My long Review seeing Steam said it was too long

[Alpha_Omega]

Game bad: Died to Tortoise

Alright now that I’ve done that time for me to leave the honest review. Rimworld is one of my favourite games of all time, but I promised myself I would not review a game like this until I had played at least a thousand hours in it. After, I want to say about four years of playing I've finally reached a thousand hours and then some and believe I can make an honest review of every part of the game.

I have every DLC, over 200 mods, and have played a lot of different types of colonies so I am going to give Pros and Cons for most things I can think of.

TLDR: The game is one of my favourite games of all time, I recommend all the DLC’s though Biotech is the one I’d recommend first. I highly recommend the game and respect Tynan Sylester and Ludeon Studios for all the effort and time they put into this game. Get Biotech, Then Ideology, then Royalty, Then Anomaly, in my opinion.

Base-game:
Pros:
+ An addictive game play loop that you can play anywhere from short bursts to hours at a time
+ Incredible art style that allows the game to look both quite cute whilst keeping its themes.
+ Multiple ways to play; it's called a story generator for a reason, you can play the good guy, the bad guy, you can play it like a creative outlet or a gritty reality of terrifying situations
+ Incredible amount of customisation. Will get into this more when it comes to biotech etc, but the game is very customizable, allowing you to play with different characters, with different skills and fight different creatures. allowing you to make different decisions depending on what you're doing that run.
+ So much mod support. I don't think I have seen a game that you can find a mod for virtually anything like you can with Rimworld, other then maybe Minecraft and Skyrim.
+ The narrator system. Using this as a difficulty system is incredible, making the "Easy" mode mean that raids come at set points, and the "hard" mode is the randomness of anything happening is pretty good! adding in the actual difficulty settings like "strive to survive" and "Blood and dust" is really good. (paraphrasing u/BoyceCecil on reddit for this one)
+ Organ and Body Health. It took me a while to understand how the health system works in the game, looking it up I came across a few posts that really explained to me how it works but, much like the last pro, I'm going to quote u/BoyceCecil again "Each body part has its own health and when a hit land, it will land on a specific body part with a specific probability based on the size of the body part." Boyce gets into more specifics but I enjoy the fact that just that there is uncertainty to the game. You can have a character running at a man with a minigun and tank all the hits because it's only hitting the armour or just hitting torso it is only leaving bruises, whereas the same character who just got shot 12-13 times by a minigun can get one-shot by a guy with a sniper because he managed to hit the head.

Cons:
- The Wealth System. I will say now, a lot of my "Cons" aren't actually to bad of cons, I think the game is pretty well balanced but I think the wealth system for raids needs a little bit of tweaking. Raids will gain more points the more wealthy your colony is, this is a pretty good system however, once you get to high enough levels, usually your colonists will be creating Masterwork - Legendary items pretty often, such as a legendary table or legendary bed, that then adds to your wealth score which makes the raids so much more difficult it gets to the point you're being raided by 13 people with charge rifles and you have 6 dudes with flak armour and assault rifles (Which to be fair, actually do very well). There are mods that overhaul this so that it's based on your combat readiness, guns, etc but I think the wealth of buildings should be lowered by a bit when calculating raid score. Though once you are far enough late game, your colony is strong enough to take on anything so it doesn't really matter.
- Combat System. The Combat System seems to lean heavily into a style of play or build that has been dubbed as "Kill-boxing" where you just kind of build a maze that the AI has to follow as it's the path of least resistance and the enemies just file into a large box one by one only to be shot down by automated turrets or your colonists. Understandably this can make the game pretty easy if you just sit there and let it happen. Another con of the combat system is how professionals at shooting or melee should not be missing a squirrel at their feet or a muffalo from 2 meters away, the shooting accuracy should get higher every level but I just end up watching my level 17 shooting character hit a squirrel once with a hunting rifle, whiff the next 4 shots and have to beat the thing to death with the butt of his gun.
- World. Some of the world building can be quite good but for the most part the map feels empty and lonely, ancient complex's give low rewards and value but require at least a pawn or two in case of threats and other factions are pitiful, a good update would add more threats and more reasons to caravan out.
- Social interactions. They always leave a lot to be desired and I almost never play with the Vanilla social interactions, it's a flip of the coin if the characters are going to destroy each other with a social fight or are just going to chat.

Overall: I do Love base-game Rimworld, and I believe it is a very incredible game, all my cons are really simple things that do not /need/ to be changed as I think a lot of it adds to the charm of the game, or are fixed with mods, it is one of my favourite games of all time.

