Recent reviews by thewanderingoutsider

I love the art style and the general premise of this game, but after a while the grind for items and stuff gets pretty stale. I'm just not motivated to upgraded all of my tools and buy all of the farm buildings and animals. The main quests are still quite buggy and honestly a bit mid, the morality system is pretty shallow. You can get through the game without building relationships with any of the characters, there doesn't seem to be any real consequences from what I've seen (though I haven't tried being full evil in my recent playthroughs). I still find it weird that you basically left your whole family behind from the Prologue, because if I were in the same situation I'd be stressing about how to find them and get them to safety haha. Maybe going back to the continent will be added in another update/expansion?

In the game's current state, it's still a bit fun for a few hours...but it definitely needs more content. Mirthwood feels really small...and not in the Stardew Valley kind of way.

I had been somewhat dreading my own experience with this game because I had seen the advertisements and early reviews claiming how different Frostpunk 2 is to the first game. And while this is true, the real question is if these changes are for the better? I'd say its pretty subjective.

In terms of tone, Frostpunk 2 is very different from its predecessor. In the first game, there was this constant eldritch horror of being at the mercy of the elements, with several hundred survivors huddled around a generator, building to distract themselves from the reality of 90% of humanity being wiped out by an apocalyptic natural disaster. In the sequel, this tone has been replaced with a dreadful sense of never ending tension and feeling constantly short-handed by the various factions and preventing them (and yourself, Steward) from going to extremes too quickly. And this is understandable because the scope of the game is bigger and you have multiple settlements and colonies to manage on top of your main city. If Frostpunk 1 was about several hundred survivors trying to build a post-apocalyptic community, Frostpunk 2 is about managing several communities to build the foundation of a post-apocalyptic nation.

The social management aspect of Frostpunk 2 is where most of the action in the game lies, which probably explains why the economic systems of this game remain relatively simple (and time management honestly matters less compared to the first game). It is the constant tension between factions that will drain your heatstamps and drain your resources more than any natural disaster in Frostpunk 2. And this is probably what makes the learning curve of Frostpunk 2 harder than its predecessor because even at the lowest difficulty, things can fall apart very quickly unless you want to turn into a dictator or just favour one faction from the get go.

I really want to like this game, I do appreciate the thought and care put into building on the foundations of the first game to create something new. I enjoy games that implement an interesting social management system on top of the economic/building management. But the reality is the social management in this game has been nothing but pure stress for me, especially since I'm unfortunately one of the kinds of players who just wants everyone to get along, when (like reality) that simply won't happen for long.

Despite my issues, Frostpunk 2 has a lot more to offer than the first game in terms of mechanics so it gets a thumbs up from me (even though it only has one campaign at the moment). The real deal breaker, though, is that this game crashes A LOT, even when you got a relatively good PC like me so be warned.

I'm keeping in mind that this is early access, and while I had fun and enjoy the immense complexity of this game, there is still a lot of stuff that is rough around the edges.

The biggest killer of the fun is that there is isn't enough "middle management" systems besides the chancellery, and even then there should me more stuff to manage knowledge transfer, interactions with other lords etc. It makes the gameplay very tedious and you'll probably lose interest before you get to any of the endgame content, you will run out of steam to ally/conquer everything...or at least I did. The title limit for your city is also a real bummer, I was looking forward to creating a large inter-generational dynasty but for the time being that's not how it is going to be unfortunately. I really do think that even if there are no titles left for your children to inherit, there should be some system that allows them to remain in the city, as well as to assign them titles once you vassalize different regions. I also find it really dumb that there are certain buildings that can't be upgraded, particularly the lord houses and temples to expand living space. Families should be living together honestly.

Those are just my pet peeves, so I hope the developer takes this stuff on board. They're onto something here for sure.

[Edit: 31/07/2024]: Patch 12 introduced the lesser lord system.

As the old saying goes, this DLC is literally separating the wheat from the chaff.

