Well, it is hard to write this review. I wish that steam would have a third option which is neither Yes or No.

I want to reccomend this game, but at the actual stage, wait for some balance updates. The game has so much potential.

I thin this game tries to be a mashup between Anno 1800, Banished, Farthest Frontier (and similar games), and a bit of Frostpunk. But this formula doesn't match well.

The Good:

It has the addiction potential like the Anno series, Frostpunk or factory games like Factorio and the likes.

Beautiful graphics, atmosphere and soundtrack.

The Bad:

Sometimes the game is super relaxed and then turns on you very hard. Production values go up and down an it is very hard to find out why, because the definitve production is obfuscated behind so many systems like Workforce, Morale and Ressource nodes going empty.

Watermanagement in the early game is so much pain, and ressource depletion and replenishment is nowwhere explained in the very, very short tutorial.

So many missing comfort funcitons: More Tooltips, please. If i hover over something i want more information. Some stuff has this, but it is the boring stuff.

Worker replacement on death when not having workers: The first new workers should fill out the empty spots. If everything downspirals you have to micromanage the hell out of the game. The same with upgrading your workers to the next class.

The "Research Nodes" are a nightmare: To farm sand for glass you have to reasearch a node, but wich one is not visible in a kind of tree, instead you have to click on the node and read which one you need, and then find it in the "Tree"

Worse: Some prequisites to nodes can't be build with a node further in the tree: I want glass and sand but have to research a node where i get a Maintance Building, but cant build it because it requires glass. This feels so dumb.

The pacing is weird: You progress in cycles and i am always two to three cycles ahead with unlocks but so very behind with building and researching everything, this doesn't feel rewarding.

So many things feel inconsistent or not well enough explained.


Conclusion:

I want to like this game. It has so much potential, but there need to be more comfort functions and many, many balancing fixes. I will sink many hours into it nonetheless. It is a bit sad, that the game makes me want to play Anno 1800 or Frostpunk, and not this one due to lack of gamplay polishing.

To be honest at this age of the game I'm going to give it a no.
Pros:
* You know those mobile game ads that make it look like it's a proper city/settlement builder, only to trick you into some stupid thing where you don't actually build anything and is the biggest bait and switch?
New Cycle looks like the game you wanted to play before the bait and switch, which I love.
* It does have similarities to Frostpunk as others have mentioned, but it's got it's own chaos going on.
* I like the various levels of difficulty even if I play on easy mode.
* Graphics are great. It's fun following your villagers around.
* In the early setup you can turn your brain off and just enjoy building things and making your settlement grow.

Cons:
* The tech can't keep up with how quickly the cycles are, and even in abundant resource maps the resources go quickly.
Then you get to a point where your various techs barely produce because they are studying bigger tech. You waste so much energy building extra smelters and blacksmiths etc just to get the amount of various ores and tools you need.
* Resources types are too limited, especially with the Ore types and the mining of ore.
* Tech gets nerfed for "studying" so you have buildings no matter how many people you put in barely producing any output.
* Some of the negatives aren't really explained so you can't figure out how to fix them.
* Again with the resources, they go way too quickly. People shouldn't be going through as much tools and clothes as much as they do for example.
* Outpost setup and usage to try to go to other colonies isn't really explained well so it feels like you're building them for nothing. I really don't want to go and look at a guide on Steam to figure out what I'm doing.
* The buildings themselves are all brown without any real distinguishing features, and it's easy to accidentally toggle off labels. As you go into brick buildings etc the outlook should change a bit.
* Resources in general are hard to find because unless you accidentally have the proper tab pulled up, you might not know where you can find water or minerals or things like that.

Suggestions:
* For sandbox mode, give us an option of making resources more plentiful or resource use is less. The basically give us the option of possibly making it the sandbox option a cozy settlement builder.
* For the campaign, make easy mode, well, easier. Some of us want to go through and just get the story while building everything, and we'd do replay value one each map just on easy mode.
* General resource renewal. I'm not talking about with just rain and snow, but maybe set up some woodsmen that actually help replenish the forest with new trees.
* More detailed tooltips for negative affects on buildings.
* Better resource usage for goods such as tools and clothing. It shouldn't be as high as it is to keep the moral up.
* Adjust the levels of tech with the cycles. The cycles go way too fast for the tech. This should be set as an option for all difficulty levels.
* More node types for mining/gathering. After a bit the gathering posts are useless for stone and iron, give us a bit more options to keep them running.
* Let us mine multiple ore types at the same mine based on the amount of miners for each. If you want to put 15 miners to do lead, iron, and copper, use that population! Set it like the gathering posts so we aren't building 3 mines right next to each other and again, wasting resources.
* Make the dirt roads cheaper/free and then let us upgrade for faster travel.
* Let us have some space between buildings and roads.
* Unless I didn't get there tech wise, along with the wells/pumps, add something to convert seawater into normal drinking water.
* Finally, Console codes. Even if you don't update any of the above, at least for us that don't want to really deal with the lack of resources etc, let us put some type of console code or something so we can gain other resources to build upon. Think of it like the Age of Empires codes.

Am I still going to play it? Whenever there is an update I'm going to check it out and see what is going on, and my review may change. There is a lot going for it, but for now I think it's a bit too frustrating for a settlement builder that some people might just want to turn their mind off. I might have more cons than pros, but that's only because I want this game to become fabulous.

For an EA game, this is very well polished. One of my favorite city builders/resource management games.