Recent reviews by Ansive

Story and dialog is weak
Game is short (1-2 hours, a few screenshots aren't in the game)
Models and voices are ok
Idle animations are exagerated short loops
Sex scenes are short loops with multiple viewing angles (see screenshots)
No finishers
Minigames are trivial
Room to room navigation is a bit awkward
Achievements are easy (need to reload a few times for different choices)

Great game (units, balance, items, variety) with a poor engine (CPU limited, low fps, no AA, crashes) and an overly long repetitive campaign (don't play max difficulty, you can cheese it anyway using astral points).
Make sure to get the Fixers Patch if you want to crash less often and experience less bugs.
Also, one achievement can make you play the entire game again.

Some moments will stick with you. Like watching your enemy's army funnel into your warrior's unlimited retaliations. Or cleaving half the army after using astral energy to traverse the entire battlefield. Or double shooting an enemy mage before he can summon a dragon.

7/10, took too long

I initially bought the game because I liked the aesthetic and the hex grid.
But it was definitely less chill that I expected coming from Dorf romantic. Imagine Civ6/humankind district placement mechanics, dialed way up.
At first the decks and building adjacencies didn't make sense. But once you get more familiar you start to see reason to madness, even elegance.
The game also features a basic 'district planner'. Which is helpful in the puzzles.

Achievements are not a grind, just a bit difficult.
- unlock all decks
- discover and build all merged buildings
- complete all the scenarios (several)
- complete all the puzzles (lots)
- play 1 normal game with no bad placements

I found the puzzles to be harder than the scenarios. I'd recommend leaving those last.
Also, the scenarios became more fun once I stopped trying to min-max placements or fill the map to max points. Instead focus only on the objectives (then ending the game right after).

There is rng in the card draw, but you quickly learn to control it (each card has a percentage chance to draw and it goes up when you don't get it). It's best to bank your draws. Depending on your objectives sometimes it's better to draw without upgrading the deck. You can also upgrade a deck to force new draws without actually drawing.

Won't remember settings. Skill bugs (can't use slot, need to restart).
Full screen windowed doesn't work. Task switching may reset resolution.
Girls have aliasing in the gallery (had to play in 4K and downscale).
Skill tooltips are slow. No way to differentiate between active and passive skills.

bad:
Some awkward short character animation loops. (repeated exaggerated expressions during dialog)
Sex clips are fairly short and there's no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. So it's mostly warm up material.
There is a screen flash after each combat animation sequence. (fixed)
Upgrades don't show what will be gained (character stats or weapon skill improvement)
Implants cost double than advertised. (fixed)
Some translation errors.
Weak story and dialog.

good:
Characters are hot and there's no guys.
Graphics are great and 3D animations are good (but short).
Each scene is a short loop showed from several angles (but no free camera).
You get several scenes for each girl and there are many girls.

Gameplay:
You talk, you fight (and get resources), you upgrade, you travel to a new location, repeat.
Combat is turn based and fully 3D animated. (but there is no actual challenge)
You sometimes need to QTE or click things to defend. (if you're tanky it won't matter)
You can upgrade your main stats. And there are weapons, buffs, skills and implants (buffs) to be purchased.

Achievements are easy.
Won the roguelite mode the 2nd time.
Stats max at 5. Weapons at 6.

Overall a short decent experience.
4/5

The 1.4 patch in itself is worth the price of this DLC.
Frogs are OK to play with if you need to quickly ramp you population size.
The Coastal Grove is unique in layout and blueprint acquisition. Also heavy on fishing.

The core gameplay is similar to the first game.
You need to manage your workforce, resources, city placement, exploration and people's needs.
Workplace, healthcare and eating micromanagement are gone but there are other things to worry about, like faction politics and ideology.

Due to the changes you feel more disconnected to your city. I found I enjoyed FP1 more due to the smaller, more intimate scale.

Game has horrible motion blur due to TAA antialiasing and looks really bad at 1080p (TAA can't be disabled). At 4K this is significantly improved, but your framerate will tank a lot. Game is about twice as GPU heavy compared to FP1. I needed to use DLSS to get decent framerates at 4K with very high graphics settings and lowered lighting (around 50fps using an RTX 3090).

About 150 good hours of city survival scenarios. Rest was not so fun achievement grind.

AI is actually capable at playing the game.
Good Civ 4 vibes.

An elegant settlement survival game.
Lots to learn and discover.
Has roguelike meta progression and a good difficulty curve.

Still fun 500 hours in.