Recent reviews by Norm

I'm about 20 hours in and still enjoying this game. I havent found the UI to be difficult or have shortcomings as other reviews suggest, it seems as clear and easy to navigate as other city builders to me. I of course like all was drawn to the game by the artwork and am still immensely enjoying looking at my city both wide view and zoomed in.
I think the only thing i'd say is that this game isnt a heavy city builder-- it's not miles away from Frostpunk in terms of difficulty or complexity, but it isn't quite on the same shelf. I don't want to say it's "more chill and relaxed" but you'l definitely feel more chill and relaxed playing it. Even when everyone in your colony is dying of heatstroke, your blood pressure will be significantly lower because of the music if anything.

In terms of story and worldbuilding-- it's not bad. The expeditions you go on reveal tidbits of what might have happened and the world's situation at large. There are some fairly tough decisions and consequences to be had here, but think more Scavengers Reign than Rimword, Frostpunk or Endzone. I do think there was some missed opportunity with the environmental worldbuilding and flora/fauna lore. A lot of the game is about scanning plants and rocks and things in order to learn how they all work together or apart, how they might be beneficial or used to upgrade things, or harmful if handled in other ways. That's cool as a concept, and its cool in practice here too more or less, but i just dont find a lot of the information you learn to be all that interesting and engaging. It feels safe and to the point, always steering you towards the functionality of scanned subjects rather than getting particularly inventive or creative. So you wind up just kinda scanning the Book of Knowledge for the functional information like it seems to want you to, rather than reading it all and really finding yourself absorbed in the alien nature of the world. "Can I use this to make a salve for lacerations?" "Will this be a stronger material to make homes with?" "Will this poison everyone if I make a porridge out of it?" That kind of thing. Instead of "Oh wow, I was just using these orchids as decoration but apparently if I plant these by the lake the flowers hatch into vampiric hummingbirds instead of bloom into pretty flowers, because of a mutualistic relationship with a type of larva that lives in the lake's eel population..." etc.

But it's a fun game and better than the reviews here on Steam led me to expect.

This is my favorite game I've played this year. I really don't understand anyone saying this one wasn't as good as the first one. I LOVED Lone Sails, I would say thats my second favorite game of the year now, Changing Tides just offers so much more, while preserving everything simple and special about the first game. The game Changing Tides most frequently had me recalling (in all the good ways) was Subnautica. I grew to love my ship in CT the same way I did with my submarine in Subnautica, it's just you and your boat exploring the depths and heights of this beautiful world all alone, solving problems, getting out of pickles, surviving the unexpected. This game has all those same Subnautica feels, as a side scroller, with just a pinch of Bioshock thrown in. Not scary Bioshock, the grand mesmerizing underwater city part. Also a bit of Sunless Seas flavor.

What Lone Sails had that Changing Tides doesnt so much, was endless beautiful, bleak landscapes. Theyre here in Changing Tides, but not to the extent they were in Lone Sails, and I did miss that a bit. Changing Tides trades about 70% of that for beautiful, cool seascapes and interesting post-steampunk remnants of a lost society. You're exposed to a lot more legacy and left behind remnants of the drowned civilization that came before-- and you're even offered a little bit of lore via environmental cues and murals and things. It's a good trade, but for me nothing beats those hazy post apocalyptic visuals of the first game.

You of course need to play the first game prior to this one in order to experience "the story." This one took me about 10 hours to beat and I really took my time. I died about twice I think. You never get hung up at spots, there were 2 or 3 environmental puzzles that had me stumped for brief periods of time but if you keep walking around and looking at stuff the way will become clear-- you wont need to look at wakthroughs for any parts of this game unless you just reaaaally suck at puzzles or hate having to stop and think a little. What im trying to say is they did a great job of making the puzzles juuuuuust challenging enough to keep you engaged, but not at all hard enough to take you out of the immersion and stop you in your tracks. You can tell there was a lot of thought put into where that line is and how close one should get to it without goibg over. It's puzzly enough to not be a walking simulator, its walking simulator enough to not be a puzzle game.
There are two or three moments that will make you utter "ohh bad assss" under your breath, and a handful more than will give you feel-good chills. I will faithfully purchase every vehicle adventure game Okomotive ever makes, they are onto something special here.

And whoever was behind the art design for both these games, I want you to know you're brilliant.

