My feedback after finishing Chapter 4

[Fuko]

I just finished Chapter 4 and here is my feedback. You have an amazing game in certain aspects, such as fantastic graphics, sound, story, voice acting, and characters. But the gameplay and quality of life is not adequately tested or iterated enough upon. I'll list some problems below:

1. Elder spamming "Brother/Sister is under attack!" without any context on who or where it is occurring is just beyond frustrating:
a) No visual indicator (ping) on the minimap on the location of the unit under attack.
b) No instantly being able to focus on the location of the last event message like RTS games by pressing a key.
c) The elder doesn't need to notify when the camera is literally on the group under attack. It makes it impossible to tell if a gatherer elsewhere is dying or if he's just spamming about the battle I'm literally watching.

2. Tiny, unchallenging groups of enemies scattered absolutely everywhere, with small inconsequential loot also scattered absolutely everywhere, makes it a mind numbing chore to explore the map.
Less is more. Something like 8-12 major enemy encampments, with significant treasures/strategic resources/vendors/narrative events after winning each encampment fight, is far more fun than a map filled with 50 tiny trash fights with equally tiny treasure/resources scattered everywhere.
You want a certain amount of extremely dangerous enemy types that requires the unique strengths of certain fighter types/faith spells to take down, rather than just mobbing it with peasants.

3. Bailey, Meadary, having too few slots, and requiring tedious micro otherwise they sit there forever even with full health/sanity, yet it is INCREDIBLY annoying to see who is maxed due to the constant automatic switching between health/sanity bar with the name bar!!! Just have the name above the health bar without the constant switching!!! Just have them automatically leave when they're full!

4. ARPGs almost all have some form of auto-loot for a reason. Not only do you need to micro through 50 trash fights, but you need to tediously click tiny and hard to see treasure boxes/corpses/red herbs/item bags that are also everywhere? It is tedious and mind numbing.

5. Magic items you find should open a screen that allows you to assign the item to any unit on the entire map. My explorers picking up some +10% Mining item, and I'm supposed to run back to town, drop the item, and get a miner to come get it, and then wait until he does so I can tell him to return to work afterwards? It is far too much micro and tediousness again for a negligible gain.

6. Elder spamming "You don't have enough gold for military units" every 5 seconds when gold cost exceeds income from traders......

7. Too little gold income for how much gold military units use. I thought the game would drastically improve after unlocking trading post, and yet the gold income to unit cost is so off that you can't even afford 1 military unit per trader, and is the trader shop ever supposed to refresh? Where is the timer? In addition, finding the trader NPC should be extremely consequential, but it turns out nothing he sells is as valuable as keeping the gold for my military units.

8. Why is fighting so peasant focused/simplistic anyways? It would be beyond cool if you had a small party with a proper fantasy loadout of tank, healer, archer/mage, and explorer. With abilities and faith abilities that are unique to each class and essential to beat certain enemy types. But instead I'm using peasants to fight for 75% of the game, and complexity at least at chapter 4 only goes as high as adding 1-2 axemen/archer? The fights thus have no complexity other than watching them auto attack, and the faith spells feel straightforward and underwhelming without any particular enemy type that requires it.

9. When you finally feel like you're gaining some ground, the Blood Moon comes and respawns a bunch of the trash on the map.... ANOTHER tedious trash clear? It should trigger something like a giant attack that you need to defend from, not the insane tedium of reclearing random trash AGAIN.

10. No ability to reorder the portrait bar makes organizing who is food/cutter/miner/fighter/explorer completely untenable. Ordering units by their role, or having a naming system to keep track is fundamental to character focused games, and yet neither are available during a mission.

11. This game is set up perfectly for exploration. What dark secrets hide in the woods? What pagan/shamanist mysteries awaits? What profane artifact or spell? What terrifying narrative event? I was expecting to find hidden secrets that reward exploration like other exploration focused games, But there seems to be barely anything out there besides more trash mobs and common loot. Things like finding the witch and hermit should be a big jump in your power progression. ie: opens up new spells/tech/fighter types/options, but instead they're just affliction healers.

12. Needs map filters only for important strategic things like clay/iron/gold deposits, and where the hermit/witch/roaming trader is. I can't tell where anything is when the resource filter shows every common material on the map, and the point of interest filter shows every little minor object.

