Considering purchasing, with a few questions

[Hoppled]

For a long time I've had my eye on this game. I've been meaning to buy a top-down 2D graphics game, its nice on the eyes.

Battle Brothers is another game like that I've been looking at, however, it is extremely difficult and I feel like I'd never get good at that xcom style of game (played the demo).

Also, Hearts of Iron IV is another game that's top down strategy... however that's the the type of strategy game where I'm like "Okay, I'm doing stuff but I have no idea if its right... I'm just 'doing stuff'"

I am mostly leaning towards this game and its DLCs. Pretty expensive, but I assume worth it? I imagine 500+ hours of content?

Either way, let me know what you think about my tastes mentioned above. I am not too picky of a gamer, however, battle brothers I am not smart enough to play.

[Astasia]

This is not really a combat or strategy game, it's a colony sim where combat keeps you on your toes but is a small portion of the overall content and is pretty simplified. As far as content available, I'm probably over 2000 hours including time played before the Steam release, much of that for me is because of mods though. Some people play thousands of hours without mods, but mods provide near limitless content for this game.

[MadArtillery]

While I haven't put it down since I bought it 200 hours or so ago I'm not quite sure you are aware of what you are getting into given the game comparisons. Rimworld is a colony builder not a strategy game. You will definitely be building defences, raiding bases, and both firing and defending from artillery but combat is definitely not what a majority of game time will be. You'll be building both a sustainable colony and defences. You might go quite some time between combat encounters at times and be fighting off toxic fallout and food shortages then worrying about the next attack.

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

While I haven't put it down since I bought it 300 hours or so ago I'm not quite sure you are aware of what you are getting into given the game comparisons. Rimworld is a colony builder not a strategy game. You will definitely be building defences, raiding bases, and both firing and defending from artillery but combat is definitely not what a majority of game time will be. You'll be building both a sustainable colony and defences. You might go quite some time between combat encounters at times and be fighting off toxic fallout and food shortages then worrying about the next attack.

Oh, yeah I get that. I understand that its a colony sim where you have settlers which have their own traits/personalities, etc etc. I was just bringing up those other games, as they are others I'm considering - yet, I mention the cons that I immediately found: Battle Brothers seems way, way too difficult from my time playing the demo. Hearts of Iron IV seems just like a "wtf am I doing" kind of game the first 500+ hours.

[jscjml]

Yeah Hearts of Iron is much more complex than this game. At least in my opinion.

Thats not to say Rimworld isnt fun though, its in my top 5 games of all time and I only have 500 hours.

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by jscjml:

Yeah Hearts of Iron is much more complex than this game. At least in my opinion.

Thats not to say Rimworld isnt fun though, its in my top 5 games of all time and I only have 500 hours.

What do the DLCs add and are they worth it?

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Hopland:

What do the DLCs add and are they worth it?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/294100/discussions/0/3199243212175244011/#c3199243212176335461

[jscjml]

I might miss a couple of things, but Royalty adds the Empire faction, and Psycasting abilities with other things. The Empire are a really high tech faction that you can get honorary titles from (like count, duke, knight, etc) for perks, like the ability to call in airstrikes, and access to psycasting abilities.

Ideology adds something like religions to the game. You can tailor your religion to different things, such as liking, or hating the harvesting of organs for example. Those are the main points of the DLCs I think, but they add alot more that you could probably find on the wiki.

I think that they are both worth it, if I could only choose one though, I would probably go with Royalty. The psycasting abilities from that DLC are very strong, and I just like using OP stuff I guess.

edit: I'm missing alot of things. But yeah the wiki has a list of everything if you ever wanted to check.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Hopland:

Originally posted by jscjml:

Yeah Hearts of Iron is much more complex than this game. At least in my opinion.

Thats not to say Rimworld isnt fun though, its in my top 5 games of all time and I only have 500 hours.

What do the DLCs add and are they worth it?

Royalty mostly expands the high tech melee weapon options, a new nonplayer faction, essentally a magic system, and more quests and things like labourer and solder reinforcement drops. I only purchased it recently so most of my experience with it is from streamers and content creators. It seems certainly a nice addition but not gamechanging seems to be the consensus.

Ideology adds a culture system to the game for every faction including your own along with adding social castes, roles, and specialist positions. This means recruiting bandit factions will encourage you to act more like a bandit as they are both better at and enjoy raiding people, taking their stuff, slavery ect. While you may get humble but very skilled ranchers from a tribe on the world who care only about having as many farm animals as possible and want to only eat meat, skilled planters some tree loving hippy tribes who will plant with the best of them and are the best at running the new dryad system allowing you to summon hoards of combat or worker creatures as a force multiplier, Ect ect ect. Specialist medics, advanced researchers, shooting specialists, animal specialist, crafting specialists. You can have them all in one colony by recruiting from specific factions and bending a bit to accomodate their way of life. This dlc changes how the game plays the most so far in my experience.

[JBrown247]

the difficulty can be tweaked to whatever you want it to be.

