Recent reviews by MTR

It's unfortunate I have to make this review, but I'm baffled by the recent update.

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of this fame, it's one of the best sandbox builders/puzzles there is. But the animal update makes absolutely no sense, it almost feels like the developer didn't properly playtest it. It's incredibly annoying to wrangle animals: they behave unpredictably, you're given very few tools to actually do it and the requirements for level completion are ludicrously steep. I just plain don't understand why developers thought they needed to update the system that was perfectly serviceable in the first place.

Anyway, I just hope they either revert it or do something about it. I'm just very disappointed to see one of the best game on steam to go from 10/10 to 8-7/10 experienced soured for no reason at all.

Imagine managing to make remaster a far more buggy experience than original games. I've never previously had game-breaking bugs in ME and now I've encountered multiple in each part I've played.

Regarding updated graphics: the only part that looks visibly better than the original is me1. As a result, me2 looks unexpectedly bad, it retained an era-appropriate deep-fried look with black shadows and grungy textures.

I think it's finally time to change my review to positive cause the continued development of this game has transformed it completely. Previously it was a solid framework for a fun sandbox style medieval city sim, and now it has a proper challenging gameplay balance and mechanics.

It's still not without its fair share of jank, but most of the rough corners have been smoothed and now it's more endearing rather than anything.

The only mechanic I don't fully enjoy is conflicting allegiances (kingdom, labor, clergy). I dont think it adds much and feels very artificial. In the end you just end up building rows rows of armories to get that kingdom allegiance into positive, so it's an easily circumvented annoyance.

Anyway, over the years I kept coming to play more of this game when I get that city building sandbox itch, and for me this is the best indicator of quality.

23/04 UPD: many of these problems were fixed in the first major patch, so I'm changing it to "recommended", because now it's a pretty playable base building game. However, a few minor issues still stand

TLDR: the game has a ton of potential, but it needs an insane amount of game balance polishing and minor mechanics updates.

There's a fine line between challengingly difficult and frustratingly unplayable. Here are a few things that just make this game the latter:

1) Colonists breed like rabbits, forcing you to expand like crazy and there's nothing you can do about it. The more you build, the faster they breed. You can of course try creating gender-specific domes, but it will obviously heavily damage your productivity and basically stop natural population replenishment for good.

2) Plot events are forced on you even if you just don't have resources to spare on them. "Yo here's a rocket fill it with precious resources and make your colony collapse no there's no button preventing your drones from loading cargo on it screw you"

3) Colonists AI is insanely stupid, which makes far expansion nearly impossible. They won't wait for shuttles if there are none available, they'll just run and suffocate to death and you cannot even prevent them from doing it. However, the scarcity of resources on map forces you to expand so there's no real way around this bottleneck in the current state of game.

4) Trying to make colonists choose optimal occupation is a massive pain. Scientists will work in diners for no reason, Engineers will stay at the dome where they got education and will work in retail and service instead of going to the dome with factories. At some point in game basically all you do is micromanage that stuff. Dome specialization is not a panacea.

5) Randomized technology trees create serious difficulties. For example in my last run I just wouldn't get a shuttle hub, which made a distant expansion nearly impossible.

6) overall UI is messy as hell, especially management tabs, they're highly unintuitive and don't provide enough functionality.

The game totally can be made playable with modding, but you can't rely on modders to finish your game. Overall it can still be saved, but I am very sceptical about perspectives so far.