A dwarf went mental and pulverised a goose, proceded to get stabbed to death by the gooses owner
10/10

The game attracts the player with the big depth it offers, both in terms of the procedurally generated storylines, world generation, relationships between civilizations, settlements, as well as the depth and variety of activities and ways to develop Your settlement it offers.
But unfortunately it's got several fundamental issues:

- First of all is it's bad UX. Many oversights in terms of "quality of life" features. Unintuitive, fractured, complicated UI. Crusader Kings II UI is wonderfully clear in comparison. Game requires tedious micromanagement, which often ends up ultimately insufficient anyway, in order to overcome inexplicable dwarf AI behaviour. You can read a wiki article or steam discussiong about how some mechanic is supposed to work 10 times and still not be able to understand why a dwarf refuses to do the work You want him to. Incredibly frustrating.

- A problem which most "grand strategy" games struggle with, is that You, the player, end up waiting for the game, instead of it being the other way around. The game is very computationally complex, which will slow down the flow of game time and make the game lag noticeably, once Your fortress is complex enough. In other words You will end up wasting Your time, even without the lag. This game DOES NOT respect Your time, and You will not be able to get much done in short sessions.

- In a way there is TOO MUCH depth. The amount of macro and micro level game mechanics will take an incredibly large amount of time to even find out they exist, let alone learn them. This is one of those games that have poorly designed in-game progression and instead force the player to rely on 3rd party guides, wikis, and advice to progress through the game "properly" (there is no proper progression because it was never designed). Personally I consider this type of design fundamentally flawed in any game and I hate game design where the player cannot be reasonably expected to progress, learn and enjoy the game without 3rd party guidance.

- A smaller concern is that if You pay attention, the procedurally generated history is underwhelming and You can feel it's synthetic. Very impressive for procedurally generated lore, but ultimately insufficient.

Having followed the devlogs I conclude that the developer is focusing on adding new content and new functionality/mechanics, increasing the scope of the game, instead of focusing improving the user experience of the content that's here. Therefore I don't recommend buying the game, unless You are ready to invest more time into it than it's actually worth.

Dorf