Royalty:
Pros:
+ I love the empire as a faction. I love the lore implications, the stories you can write with them, the powerful things they use, the new quests they give they were an incredible addition to the world and lore.
+ Psychic powers. Psychic Neuroformers are an incredible way to add another little aspect into the game that makes you able to use powers and abilities that can do anything from shoot fireballs to heal limbs.
+ Biocoded weaponry are really cool as are persona weapons.
Cons:
- Neediness of noble pawns. I actually do not hate this aspect of the game, the fact that the higher up the Nobility of your pawns are the more needy they are for better stuff makes a lot of realistic sense, my biggest gripe is the fact that they will then start not doing certain jobs, refusing to do certain things. By late game you need to have a colony full of capable characters and a large throne room and massive bedroom just so your noble can sit around and do little.
- Biocoded weapons clogging stockpiles. Look, I like Biocoded weapons, and this is very nit picky of me, but the Biocoded weapons that enemies drop if you become an enemy of the empire will just fill my stockpile. You have to set up a crematorium just to burn biocoded weapons but it takes a while.
- Tribal factions not having Psycasts. I always add mods that allow the tribal factions that spawn in game to have ways of getting Psycasts through the anima tree and stuff like that. I think if it was a random chance for Tribal factions to have Psycasts in raids that potentially scale with colony wealth would make Tribal factions a much bigger threat come late game.
Overall: I love it, could not live without the empire being a faction, I write a lot of my characters from the game down and give them lore and I always use the empire as some former incredibly powerful imperial foe that has shattered and splintered off like this.

Ideology:
Pros:
+ I am biased to Ideology, I really enjoy most aspects of Ideology as it adds in a part of the world that I feel is core, ideological differences and reasons to war with other factions. Ideology can make it both easier or harder depending on your memes and playstyles. However…
Cons:
- Balance is a big issue with Ideology. I find myself almost always going with the same few memes or playstyles as I know it is going to be incredibly rewarding and make me strong, others have similar issues with struggling with harder memes and playstyles. As this is a review I’ll make it clear to everyone, when you look at the memes you can see which ones will have a higher impact and a lower impact. If you are just starting out I suggest you do a fluid ideology with a low impact starting meme.
- Least amount of content for the same price as the other DLC’s that add a lot more actual content.
Overall: I see a lot of people that dislike this DLC as they do not understand it, no, this DLC isn’t to worship gods that help you, or to give you false gods to fight, this DLC is made for you to create your own belief system to worship that will help you gain rewards like relics or mood benefits AND to make the game harder for people that wanna make the game harder for themselves with different colony playstyles. A mod I suggest for this DLC is “Wololoo – Better Conversion and recruitment” by the legendary RedMattis as I think it helps the whole game, it makes it so that when you convert a prisoner they’ll lose some of their resistance and will making it easier to recruit or enslave them.

Biotech:
Pros:
+ Children. You get to have your pawns have children! It makes the game feel so alive compared to just adult pawns everywhere
+ Xenotypes. My favourite part of Biotech is all the Xenotypes you can either create or find. I love every part of it as they all have advantages and disadvantages, Yttakin are great at animals, Impids breathe fire, High Mates (Yes they are base-game biotech) psychic bond, it makes the world feel more alive and adds more personality.
+ Mechanitors. Becoming the lord of mechs is an incredible playstyle that I don’t play often enough. Fully automating everything by using mech’s you’ve created to fight, sow crops, make guns it’s great.
Cons:
- Can be a very busy thing, especially if you’re trying to create your own Xenotype. I’ve never really created my own as it takes a very long time to get everything.
- Apocritons exist. (not really a con but I wish it would stop falling on my children.)
Overall: This is usually seen as the best of the DLC’s and I can agree to an extent, I just don’t really play that much into mechanitors and gene creation too much personally but out of all of the DLC’s this definitely the one I would recommend as a first purchase.
Anomaly:
Pros:
+ Fun horror aspects! The new creatures and monsters I think add a lot to the game, studying them and becoming an SCP like foundation is pretty cool! I think it honestly can pay homage to the internet legend that is SCP
+ It adds a reason to leave. I think the game needed a real reason as to why you’re trying to get off planet, the fact that there is these Lovecraftian horrors that are going to eat you adds a lot of world building.
+ The addition of Ghouls and appendages. I like the Ghouls, the inhuman system and the appendages a lot, I think they add a little to biotech almost.
+ The Horax Cult. A group of cultists that come and summon monsters? It’s just a cool concept for the game to add, it makes another terrifying threat.
+ The new traits are all AMAZING and I love Body mastery and Perfect Memory.
Cons:
- the risk/reward of it all. You get little to nothing capturing the entities or even interacting at all. The anomaly research tree is cool but what do I get? A cube that will wipe my whole colony in days.
- The point. The point of this DLC seems to be to have cool moments, which I do love as a concept, but you get little to nothing, the weapons aren’t as good as some others, after your first playthrough the surprise is gone, there’s little replay ability after you do one anomaly run.
- You cannot start with the new traits. Unless you have a mod that allows it, you cannot start with Body mastery or perfect memory. This is pretty fair I guess but I really enjoy having those traits on colonists.
- very binary. I play with all the DLC’s on every playthrough. I think they add a lot to the game. Then there is Anomaly. It’s hard to make that type of game play fit into a normal run, I’ve only managed to do it once with my most recent gameplay because it made narrative sense in my head.
Overall: I did really enjoy Anomaly, I think it was a good add to the game and can make some sense, But I think tweaks should be made, maybe make it less binary to make the reward worth the risk and fit it better in with the other DLC’s.

Final Review:
I love Rimworld, it is in my top 3 games of all time and a game that I can just put on in the background while I do other things if I need to, it has great art style, amazing modders, some incredible content creators (Looking at you Samuel Streamer). The DLC’s are all a good purchase though some have more benefits than others. I cannot wait to see how the game builds in the future.

[Rex]

Why not summarize on the main review and elaborate in comments?