Updated for Cities Of Today patch.

I want to like this game. I love the concept and the advertisements really appeal to me. However, I just can't get past the major issues with this game. I've played it at each stage of development and recently came back for the beta patch. Each time I walk away thinking the same thing: I really hope this turns out well but I'm not confident.

Pros:
+The game is beautiful. The world is appealing to look at and the designs of the animals are top notch.
+The narration is spot on. Funny and snarky that fits the god game perfectly. However, can get repetitive.
+God powers are great. Everything from the simple heal followers to bringing down meteors on disbelievers.

Cons:
-Nuggets (The people you oversee) build their own homes.

This issue has been reduced in the patch. They still build on their own and sometimes in poor locations. However, now multiple families live in the same building. This cuts the number of houses being built drastically. However, they still are not in your control and if you have to destroy one you get none of the resources used back.

The change does help slow the creep of your city, but eventually they will grow beyond the borders of your defense network and be vulnerable to wolves and the like so not a perfect solution but a step in the right direction.

-The tech tree (slight balance changes in patch but issues listed are the same).

Oh boy. First off, it has no legacy feature. What do I mean by legacy feature? When you upgrade something, say the houses that your nuggets build without your input, that new building is the ONLY thing you can build. There are no more stone huts that require sticks and stones. Now there is only medieval home that requires bricks and planks.

This can instantly cripple an economy if suddenly you need a tonne of resources your nuggets aren't supplying. This can lead to a cascade effect where you need more bricks, but you can't get more bricks because you need cement to build brick factories. But you can't get cement because it requires bricks and oil to make and all your bricks are going into houses that you can't do anything about.

You can't build a basic stonework the moment you research the better one. This idea effects all buildings. The moment you research the better one, you can no longer make the basic one. Another example is the engineer hut. You need these to repair buildings. The first upgrade requires educated nuggets to work. And the tech is right after you unlock schools. So there is a good lag time between getting the new building and actually having anyone to work in them.

Secondly, the thing is static. It is the same tree with the same research times every game. There are only two or three decision techs but honestly they don't effect much outside of power generation. Kills replayability. After first go, you've seen everything.

Third, it doesn't gel. Admittedly, this is a nitpick but it always bugs me. Researching everything in order (no cherry picking) leads to a missmosh of stone buildings next to modern day skyscrapers. There isn't a civilization tech level, but a building tech level. So some buildings stay stone-age rocks leaning against one another for most of the tech tree while other buildings progress leaps and bounds. It might not bother some people, but for me seeing a business that is four big rocks resting against one another next to my oil pump and windmill takes me out of the experience.

-The environment.

This issue has been changed in the patch quite a bit. This game has a very obvious "don't wreck the planet" subtext but it is less brutal. Before it would punish you as soon as you built any industrial production. Now it gives you the first tier for free. This is a good balance as it lets you get a feel for things before smacking upside the head. However, while not initially punishing like before it still lacks options besides build more parks later on. For example, I talked about the resource issues when you research new building types. The obvious solution is to build more production buildings. More brick makers to meet the demand for example.

The problem is each advanced factory has a negative effect on the environment. You can solve this with parks, but they are hard to earn and add more material cost on an already burdened supply chain. And if you don't nuggets get sick.

These sick nuggets will ruin production chains leading to food issues, buildings not being repaired, and overwhelm an unprepared medical system. And the the only fix at the time is to build parks that you mainly only get through events ... a mater I'll get to in a little bit. These parks are expensive and after the patch provide more oxygen than before, but you'll still need a considerable amount of them to keep people from getting sick as you industralize.

-The 'quests.'

Nothing changed here, these are a joke. Every now and then your nuggets will send you a letter asking you to do something. Some are as brain-dead as name a nugget while others are more involved (or flat out annoying). Do the quest right and you get a few followers and sometimes a park. Meaning these quests are not optional and failing one can cripple your civilization. But the worst offence is after a half dozen or so ... they just .... stop. You'll have several at the start. An hour of nothing. One more randomly show up. Then hour after hour of nothing. It is like they forgot the system even exists. Which is a problem because:

-Faith and followers.

At the start you feel like a god. You are healing the sick, hooking up nuggets, flinging wolves into space, dropping rain on empty water tanks in winter, and doing other godly things. Your nuggets love you and it is easy to get them all to be followers. After a while, your follower percent will drop from most, to half, to somewhere between a quarter and a third.

At first you worry and start dumping powers on the people to boost your faith. But then it starts to dawn on you - It doesn't matter. You can go afk for an hour, or religiously tend to your nuggets and it has Zero effect on them. If you do evil things you make a meter go down where you get less passive faith but more from sacrifice (note: you have to do the sacrifice, no evil cult culling other towns or anything like that). That's it. You nuggets don't become evil or fearful, they act exactly the same. You can be a loving god that tends to all their boo-boos and give them happy music and protective domes from all threats. Mechanically, they act the same as if you walked away.

This really hits you about the same time the quests stop showing up. Not long after the last letter is sent you start to lose followers and you realize your actions are mostly pointless.

Your nuggets will grow without your input.
Your actions don't change anything for them.
Your building plans are ignored and sometimes outright ruined.
Your research is a linear with little choice in it.
And eventually you unlock governors who automatically build everything besides houses so they don't even need that from you.

And none of those issues changed in this patch. It's a good step in the right direction but not a cure all. And this is the real reason I still can't get into this game. When they do finally add space and other planets, will I need to play? Will the minister of space just explore for me after I finish a 15 minute tech? Will it matter if I am an evil god or a nice god as the nuggets explode across the worlds, auto building what they need? And what is the point of being god in a god game where you research yourself out of a job, and out of a function?