[Swordmouse]

Virtually everything about Rimworld can be tweaked. It's a great game in its own right, but with the addition of mods, it can basically be any flavor of colony sim you'd like it to be. Want to try being a cult of vampires that hate sunlight and sacrifice people in order to obtain Lovecraftian gifts and power? You can do that. Want to turn Rimworld into LOTR, complete with magic, elves, orcs etc? You can do that. Would you rather face a zombie apocalypse? What about an Alien vs. Predator style game? Fallout? Psycho druggie cannibal Vikings? High-tech saviors determined to bring peace to the planet? Do you like FTL? Because there's a mod that essentially lets you design your own spaceship and cruise the galaxy. Want to run a restaurant? Rimworld has your back. Countless examples, countless combinations.

And THEN you toss in the various biomes, which can make even the same style of colony feel drastically different. Forest vs. desert vs. ice sheet bring so many different types of challenges and considerations that you'd have to play the game to appreciate them all.

And that's not mentioning the fact that every game is different, regardless of how similar you try to make your colonies. Events, enemies, disasters and opportunities will all be different, and over time, shape two copies of the same starter colony into entirely different experiences.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Rimworld is stupidly replayable. If you end up liking Rimworld, you're never really going to be done with this game, you'll just play it obsessively, come back in 3/6/12 months, notice there's even more content, and get lost all over again.

[Dyspeptic Icarus]

Originally posted by Hopland:

For a long time I've had my eye on this game. I've been meaning to buy a top-down 2D graphics game, its nice on the eyes.

Battle Brothers is another game like that I've been looking at, however, it is extremely difficult and I feel like I'd never get good at that xcom style of game (played the demo).

Also, Hearts of Iron IV is another game that's top down strategy... however that's the the type of strategy game where I'm like "Okay, I'm doing stuff but I have no idea if its right... I'm just 'doing stuff'"

I am mostly leaning towards this game and its DLCs. Pretty expensive, but I assume worth it? I imagine 500+ hours of content?

Either way, let me know what you think about my tastes mentioned above. I am not too picky of a gamer, however, battle brothers I am not smart enough to play.

The Graphics are low-key sexy; when compared to HOI4, it's leagues better in graphics.

Rimworld is more akin to Turn-Base Strategy (TBS) game than HOI4, which is a Real Time Strategy. (RTS)

You'll pause a lot more than HOI; mods are incredibly diverse, and I suggest picking up SoS2, and a bunch of QOL mods.

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by joshjosh100:

Originally posted by Hopland:

For a long time I've had my eye on this game. I've been meaning to buy a top-down 2D graphics game, its nice on the eyes.

Battle Brothers is another game like that I've been looking at, however, it is extremely difficult and I feel like I'd never get good at that xcom style of game (played the demo).

Also, Hearts of Iron IV is another game that's top down strategy... however that's the the type of strategy game where I'm like "Okay, I'm doing stuff but I have no idea if its right... I'm just 'doing stuff'"

I am mostly leaning towards this game and its DLCs. Pretty expensive, but I assume worth it? I imagine 500+ hours of content?

Either way, let me know what you think about my tastes mentioned above. I am not too picky of a gamer, however, battle brothers I am not smart enough to play.

The Graphics are low-key sexy; when compared to HOI4, it's leagues better in graphics.

Rimworld is more akin to Turn-Base Strategy (TBS) game than HOI4, which is a Real Time Strategy. (RTS)

You'll pause a lot more than HOI; mods are incredibly diverse, and I suggest picking up SoS2, and a bunch of QOL mods.

Okay, thank you. Would it be worth getting both DLCs? Yeah, I don't think I'd like HoI4.

[Rianith]

The base game is great, and quite a lot to learn, so I'd just get the DLCs when you seek a new challenge?

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by Rianith:

The base game is great, and quite a lot to learn, so I'd just get the DLCs when you seek a new challenge?

If I like the game then I guess I'd get the DLCs too. Question though. Should I play on committment mode? I never like relying on constantly saving my games. But if its recommended to save scum on my first runs I can do that.

Also, if I get the DLCs - do they just activate by themselves? If so, should I just disable them so the game isn't too hard at first?

Thanks

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Hopland:

If I like the game then I guess I'd get the DLCs too. Question though. Should I play on committment mode? I never like relying on constantly saving my games. But if its recommended to save scum on my first runs I can do that.

The games saves for you. If you do not like reloading when you are about to lose in a strategy game and rather go for the lose and do another game, you might wanna go commitment mode. That said, in Rimworld you very often don't just straight up lose. The games wants to let you recover from big loses. In general you could just go on an easy difficulty if you wanna check out what dangers await and scale up from there. The game lets you even change difficulty while playing.
The question you asked will attract different opinions and you have to know yourself if you would rather see consequences and work with them/learn from them or to undo them. If you start your first game, you will likely meet some unexpected things though. You have to know yourself if like the possible consequences of that. "Commitment mode" will give you the "real" Rimworld experience, but with loading it might feel a lot easier at start.

Originally posted by Hopland:

Also, if I get the DLCs - do they just activate by themselves? If so, should I just disable them so the game isn't too hard at first?
Thanks

They are in the mod list and you can just disable them at start. I would not 100% go the way of saying "the make the game straight up harder", but Rimworld will show you enough new stuff to dive into without the DLCs already and from your OP it sounds like you might enjoy the more basic experience at once. The base game is also by far the part that is best explained by ingame tutorial/learning helper stuff. You can just add the DLCs later if you are willing to restart.