As someone who has played the majority of From Software's titles, the DLC has not just met my expectations of expansions in terms of content variety, quality and difficulty but exceeded them! This DLC is really designed to push every aspect of the existing game mechanics to the max...you will use spirit summons, you will try weapons, spells, and ashes of war you likely haven't used up until now, and it makes for a far engaging experience. The map is huge and each region is not just distinct but beautifully designed and every major boss feels like you're fighting in a movie! It's so good that even though I'm dying to some bosses constantly, I can't wait to get back and fight them because the movesets are awesome to look at...except for Commander Gaius ♥♥♥♥ that guy and his big ass pig. But anyway, this is why in terms of price value, this DLC is practically a sequel, and there are many AAA developers out there that would charge more for far less.

I feel like the mixed trend is just an inevitable reality as Elden Ring was the first From Software title that captured some of the mainstream audience, and it's no longer just a dedicated, niche group that's playing it.

But to be fair, the only major drawbacks in my experience is the multiplayer and load time. I hope for future games, From Software does something to make it so multiplayer can be done with every part of the game, not just the dungeon areas. But at the same time, the only reason why load time and stuttering is an issue is because so many people are playing right now, it's probably overloading From Software's servers.

Nonetheless, in conclusion, to all of those complaining...it's literally a skill issue.

As someone who always plays with the Lovecraft mods, I'm really excited to see horror events and gameplay mechanics actually introduced into the base game. The other positive is that the devs always introduce a free update that adds minor, quality of life changes to the base-gameplay independent of official DLC content. My personal favourite is how pawns can still move even if both their legs are gone instead of being completely incapacitated!

I feel though that with every new DLC, there's a growing number of naysayers and detractors that kind of need to be addressed. It's important to remember that Rimworld has one of the most dedicated and active fanbases out there, and the community is really lucky that we have devs that don't just tolerate mods but actually work with mod developers to some degree (you need not look further than the Vanilla Expanded mods). But you only need look at SteamCharts to know that the number of cocurrent players is relatively small compared to a lot of other successful titles. So, its my personal theory that the current cost of the DLCs helps ensure that the devs are not developing comprehensive updates for this game first released in 2018 at a loss. I think some players are just not simply aware of the ongoing costs to just even keep a game available for purchase sometimes.

I know inflation sucks and paying the price of a small indie game for a DLC is maybe just too much for some people. Idk how people play, but Rimworld is one of the most comprehensive colony sims out there with an unrivalled end-game experience. And every DLC for this game adds more tools to the sandbox that always keeps any playthrough interesting. You only need look at the Ubisofts, EAs and Paradox Interactives with how they pump out lacklustre DLCs which have only the tiniest fraction of the new content that Anomaly has.

It was promising...for a while. Unfortunately it seems abandoned, the last major update was way back in 2022 and there are performance and crash issues that still persist in the game's current state. It's a shame for sure.

I remember when I first got this game during its early access and I loved the whole concept, even if it was rough around the edges, I just had to stop playing it because my laptop could barely run it. Once I got a better PC, I decided to fire it up again and I was disappointed to see a lot of changes that made the starting and subsequent experience more tedious and overly-complicated than I remembered.

Also a lot of the other reviews claim that this game has been abandoned and I guess I'll just take their word for it. You'll regret buying this.

It reminds me a lot of the Kingdom series but this side-scrolling pixel base builder still has a few features and game mechanics that make it feel like a distinct experience. I quite like how the research system works as well as the world map. Unfortunately, I would still consider the Kingdom games to be the more objectively superior experience, especially in terms of customising the difficulty of your experience. The so called easy mode does not disable the "campaign" and its bosses for example and even if the enemies are objectively weaker you still find yourself running out of resources one way or another (maybe that's part of the difficulty balance but it just got annoying for someone trying to see the full breadth of the different mechanics at play).

The only thing that's stopping me from giving a full on negative review is that I still had a good time overall and I like the look and feel of the game far more than the Kingdom games. I just hope the developers keep to their word and follow their road map and not abandon this game.

I accidentally bought the Return Sceptre for 2 million gold.

I love the bonedogs. I literally spend days watching my little pupper bounce after my squad.