I hate to give this game a negative review as in general I try to be more lenient with indie devs. But that is also why I've actually held off playing this game until now as I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, give them time to patch the game. I think 8 months after full release (I think this was also in Early Access before that?) is ample time

But alas the game still is just too buggy to play and I am not talking minor bugs I am talking game breaking bugs

Right off the bat I am playing at 1440p and at 100% UI scale everything is too tiny to read, the game actually even defaulted to 150% UI scale for me when it defaulted it to 1440p resolution. But alas the UI scaling has a lot of bugs. Once you scale above 100% the progression interface becomes unusable! There is no scroll function left to right so you have unlocks that are literally not clickable as they are off of your screen! So everytime I want to unlock something in progression I have to go change the UI scale to 100% and then change it back to 150% after unlocking stuff which becomes annoying very fast as you can imagine

Other bugs relate issues with the NPC behaviour. You have granaries and warehouses you can fill with supplies. The warehouse seems to work well but the granary is very buggy. For example if you store berries in the warehouse the market tender will never have berries to sell as they will only go to the gathering hut but the gathering hut will be empty because they will be stockpiling the granary. Issues like this only scale up as you expand and eventually just cause your city to become completely unsustainable

Another issue is that the tax forecast is inaccurate, I don't know why the game can't just tell me accurately how much tax I will earn at that taxation level. All other city games if you raise the tax it just tells you what you will earn exactly on the next tax income cycle. Foundation is the first city builder I've played where the forecast is a maximum possible and not the actual value you will get

Also the land sizes are not balanced towards how much land everything needs. Houses in this game require a lot more space than in most city building games so the very tiny land parcels you get per expansion is an odd choice considering how much space everything takes in this game. Most city builders land parcels and expansions are balanced to the same scale of the building activities so that you can expand more naturally. Here you quickly run into land shortage issues in very early game which I've never experienced before in a city builder

Now this game is quite beloved and my negative review is one of few among many positives but alas due to the bugs and design flaws I can't rate this game positively in its current state as at the time of this review

The game does have some definite strengths. The art style is top tier and the modular building capabilities is massively innovative. The background music I could listen to for weeks on end and the general concept is amazing

If the execution was just slightly better and the bugs get fixed then this would probably be one of the best city builder games I ever had played but the bugs and some design oversights really hold it back from its full potential

*IMPORTANT NOTE*
The game is still receiving updates and if they can continue to fix the issues in my review and some of the other negative reviews then the game will be in a much better place

I purchased the game during Early Access, and at the time I understood that having some bugs was normal. However, after starting a new game and investing many hours, I’ve run into an issue that has become very frustrating.

When a house is upgraded to level 2 because of a certain resident, and that resident later moves out, the house automatically downgrades. This creates a repetitive loop: the house downgrades, I have to spend materials and time to upgrade it again, another eligible resident moves in, it upgrades again, then they leave, and the cycle repeats.

I would suggest adding a setting or mechanic that allows a house to remain at level 2 even if the resident leaves. This would reduce unnecessary micromanagement and make the late game more enjoyable.

I’ve played for over 250 hours and really enjoy the game, but in the late game, this loop becomes tedious and takes away from the fun.

Fun, chill game but pretty buggy.
Building attachments needed to be rebuilt every time I loaded, during one out of my three playthroughs.
Villagers get stuck sometimes but teleport out after a while. Other small annoying bugs.

UI needs a bit more polish for management of certain things.
Also the residential density reset if unpatrolled is not a great mechanic.
And should definitely show all entries to buildings when placing a new building.