Recent reviews by CawsForConcern

You have to keep going, if only to do just that.

Exceptional lore and strangely addictive gameplay that routinely keeps me up until 2AM.

I'm in love with this expansion. The amount of care and detail put into the assets; the incredible feeling launching into space for the first time. The harsh air-burn glow as you descend down to an unfamiliar world. It's all so, so good.

I love the new buildings, I love the new challenges on the planets. The free 2.0 features are so incredibly excellent as well, things like the train interrupts and train groups make managing your rail network so much easier.

Highly recommended with the caveat that there is a learning curve to the new content. It'll click in time, but things like spaceship construction & logistics take a little to wrap your head around.

I think Frostpunk 2 is a good sequel. As other reviews have pointed out, it is a departure from the zoomed-in, up-close, and personal nature of Frostpunk 1, but I think that people overlook that Frostpunk 1 really did everything it could do with its mechanics. The game straight-up states this during its introduction cinematic: we survived the end of the world -- now what?.

I see that some people are lamenting the loss of fine control, like being able to place specific buildings down, road networks, that kind of thing. In all honesty, with the scale that Frostpunk 2 is trying to achieve (tens of thousands of people instead of hundreds), things like laying down roads stuff would just be tedious busy-work.

I do agree that there's UI issues that need to be patched, like not being able to see what law you're replacing and reminders on if repealing a law will upset a given faction because you promised it a few hours of gameplay time before. I'd also like to see more UI information about how much 'expanding a district' actually affects production numbers, or how many workers I'll free up by placing a hub that reduces the amount of workers needed for a district. Without that, it's kind of a guessing game as to how much you need to expand a district (when it should really be an informed choice).

Still, the delicate management of resources still feels tense and engaging. I've teetered on the edge of starvation, I've battled squalor and crime and managed to pull through. I've lost thousands of people to the cold when I took too many in and didn't have enough Housing and Goods to supply them all.

In summary, I think all the bones of a great experience are here, and they just need a little shoring up.

Exceptionally fun puzzle combat with sharp dialogue. A really solid package and damn good game.

Utterly enormous DLC and having a ton of fun duking it out against new and challenging bosses.

If you enjoyed Reus 1 but hated the time limit (and having to have a wiki open on the side to recall how to upgrade anything your giants put down), you'll likely have a great time with Reus 2.

Games go a lot quicker - not because there's less thoughtful planning elements, but because you'd not hammering the pause button every 2 seconds to optimize a time-limited game. It's more time playing the game and less time re-planting resources and praying to RNGesus that you'll hit that 33% 'Greater Aspect' to upgrade whatever.

I'm still pretty early into the game, only having unlocked the 2nd era, but I like what I see so far. The only gripe I have right now is I haven't found a way to turn on a display for 'tile yields', where you could see what the tile provided at a glance. I hope it's a planned feature, because at the moment you have to do a lot of clicking to see what tile is providing what yields.

(if tile yields *are* already in, please make it easier to find in the options!)

!! SONY HAS BACKED DOWN !!

I LOVE DEMOCRACY

Let me start out this review that I don't mind grinding. I like grind.

The building system is fantastic, the combat is punishing but you learn how to play around the slow, deliberate attacks with time. The sailing is fun, the visuals are fantastic. So why the negative review?

The Plains.

The enemies are fine. The biome itself is very pretty, the little points of interest you find are well-generated and fun combat encounters to deal with, where you need to carefully approach encounters to avoid getting swarmed and overwhelmed.

What's the issue with the Plains biome, then?

You can't find the boss. The materials to summon the Plains' boss are annoyingly scarce (which is in stark contrast to all prior bosses), but you genuinely have to luck-out to find the boss location of the Plains' boss.

I genuinely spent ten hours and searched no less than six plains biomes, from small itty-bitty ones to sprawling massive ones. The Plains are cool, but they are not ten-hours-of-searching-cool.

In the end, I folded and found a map generator tool that lets you look up all of the Points of Interest on your map, including boss locations (linked here for the poor souls who end up like me: https://valheim-map.world/

I could forgive the loooooooong dev cycles, the massive grind for materials, the decision to hold-fast to the no-teleportation rules. I was having a lot of fun with the game up until the point I couldn't progress because the developers didn't care to make it easy to find a boss. To clarify, you will be tripping over the 'boss location stones' for all prior bosses while rooting around in each biomes' respective dungeons. I even found a boss location stone for the boss *after* Plains in the second dungeon I visited.


Without any alternative means other than external websites, this is an unforgivable progression blocker. Looking online, every suggestion is "yeah, the search for the Plains' Boss sucks, either keep looking or just use a tool to look it up."

That's dumb. The game has a mechanic to hint to you where the boss locations are, and it should use it.

It's not ready.

* Suspect AI is still uninteresting. They almost never hesitate, they almost never run away and hide to try to ambush you, they just point and shoot - often when facing the completely wrong direction.

* Changing your teammates loadouts in Commander Mode straight-up doesn't work for any officer except for Alpha. You're stuck with the default loadouts and armor for Bravo, Charlie, and Delta.

* Suspects are stupid accurate and will fire through insane angles with stupid accuracy. There's no prolonged engagements or suppressive fire.

* Alternative deployment zones straight-up don't work. You can choose an alternative entry point, but you'll always end up at the 'default' entry point.


The game is an exercise in frustration.

Overall, really disappointing. Maybe future updates will put the game in a better place, but at the moment it's really subpar.