You seem 90% there. Excellent visuals, sound, story, voice, setting. But it seems all that was polished and prioritized before getting the core gameplay in place. The gameplay needs the same work you put into the rest of the game. It's too bad because the setting really is fantastic. I hope you'll be able to make a comeback in future patches and DLC.

[Nou]

I agree with this list. Devs please read this, it would improve your game a lot.

[Belli]

+ 1. Really agree ! Especially micro fights and the peon not going back to his duty when moral/health is full.

[Funkyplasma]

The elder announcements really start to annoy the poison one is the worst because early chapters I stood on a poison trap and you can’t build healers hut to heal it so for 2 maps it’s all I heard NONE STOP :( your person is about to die they are in danger as I can’t cure it wow it gets annoying I was hopefully when I found healing spring and thought yes come on heal me .. sadly no…
I just fed the child to the tree thing so everything is not opened up yet but I have enjoyed it .. also thank you for the blood moon info I didn’t realise that was the respawn trigger as like you this is a big problem for my gatherers :( I’m ok with it if the blood moon reset gatherer nodes like ponds as I did run out of resource nodes inc mushrooms

+1 for please make green herb cure poison and not just the healers hut thing its not like there are loads of them i think i only found 1 after checking half the map :(

[Sunswords]

+1

[Funkyplasma]

5. Magic items you find should open a screen that allows you to assign the item to any unit on the entire map. My explorers picking up some +10% Mining item, and I'm supposed to run back to town, drop the item, and get a miner to come get it, and then wait until he does so I can tell him to return to work afterwards? It is far too much micro and tediousness again for a negligible gain.

so after testing it turns out you can but you still have to be standing next to them goto inventory click the little dots to the right of the item and it will give you an option to transfer that item to another person but this will then queue up a command for the gord giving the item to then walk upto that gord you want to transfer too and give them the item

[War Machine]

Excellent list. I think number 2 is actually the most important point. Constantly clearing small trash mobs feels too easy and boring. We need elite mobs on the map who require more strategy and better group composition to take down. Rather than "Let me send all my misc peasants to auto attack easy mob number 57"

[Quinoa]

+1 Agree to the list. I played during the Demo and got thrilled about the game, but not so much now. Find it more annoying which is sad, I had to stop playing it after 2 days.

[Tonyx]

+1. Extremely well thought list. Hopefully the devs can do something about it.

[Xan84]

Originally posted by FuuChan:

I just finished Chapter 4 and here is my feedback. You have an amazing game in certain aspects, such as fantastic graphics, sound, story, voice acting, and characters. But the gameplay and quality of life is not adequately tested or iterated enough upon. I'll list some problems below:

1. Elder spamming "Brother/Sister is under attack!" without any context on who or where it is occurring is just beyond frustrating:
a) No visual indicator (ping) on the minimap on the location of the unit under attack.
b) No instantly being able to focus on the location of the last event message like RTS games by pressing a key.
c) The elder doesn't need to notify when the camera is literally on the group under attack. It makes it impossible to tell if a gatherer elsewhere is dying or if he's just spamming about the battle I'm literally watching.

2. Tiny, unchallenging groups of enemies scattered absolutely everywhere, with small inconsequential loot also scattered absolutely everywhere, makes it a mind numbing chore to explore the map.
Less is more. Something like 8-12 major enemy encampments, with significant treasures/strategic resources/vendors/narrative events after winning each encampment fight, is far more fun than a map filled with 50 tiny trash fights with equally tiny treasure/resources scattered everywhere.
You want a certain amount of extremely dangerous enemy types that requires the unique strengths of certain fighter types/faith spells to take down, rather than just mobbing it with peasants.

3. Bailey, Meadary, having too few slots, and requiring tedious micro otherwise they sit there forever even with full health/sanity, yet it is INCREDIBLY annoying to see who is maxed due to the constant automatic switching between health/sanity bar with the name bar!!! Just have the name above the health bar without the constant switching!!! Just have them automatically leave when they're full!

4. ARPGs almost all have some form of auto-loot for a reason. Not only do you need to micro through 50 trash fights, but you need to tediously click tiny and hard to see treasure boxes/corpses/red herbs that are also everywhere? It is tedious and mind numbing.

5. Magic items you find should open a screen that allows you to assign the item to any unit on the entire map. My explorers picking up some +10% Mining item, and I'm supposed to run back to town, drop the item, and get a miner to come get it, and then wait until he does so I can tell him to return to work afterwards? It is far too much micro and tediousness again for a negligible gain.

