Recent reviews by Vile Heathen

Temporarily giving this a thumbs-up, but only because it has a hell of a lot of potential. I played a bit, and it's pretty solid, although a slow burn, but I've stopped playing as there is too much content missing that the devs are (hopefully) still working on. The biggest one is *roads*. Not being able to build roads in a village-builder is a dealbreaker. Hoping they add it to an update soon. Looking at how the rest of the game is built, I'm sure they won't halfass it.

Almost a first-person Banished. Fun and can be relaxing or (somewhat) challenging depending on how you want to play. Nice photorealistic graphics with good immersion. Lots of options for designing a village. Hunting and farming is pretty fun. There are some minor QOL issues that need to be addressed, mostly relating to setting up production bills, but these aren't a reason not to enjoy the game. The new map is great, much improved. CO-OP mode works pretty well. My only major complaint is the writing. It's not interesting, and the quests are mostly "pick up some sticks" or something with running between towns ad nauseam. And you're REQUIRED to do these if you want to expand you village at all. The "flirting" to get a spouse is super boring. Thankfully can usually just spam the 1 key really quickly to get past the repetitive dialogue options and get 50-60% the way there. But the worst part is the NPC banter. It's sooo sexist. Not in a serious/political way, but in a cringe "these are the jokes your grandpa thinks is funny" kind of way. IDK if they devs think this is how jokes were back then, but it does not help with the immersion when I heard the same joke from my 85yo neighbor complaining about his wife. Which is a shame because the voice acting is actually pretty good.

CO's only mistake is not releasing this in Early Access. Are there performance issues? Yes. Are the devs aware and have been releasing patches to improve it? Yes. Could you spend 5 minutes adjusting your settings so it could perform well? Also yes. I get an occasional stutter, but it runs well on medium-high settings at 1440 on with my 5700XT, which is a pretty mid-range GPU.

That said, I'm really enjoying this game. It looks and feels a lot better than the first CS. Looking forward to see it has it full matures, gets mod support and DLCs.

I, too, complained about not being able to rotate buildings at first. I eventually came to realize that I like this about the game. Planning layout tetris style adds to the challenge. Also, being able to lay roads inside building plots is a cool perk which I haven't seen in a game before. In lieu of rotating buildings, I think it would be cooler if there were a few building styles, especially for the houses. Just for flavor. Maybe some decorations that can boost faith or something.

Overall, great game. I don't think it's as difficult as people are saying though, unless you're totally new to tower defense and settlement survival games. I usually play on the unstable build, and I've experience no game-breaking or annoying bugs.

The new achievement feature is pretty great too--and I usually don't care for achievements,

The NPC AI is pretty good too. About on-par with rimworld or dwarf fortress, but much more hands-off. Except when you're literally placing your god hand on them throw them into a cullis gate. Sometimes they react to your godly powers or get confused or scared.

I've got hundreds of hours in this game and I'm still figuring it out. Congrats to the solo-dev Raymond for making a great game. Looking forward to what is next.

Great game. Satisfying gameplay, and very well-written and believable characters with fantastic voice acting. My only gripe is they used hand-drawn portraits for the characters and "animated" them for different expressions. Looks fine in itself but completely broke the immersion for me given that the rest of the game felt realistic, like I was actually part of the shipbreaking team. Also would have liked some more ship variety for replay value after finishing the story, but from start to finish, it was nearly perfect.

Great sandbox game. Wish I had discovered it earlier.

I first thought it was going to be a Space Engineers knockoff, but it's a whole different beast. Your focus is a mix of survival and engineering systems on a smaller scale. Things go boom if you mess up. Lots of different playing methods via atmospheric conditions, etc.

I play lots of these types of games and I usually get bored of them pretty quickly once things get established. This one offers lots of different difficulty modifications that can really challenge you if you're too accustomed to Banished clones. I'm sure the easier modes are fine, but I highly recommend Endzone if you want a challenge.

If this was a $20 game, I'd say hell yeah, pick it up. It's a solid rpg shooter, but it doesn't really break any ground, or go the extra mile. I've put 4 hours into it, and I'm just not having $60 worth of fun. The story so far is predictable, acting and animation is okay but not great, and the setting, though visually not bad, feels like it's been done to death lately (i.e. over-the-top dystopian dark humor. Okay, I get it already. Megacorporations are evil.). I've loved Borderlands and the Fallout series, and this borrows from both of those, but it doesn't do anything that makes it worth $60, especially since it's a short game.

Updated review: Very pleased at how much effort the devs are putting into each update. It has good engineering-type gameplay. A major improvement is now you can have transport belts etc clip through buildings sometimes which avoids dealing with arbitrary-seeming hitboxes. Lighting was added, and there's a decent amount of content which you can unlock. Lots of cools ways for locomotion, such as jump pads, vehicles, jet packs, and zip lines. The enemies are still pretty underwhelming, though I feel like their only purpose is to make certain areas inaccessible early-game. It's otherwise a pretty relaxed game, which is a detriment if you're looking for something with some tension. The mineral nodes are inexhaustible, so you can just let the game run while you go make a sandwich or something, and your buildings can't be damaged. There's no fear of enemies swarming your base, no defense turrets etc like in Factorio. That's not the type of game it is. It's still pretty fun though and I'm looking forward to what they add next.