Recent reviews by Juniper Monkeys

(I finished this game on the Switch, but bought the PC version to support the dev because I liked it -- so, low play time here)

What a neat game! For its genre, I think it was just about perfect -- well-done and snappy in the main story and side quests, with a little bit of challenge in places but not so much that a kid couldn't manage, and with very few draggy parts. It took me about 4 hours to fully complete. It doesn't hurt that the art and sound design (so many trumpetings) are ridiculously cute, too. Just a really all-around nice game.

Minor issues:
- I had a couple bugs relating to item placement -- odd clipping and so on. Nothing too bad.
- The PC version appears to have somewhat limited resolution options, and tops out at 1080P on my 1440P monitor.

Deserts of Kharak really brings me back to Homeworld -- the look, the sound/music, and the story are all great. There are a few points that are kind of iffy, though:

- Playing it is a little bit of a pain in the ass. The regular camera doesn't zoom out as much as you'd like, control groups are a little wacky, unit formations can be suicidal, and so on.

- The story is pretty short. Eight or nine hours on normal difficulty. There's skirmish and multiplayer, but the skirmish AI is not very challenging and I'm not really interested in multiplayer.

- There's really not a ton of variety in the way that missions play out. Sometimes you have to collect an artifact or place some turrets, but basically a couple big control groups attack-moving will carry you through the game.

- No unit variety between factions that I could see. Obviously they look different, but each of the two factions share the few basic unit types. The DLC factions are really minimal reskins of the two standard factions -- don't bother.

With that said, for $25 I feel like I got my money's worth, but at the regular price of $50 I'd feel kind of ripped off. In general, it's just how I like RTSes -- a little more sweeping and "arty" than StarCraft, not too much boring macro (Planetary Annhilation), and the great Homeworld feel. I just wish it had more and more varied missions.

I really enjoyed most aspects of Banished, but found the late game and replay value a little unsatisfying. The art is nice, the sound is decent, gameplay's pretty good, and the interface (while a little overwhelming at first) is well-designed, for the most part. The beginning stages of the game are really neat, presenting some interesting challenges with a variety of solutions.

My only problem with the game is that once you've built a sustainable little village, expansion isn't very interesting. The challenges and solutions are the same as they were in the beginning of the game, but the stakes are lowered, since you have a larger population and (presumably) more stored resources. There's only a very minimal progression of buildings and technology, so you spend the late game doing pretty much the same things you did in the mid- and early parts. The result is that (for me, at least) the more successful your town is, the more bored you are. Likewise, I didn't find that starting a new town was super-fun either; starting my first town was, since I didn't have any idea what problems and solutions would crop up. The second (and third, etc.) time around, though, I already knew what to do. The game isn't really flexible enough to make varying your successful strategy any fun (a counter-example might be Crusader Kings 2 -- also mechanically formulaic, but with an insane amount of replayability).

That said, I do think Banished is worth playing. It's different enough from other city builders I've played that I feel like I got my money's worth.