I really wanted to like this game, but in the end I did not.

Family simulator 2015, the real meat of the game is not the battles, which are repetitive, easy and boring, but in marrying off families to the various thrones you set up. Different men and women will have different traits listed.... but as there is no actual interaction the personalities of each person is just words on the screen. Personality traits don't even matter in the handful of grab bag random events... which like the banner saga have unpredictable outcomes no matter what is chosen (making them random events where you have the illusion of choice.)

Now as a strategy game where you pair off families and breed lots of children it works well. But nothing can be customized so you never have any sort of investment in the dynastys you are building. Plus, if you are any good at the game you will have so many children in each line that it doesn't really matter what happens to any individual.

The soldiers you take in will only fight for a few battles before they will grow old and die, so you will never become attached to them. In addition, every person you manage is so interchangeable it doesn't even really matter if a bunch of them die in a mission, there are a legion of bland replacements ready to fill in. In addition, while the game has 9 "classes" which do have some slight variation, you are really just dealing with three... hand to hand single target, ranged single target, or ranged aoe. The broad archetypes of which set of three classes a family has access to is set by the class of the founder of the family hundreds of years ago.

Now, even with the boring battles, the fun of breeding families might in itself have made a fun game.... except for one major problem. Like the latest XCom, the designers seem to think that interrupting you every few seconds makes for an exciting experience. You have to make it through 300 years, but it felt like every few days I was being bothered with the death of someone, the finishing of research, a new useless invasion, etc. Never did I really just get to let the clock run and watch the dynastys play out. I loved XCom, but hated that the strategy map interrupts you constantly, and this game is even worse in this regard.

It has some strong points. The narration in particular is inspired. And it CAN be fun to match up that 55 year old war hero with a 16 year old bride and see if they manage to breed. But overall the experience was just an annoying slog filled with unrealized potential. Without interaction between the people of any kind, all of the personalities and dynasties meant nothing more than ticks on a spreadsheet. Maybe that is all life is in the end.

4/10