Seneste anmeldelser af GuantanaMo

I have been waiting for this game to release because the concept absolutely appeals to me. The trains and buildings are adorable, there's a lot of objects and the concept itself is sound - it's fun to watch the train move through the landscape (though as someone else noted, some interactable pieces would be nice.)

Yet some aspects keep me from playing it and recommending it to others. Building terrain is tedious, I should have to manually rotate and place every diagonal. The color scheme is kinda drab and lacks variety. The terrain pieces don't really interact to create something new, it won't surprise you and reward patient fiddling like Townscaper does. Instead there's a bunch of huge pre-made terrain pieces to plop into your world. This is fine for buildings but I really don't want that for a creative game - let me stack stuff on top of each other instead! Let me work nature with softer brushes and plop man-made stuff on top of it! Building tracks could be more intuitive, but maybe I just need to spend more time on getting used to it..

I'll be following along as the game updates post-launch and I absolutely will revisit this review, since it's pretty close to a "recommend" for me, especially since the price tag is very sensible.

I had 3 hours of "one more round" fun until it started to fall apart for me when I realized how the game works. It's a neat concept but many design decisions make it hard to recommend. Its linearity doesn't bother me, since must people who finished it seemed to like the linear story. Here's what I did not like, minor spoilers for the first few hours (up until a battle).

- The management aspect straight up does not make sense. Only happy suspects pay taxes so you have to basically fulfill as many requests you can, no matter if they are reasonable or nonsensical.

- Maybe that changes later in the game but you play a really sad excuse of a king. Your suspects as well as your peers and vassals can treat you with basically no respect in your own castle.

- I like the family but it's weird af that they come to court as petitioners with potentially very private matters.

- The major decisions you're making are in regards to diplomacy. And the game punishes decisions with stupid gotchas. You decide to side with the guy who wants to stop fantasy meth trade? Well, he's trading with your enemy and rubs it into your face. One guy would only join if you got his friend got to join as well, only to tell you afterwards that that friend is actually a major ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and that he just killed him. Much like your suspects seem to think taxes are optional, the lesser lords aren't really your vassals because they only help out when you do their bidding.

This is the only time I've been burned by an Early Access title.

Plain and simple: It's boring. There is no gameplay. I don't mind sandboxes at all, and I play ME's sister game (Space Engineers) religiously. But this one is totally uninspired, bland and its only purpose is shooting at stuff with catapults. Yes, it is Early Access and things may change. But at this point I don't think it will unless they radically change their approach to game design.

Edit: This was written before the "Planets update" was released, but my point still stands. I don't feel as the gameplay has changed much.

Yet Another Edit: As of March 2020 the game is abandoned and has been for almost a year. What little they added to the gameplay loop has remained incomplete or even been rolled back (like AI peasants).

Edit February 2021: Get Valheim instead