Recent reviews by Zhikaka

1. The AI computer player won't attack. It just sits there. It can spend endless hours just idling away sitting there.

2. The MG42 gun will see and kill everything, even shooting up from the ground level into a 4 story stone building, it will kill and shoot people from well inside the house, who are hiding.

3. Sneaking or hiding is not possible in this game. The AI sees just about everything. And if there is a tank on Defend somewhere, it will instantly see and instantly shoot, wherever you approach from.

4. Your guys on Defend will not always shoot so you need to babysit them to shoot to be effective, as otherwise they won't be effective.

5. The bazooka units will hit nothing, even at 20 meters, firing from peace, they will miss by 15 meters somehow. I've hardly ever seen them hit anything, even if I sneak them really close and they have a peaceful first shot.

6. Talking of sneaking, every movement in this game is super slow. It takes too long to sneak, and the maps are huge. No matter the battalions and divisions had thousands and hundreds of men, here a huge city will have 40 guys sneaking about, but even if they sneak, they are instantly seen and insta killed by the MG42 unit that hits everywhere into buildings.

7. most of all, the frustrating waiting (in vain) for the AI to attack anything (it wont), and the combination of awkward settings:
A) you won't be able to choose to retreat.
B) the AI will not be able to choose to retreat
C) there is a setting for partial autoretreat for low force morale, but this means that the AI will lose 2 victory locations even if there is just one ersatz rifle troop left. One map it can force morale retreat 3 times, losing those 2 VLs per time, thus delaying your advance for 3 turns with 1 rifle halfteam with no morale.
D) without the automatic low forcemorale retreat there will be no retreat, and if you have that halfteam, you won't be able to surrender or retreat, and as the AI won't advance, then you will have to wait for the battle timer to force a "no retreat cease fire" where the attacker won't advance. Thus the AI won't be able to advance.


So all in all the AI won't attack or advance, and it or you will either have to annihilate everything to the last man, or the wait for the battle timer to force a cease fire, or for the "low force morale" setting to force one side to lose 2 VLs (out of 10-15 per map), thus making it a 4 turn thing to take over a map.


Like this the game is pretty much unplayable.

As of now the game is not even recognizing any input from the keyboard, or even the mouse in-game (only menus).

Edit: as of 11 March it started working.. yet to play it!

It is not bad, but it is not very polished which cuts playability.

-Recycling takes way too long, not to mention the parts to build a recycler
-the characters move very fast and need constant babysitting even when "automated"
-automated characters won't study or hit bags or repair things without babysitting
-automated characters wait til their bars are red before they act on them, making them "never ready" for excursions, without babysitting
-things need constant repair, so the game play is rather tedious click festival babysitting the characters to repair things, you will probably place 20 repair orders per gameplay minute. None of it is automated.
-the door buzzer keeps buzzing, even if you are answering the radio or babysitting excursions
-the inventory is very disorganized and clunky and the list is long and the scroll takes a long time
-equipping excursions from the long inventory list is slow and tiresome
-excursions can only equip 2 blue items
-some dialogues have artificial pauses
-dialogue options are on different sides of screen, not very fast to get over with, especially when the text might come with artificial delays.

This game needs a lot more work, but instead they made the sequel "2", which has bad reviews so I might not buy that.

TL;DR: too much radio spam and babysitting, inventory too disorganized and slow, everything needs constant repairs, study and practice is not automated.

some say it is like Dawn of Man, but alas Not! Here you control the guys directly like Age of Empires. All things have white borders when selected or moused over. Whether moused over or selected, they look identical. Breaks immersion. Not possible to turn white borders off. Also the units have colors, like teal, and there are glowing circles under them, or some shapes etc, glowing with player color. Looks horrible, cannot be turned off.

The manning of the siege machine is like how it should have been in Age of Empires, but not what I was looking for from a Viking game. Also the siege machines had like 3 centimeter range. It was completely off putting to play the tutorial.

The tutorial viking ships were bugged, it took like 5 minutes for them to fight it out, even then the enemy ship probably died of collision damage, as it was swimming "sideways" towards my ship and jamming it against the rocks, somehow it was the enemy that sunk though.

The woods are full of "caches" but even if you micromanage your scouts to loot them, they wont disappear, but if you hover a mouse, the message will come (at a half second delay, always, cannot be sped up from options) that it is looted already.

The zooms and the map movement with ASDW keys is slow, and it has an acceleration, it starts slowly and then accelerates a little. No options to remove the acceleration or to make it quick enough. Off putting.

I refunded this after 44 minutes. What I was hoping for was a better Dawn of Man where you dont control any of the people, but set goals for them. This was like Age of Empires or some tacky mobile game where you "upgrade" your huts. The military units were not the same as the magical "workers" that come from nothing to clearcut those woods. I think the makers of this game lacked vision and made it into what they wanted Age of Empires to be.

Not for me, perhaps of you like Age of Empires and "no range ("viking") siege machines", and if you like to "upgrade" things, this might be for you. But not for me.

too simple, also quests are like "get 21 chairs (18/21)" after you just bought chairs, etc. It's rather dumb and grindy. I think it is okay for kids 5-7 years old maybe.

Not sure you need to move at all to play. Or to press any buttons. This game plays itself, the guy shooting all kinds of things out. Then you see the gold chests and when they count gold it is somehow unskippable, like a cutscene that pauses the game. I can't really recommend it as a game.

