Recent reviews by Mantastic

Amazingly good, especially for a game that's still in very active development.

The weakness of so many city/sim builders is the endgame. You've triumphed over adversity, and there's nothing really left to challenge you. This game eliminates that entirely with it's rogue-lite style of gameplay (permanent upgrades, but temporary towns) and each town having a definitive goal. There's a constant "new to middle" town challenge that's extremely addicting and fun.

Nuts and bolts, you start on a map with places you can build your colony Depending on where you choose, the environment will be different with differing resources, events, and races. There is a very challenging (but fun and rewarding) mechanic where there's a constant double edged sword in play. You can do this thing, but there will be a negative thing to contend with. Playing this balance to keep you net positive is the key to victory.

If you're like me and you've binged the hell out of Surviving Mars, Cities Skylines, and Oxygen Not Included, you're going to love this game.

Kudos Eremite. You've created gaming gold.

I've put over 540 hours into this game.

I don't put 540 hours into games, with extreme rare exception.

IMO, there is no better difficult, but satisfying and zen colony and resource simulator out there. I can play it for hours on end and get absolutely lost in the game.

Make sure to get all the DLCs, and also some critical mods like Silva's mod pack, the 5x and 10x speed mod, and all the ones with the Spongebob artwork (just trust me). There's many others to make the game even more complex and fun, or more easy if you prefer, but best to wait until you learn the game's mechanics and get comfortable on what and what not to do before you get them.

Only real con is the late game. The best parts of the game are beginning and mid when you're constantly facing challenges and doing the best you can to grow and research new techs. End game, you'll get techs that make the game go on easy mode, and at that point you just stop playing whenever you want as your colony grows exponentially. The game wasn't made for you to cover the whole map. Just keep that in mind when playing.

There is Challenge Mode with provides a lot of different scenarios with set criteria and timelines, and those are a lot of fun as they have defined goals that you can work towards, or fail at.

Buy it. Learn it. Have a buttload of fun with it.

I want to like this. I really, really do. Played the hell out of AOE3 over the years, and was super excited for the DE to come out. Unfortunately, its been a disappointment. One that will hopefully reverse course in time with patches.

Pros:

The UI updates are welcome, especially for ultrawide monitors. The OG AOE3 looks like it's been squished on them, so this was huge. I also dig the AOE2 style UI which is more intuitive, though its a little...basic in terms of graphical design.

The graphics look much better. The updated models, textures, and physics really spruce it up. It still doesn't look like a moden, current gen game, but it doesn't have to.

Swedes and Inca are fun to play and welcome additions. Hopefully we'll get tk see more civs in the future. Gotta give Africa some love.

The classic cheats are still there, and being a big Homestar Runner fan, I'm glad "sooo good" lives on.

The music is also greatly improved.

The so-so:

I understand why they made the changes to make the native Americans more historically accurate, but its implemented in a goofy way outside of the updated names and dialogue. It just doesn't feel right. AOE was never completely historically accurate anyways, so the mining and fire pit changes seem out of place when Asian civs still have fantasy mysticism mechanics. Or a British Redcoat can take a full on cannonball to the face and just kind of stammer a bit and keep walking.

Game stability is not great. I had three crashes, one that happened really late in the game and I didn't save. Yeah, I should have saved, but when you're hyper focused in the game, its not something you think about. At the very least there needs to be an autosave, which surprises the hell out of me that there isn't one.

The not so gooder:

The whole system of leveling up for getting more cards has been removed. That was a major mechanic that was a ton of fun, and gave you more of a reason to specialize and get good with your favorite civs. Now all the cards are just there, and leveling up is essentially pointless.

The UI, while improved, has lots of annoyances and bugs. This is especially true in the deck builder. Clicks wont register correctly, sometimes selecting the wrong card next to it. Really frustrating. The cards are also a mess to select with no good sorting options. The old UI was way better.

The AI is all kinds of busted.

Armies will often get parked and just sit there, waiting for you to come to them. Commands to attack with you will often be ignored, even with full armies trained. Armies retreat too easily. Islands are often ignored. If an AI's civ takes a lot of damage, but not enough to resign, it'll just linger there waiting to get finished off, even if you give it resources to rebuild and orders to focus on economy. Sometimes it'll eventually rebuild a Town Center after a long wait, but new villagers get sent right into the slaughter across the map rather than hunkering down in the colony to rebuild. AI commands are also much more limited than in AOE2.

Villager pathing and resource harvesting is also somewhat busted. Villagers will idle with their designated resources right next to them. They have issues harvesting in groups, especially herdables.

Speaking of herdables, villagers shoo them to the Town Center like AOE2, but since there's no drop off points in the game, its pointless. It adds collectiom time waiting for them to be herded, and they get really bunched up requiring microing to harvest.

So yeah, disappointing. I hope these things are addressed. Time will tell.