It's hard to give this a bad review. There have been numerous bugged parts where to progress you need to cheese or cheat. I'm trapped on third to last quest (along with like half the player base it seems like) in Hunger & Despair quest where you have to push the ladders. SImply impossible to progress. Real bummer making it almost to the end of a 100 hour game and then having to give up after trying every day over and over for weeks. Maybe I'll come back and finish *be able to finish* one day when they patch this.

Excellent game, got it for the nostalgia and was pleasantly surprised by all the new additions, myth units, etc. This isnt just a reskin that updates the look of the game, but it's also at it's core very much still the old game you remember, just with some new features, balances and mechanics thrown in. I've only played the solo campaign and found it to be adequately challenging on standard difficulty. Little too easy at first but it ramps up, which is the point I guess. But you can change the difficulty at any point to suit your needs. Looking forward to twisting friends arms into getting it so I can dive into multiplayer and custom scenario design. They did a good job with this, I can't speak to the state earlier at launch but as of right now (March 2025) if you're a fan of the original you're missing out if you dont pick this up. If you never played the original and are just looking for a tactical RTS game that's not insanely complex or overloaded with tons of fiddly this and that like a Paradox game, this is for you. You can jump right in without worrying about being overwhelmed by learning curve or cognitive load. Great game to play kindof high.

Somehow getting less playable with each patch. It wasn't great to start with, but it was ok. I took a break (you'll probably need to as well, it goes on forever and there's SO MUCH WALKING without fast travel or enemies) but when I came back a month or two later it looked and played significantly worse than it had after release. I feel pot committed to finish at this point 70 hours in because i"m finally approaching the end game (hopefully). This game needed to be cut down by about a third, you're just going back and forth back and forth on this huge map that can take 20 minutes at times to get back where you just were. 20 minutes of not just pointing yourself in a direction and holding a key down (I wish) but also trying to get around large sections of needless lakes, rivers, ravines and cliff walls you have to walk forever to get around. If ever a game needed fast travel it was this one. Every quest given you're like, "Ï was JUST THERE, he told me to come talk to YOU, how do yáll not have radios? OH WAIT YOU DO." So back you go walking the other direction again, until you have to go north for 10 minutes because of a river that only has one bridge and it's way the freak up there out of your way, and if you're lucky you'll see a mutant rat to shoot maybe, but don't get your hopes up. Another annoying thing is it feels like it's constantly nighttime, and my guess it's a cop out to ease the graphics load. Get ready for a game that has you running around in the dark with a headlamp a LOT. Its not bad because it's not as good as the previous games in the series, it's bad because it's just a poor video game.

This is a fantastic digital CCG that needs more players and more attention from the community. What really makes it cool and stand out is the setting of western esoterica its wrapped in. This is a card game lovingly rooted in gnostic and hermetic mysticism-- as you play (and win) you unlock more lore having to do with each house, all of it quite interesting. If you're a fan of dusty grimoires, alchemy, Solomonic magic and the like, here's your new favorite game.

Gameplay strategy is often centered around setting up combos, which I love. There are tons of fun angles in taking on and defending against opponents, which makes for enjoyable deckbuilding. The card art is all great, all of it appropriately weird and unsettling in a way you often can't quite put your finger on.
Hail Paimon!

What this game desperately needs is more people playing. I've got about 50 games in and all of them have had to be against the AI. Even though the AI is fine, that's still a bummer, because it would be more fun with other players.

runs great, dunno what the fuss is about. only criticism is that every line of dialogue in this game has the word 'aught' in it. Like literally every line. It's as if the game writers recently heard the word and loved how old-timey it sounded, and just could NOT stop using it. it's constant.
aught aught aught aught aught naught naught aught aught aught aught naught naught aught

This game is great! Pleasantly surprised. It reminds me of Sim Ant from back in the day but with SO much more polish.

This game has crazy bad performance issues. Playing on a computer than has no problem making witcher 3 look beautiful right out of install, and handles stellaris end game chaos without lag or stutter. Endzone looks beautiful in screenshots and elsewhere, but it's dropping lower than 30 FPS for me just in the tutorial, which goes on forever by the way, and i think will probably be all i ever play of this thing.
If i wanted something pretty to look at that won't move I'd have gotten a painting, not a game.

*edit. I eventually got it to run ok. It's pretty good. updating review.