but they feel a bit like they could use some rethinking. It feels like they could use some more randomized requests/rewards.