Time moves so fast, the controls are tacky. For example you cannot suddenly stop the character (for example with space bar?) while scavenging. So when he encounters a tacky enemy that you spend half day hiding from (apparently it takes most of the day just to move a character from the safe zone to the hen house to collect an egg), he cannot instantly stop making noise, but the map keeps moving, making it more difficult to aim to click at a nearby bush to hide. There is no pause on either day or night. The characters move so slowly compared to how much of the day/night cycle bar progresses. So without pause, most of the gameplay is premeditating "where to start walking towards", planning it carefully with maps and whatnot, as most of the day could be spent just moving towards a crafting area. Rest of the game is watching the characters slowly craft things. Looking at the craft progression bar will keep you at your toes, because as soon as it finishes you need to start making most of the day to start slowly walking towards your next destination. Speeding up the game wont help and then the day/night cycle progression bar will run and the day will end super quickly.

So for one character the day can look like this (if babysitted properly, if you know what he should do and where things are, and if you immediately start moving and don't let him idle): you look if he needs anything, although he can begin to need things in the middle of the day too, he moves towards where he can drink water, that's 5-10% of the day there, he drinks water, then he moves towards firewood making place, makes firewood awkwardly 1 by 1, that takes 20-40% of the day, then he moves towards cooking place, slowly crafts cookables, unless you need to move back to make more firewood or to get more food. Then the day is probably finished! You can swipe the sweat for now, but alas you had time for nothing else!

This game is not a good game, seems to be like an Early Access, but apparently it is a full release. I do not recommend buying it. Unless of course you want to look at characters moving to destinations, and watching craft bar progressions or trying to click bushes to hide in.

Oh yea, despite the characters handling like an RTS, the map keeps moving around you, the rotation keys seem inverted, and the is no drag box selection, but you actually have to aim, click and hit to select a character, but if you miss, your preselected character will move from wherever he is to where you just misclicked!

Also if you character is doing crafting, and you need to collect the 2 water droplets (to gain more water), then he wont stop the craft even if you click the water thing, but you must first make him move to ground, then click the water thing, then same going back, but you lose the day by that walk alone, moving from the craft to the collector to the water thing. No time to walk to collect the egg! (let alone craft chicken fodder from chicken eggs). In my opinion just skip it, it's not worth the trouble of trying it.

If you are wondering if it is a good game, I think it is definitely not a good game. I did like TWOM but even that could have been much better. Seems this game caught what was bad in it. F.e. the day time crafting could have all been instant to the player, without hurry or babysitting a doll house, but instead progressed the day bar for an amount. But instead here we go, babysitting characters again. How lame.

disappointing click chore, political power drain, babysitting Ethiopian war. Controlling is a lot worse than Spanish Civil War. Constantly have to babysit "missions", which force you to play a certain way. Long lists of things you have to click, behind many menus. It really took Italy from being one of the most fun ones to play, into the most bothersome and annoying bore there is.

Fun stuff, but map scroll is not good. I wish the mods had campaigns.

Looked nice, good music, but turned out to be one of those nihilistic reddit games, where you need to study the wikis and load saves just to barely break even at the easiest setting. Google answers to questions like "how do I use the bandage?" that says "heal in combat", to find out that you cannot heal in combat, but somehow it says the opposite. Items are "worth X" but you only get 15-20% of their "worth" at maximum, when sold, so how are they "worth" that? Should say they are "worth" the 15% of the "worth".

Play the easiest setting, you will be stuck traveling with caravans, looking at the caravan animation goes for 3 game days, so that you keep going from one end of the map to the other while you watch your food spoil. (unless you want to be nihilistic and start calculus on how much to sell at 90% loss).

When you negotiate contracts, the seller goes "f off" and then you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no contracts. Or if you get the contract, it's not gonna be obvious what it is, no headlines, but you need to read a whole page of text to deduce it out. It's probably going to be "scout arbitrary location X" in the middle of the mountains, nowhere near the area mentioned, where your troop will spend more food and wages than what it gains from the contract.

Good idea, but not made playable, or enjoyable without "reddit wikis" and their obnoxious people who all "know better than the last person who posted". But I recommend sticking to Mount&Blade instead, unless you want to play this and safe-scum after safe-scum, trying take price notes on arbitrary generated maps, being locked to a caravan, watching the caravan go from one end of map to the other (by the way the other end of map has quests that will kill your troops, or fortresses that refuse to give you quests). No freedom in this one, boys.

Also you have to buy your characters blind, and whatever town modifiers there are, their modifiers aren't shown, but as always there is a text description.

The longer the game goes, also the enemies go harder and harder. Finally got armor? Well no low level enemies spawn, you will be fighting a constant uphill battle, where one stupid snake kills with one or two hits the guy you've been trying to level up for a dozen hours. Apparently the enemies are better at leveling up!

Wanna fight stupid snakes and hyenas that insta kill your fully armed party, even if they are locked on defensive shield wall? Then play this silly game. If one of your guys dies, it won't show which it was until the end of battle, and even then it shows only the name, not the stats. The UI is rather bad, no info is shown anywhere. All in all this game seems more like an unrefined mobile game than a PC title.

Even if you save scum and win all fights, your troops still wont progress much. They still hit nothing with crossbow or javelin, they get one shotted by enemies. It is a ridiculous game.