Recent reviews by [BWC] Firefly

I wanted to like this game. It's too repetitive. The only draw to this is the Viking flavour. If you've played any other colony-building/town-management game, you've played this one. Town creation is engaging enough, but the penalties for failure are absolutely unforgiving. Every single thing contributes to citizen approval or dislike, and the negatives outweigh the positives. If you get into a negative spiral, it's hard to recover. The biggest drawback that I can't seem to overcome is homelessness. As soon as a citizen indicates they are homeless, I build a few houses. However, these are instantly populated, increasing the population but seemingly not providing a home to the homeless person. If your villagers leave, you lose Fame and quickly lose the game. People die, whether through war, natural causes, illness, or injury, but their houses remain occupied as long as there's one family member there, including even a single infant (this happened... baby living by itself). On top of that you have incoming travelers or refugees or newcomers, whatever you want to call them. If you reject them, you lose Fame, which is what drives your Tree of Life points that you need to improve your society/technology. If you accept them, you need a lot more houses. This would better benefit from some sort of prompt to build that specific homeless person a home, and lock it to that individual and their family, if any. Having some sort of barracks for unmarried troops would be a decent idea as well, to help handle housing issues. The other issue with housing is that there's only so much space on a map. Having 500 houses for 500 citizens/families occupies a massive chunk of real estate. Combat in this game is relegated to what amounts to choose-your-own-adventure cards, where you get a series of cards presenting an option (recon, wait, go in at night) and a chance for success. Press a button, random number gods decide if you succeed or fail. I don't believe the percentages, either--I've had 35% chance of success be wildly successful, and 89% chance of success fail miserably. That is how combat goes, you don't manage the fighting any other way unlike other RPG/RTS titles.

Bearing in mind that this is a small indie developer operation, this game is incredible even besides that. The sky, weather, and terrain are very well done. The sprites/avatars are basic although the gear itself is detailed enough. Some minor glitches that should be worked out. The learning curve feels steep (and there are not a lot of up-to-date tutorials considering the most recent change of ditching the Manage tab) but once you get the hang of it, it feels intuitive. There is an in-game tutorial that bears reading, although reading it at the start of the game as your legionaires stand around in a warzone probably isn't the smartest play. Mob pathing is a thing, the AI is not that bright. Building a legion castrum is simple if you grasp the mechanics of X-amount of bodies assigned to Y-tent. Promoting veterans from one century to another is a little tricky at first. Definitely want to see where this can go--cavalry? founding and building Roman towns? improving conquered settlements?

I saw some gameplay videos and screenshots, and then I checked out the reviews. Seeing that the game was brand new and that it had mixed reviews was expected for me, as a game developer I am familiar with launch-day woes. I am a huge D&D nerd and decided to give this a shot. I got into the game, made a paladin, left the settings at the default, and proceeded to get my arse pasted across the map hither and yon. It was frustrating but also endearing -- here was a game that didn't screw around and coddle you. I was smitten the moment I got jumped by my first Will O' The Wisp on the Old Sycamore map. Literally all of the warning signs were right there. I just failed to heed them, with typical gamer superiority complex, and got wrecked AGAIN. At first I was mad, that was my pride talking, and then I slowly realised that this was going to require some thought. Ever since that moment I have been amazed at all the subtle clues and sly hints. I have to plan out all of my non-random encounters: try and scout out the enemy with a stealthed rogue, buff the hell out of my party with a mage and priest and plenty of potions and scrolls... this is the life. This is a faithful translation of tabletop-to-video-game, complete with an a-hole DM that wants to punish you for beating up his NPCs.

This is an incredibly awful, horrible, terrible, no good, very bad game. I am mad as hell that I spent thirty bucks on this grognard of a game and can't get a refund. Don't be like me -- I hope you read the reviews first before buying.