6. Elder spamming "You don't have enough gold for military units" every 5 seconds when gold cost exceeds income from traders......

7. Too little gold income for how much gold military units use. I thought the game would drastically improve after unlocking trading post, and yet the gold income to unit cost is so off that you can't even afford 1 military unit per trader, and is the trader shop ever supposed to refresh? Where is the timer? Finding the trader NPC should be extremely consequential, but it turns out nothing he sells is as valuable as keeping the gold for my military units.

8. Why is fighting so peasant focused/simplistic anyways? It would be beyond cool if you had a small party with a proper fantasy loadout of tank, healer, archer/mage, and explorer. With abilities and faith abilities that are unique to each class and essential to beat certain enemy types. But instead I'm using peasants to fight for 75% of the game, and complexity at least at chapter 4 only goes as high as adding 1-2 axemen/archer? The fights thus have no complexity other than watching them auto attack, and the faith spells feel straightforward and underwhelming without any particular enemy type that requires it.

9. When you finally feel like you're gaining some ground, the Blood Moon comes and respawns a bunch of the trash on the map.... ANOTHER tedious trash clear? It should trigger something like a giant attack that you need to defend from, not the insane tedium of reclearing random trash AGAIN.

10. No ability to reorder the portrait bar makes organizing who is food/cutter/miner/fighter/explorer completely untenable. Ordering units by their role, or having a naming system to keep track is fundamental to character focused games, and yet neither are available during a mission.

11. This game is set up perfectly for exploration. What dark secrets hide in the woods? What pagan/shamanist mysteries awaits? What profane artifact or spell? What terrifying narrative event? I was expecting to find hidden secrets that reward exploration like other exploration focused games, But there seems to be barely anything out there besides more trash mobs and common loot. Things like finding the witch and hermit should be a big jump in your power progression. ie: opens up new spells/tech/fighter types/options, but instead they're just affliction healers.

You seem 90% there. Excellent visuals, sound, story, voice, setting. But it seems all that was polished and prioritized before getting the core gameplay in place. The gameplay needs the same work you put into the rest of the game. It's too bad because the setting really is fantastic. I hope you'll be able to make a comeback in future patches and DLC.

1 if you click on the message, if focuses you to the event. The event notification (top left, also states who is happening to). This only becomes frustrating when its something you can't fix for different reasons,

[Totoro]

+1 Game activities should give fun, not being annoying

[Sharkon]

same thing I said after playing this one @release day. great looks, cool setting and interesting story but gameplay isn't fun and the loop is boring. "The Sims" meets "Rimworld" but both games are way better than the combined version which is "Gord". haven't played the "Northguard" game the devs mentioned as inspiration but I bet it works better and is fun to play.

[YoYo]

Originally posted by FuuChan:

I just finished Chapter 4 ...

Well described issues and problems, honestly, I bought the game on the first day, I like the climate and the idea very much . I can see the graphics are also nice, but the opinions about it discourage me and I decided to wait a bit. I hope the game will get a patch soon to change the mechanics a bit.

[zombieVegas UA * YouTube]

Great points, really hope developers will read it and make respective changes. I'm ok with micromanagement but it seems that game lacks several QoL features to be at least comfortably playable (points 1,3,8 as a minimum)

[StaticWolf]

Are the colonists dumb in this game? lol, here man take my children tree

[seligiline]

+100

All my thoughts exactly and I am playing late October... I hear there have been a number of iterations to improving this game lately but fundamentally these are still all a massive problem.

For example, why can I not simply right click an item 'send to person' like ESPECIALLY between missions.

I'm playing on hardcore mode and haven't even had a person downed on my first play through (except for the wolves at the end of act 1 which taught me a lesson)... now about to start Act 4 and not really sure I have it in me to continue.

Why have the trash people to choose from between Acts.. I kind of find myself choosing simply based on the presence or lack of items on certain individuals... but it kinda kills the sense of progression and I don't see the point, this mechanic just sucks. Remove it and give me the pleasure of caring about the minions which I am painstakingly levelling up

This game is so close to being awesome, yet unfortunately falls short at the moment. All I can do is hope that the devs continue to respond to community input.

Might try ditching the campaign and see if that is the problem