Recent reviews by Growler

I noticed the trees blow in the wind on one side of my island, and on the other side where the wind hasn't reached, are still.
Interesting mechanic. Doing something new like this in game development deserves my attention alone.

Its Chill, no complaints.

Can be a fun game. But the NPC's ruined my mid-game experience. I ordered a small ship to defend a trading ship, which forms a fleet. My trading ship gets attacked, i expected my S ship to defend it. It did not. My S flew around, approaching random locations around my trading ship, which my trading ship also seems to be confused, and then blows up.

I expect thing to behave how they are explained in the game. This isn't the case, and after doing tutorials on youtube/google for explanations, it really isn't as simple to do.

More infurriating to play than it is for me to enjoy. I dont know, maybe i'm not understanding it properly...
Not a strict 'No' review, but i wouldn't encourage any of my friends to play who might be interested in managing a space empire

I've wanted to like this game for a looooong time. It just never reaches any of my check boxes, even though the trailers and adverts speak my language.

99% of the game is boring and Mind numbing. the fun parts from the trailers are after hours and hours and hours of mining, building and stress testing but the fights and events are over in a split second in comparison to how long it has taken me to reach this point.
(building can be fun, but it takes a masters degree to understand if your build will work or not)

its just not worth your time... unless you like a game to put you to sleep
I would like to put a Mid vote on this game, but as i can't, i'd have to put a NO as my review

From what i CAN play, i can see this being a fun game. But the game isn't ready yet.
bought the game on the 13th Feb and was grasped by the games setting and combat from tutorial and the Democratic satire. But i couldn't play due to game lobby issues.

I was able to get my first co-op mission today on the 14th, however...
Frequent crashes which means anything you have done within the 30 or 40 minutes of the mission, doesn't get accounted for. You lose it all. This wouldn't be an issue really, but with how often the game crashes i cannot in good faith recommend this.

i am tired of feeling bad from games that don't work as intended. Gonna have to refund this one as i have played 100 minutes and not much time left for a refund. Will re-purchase once i hear the game is fixed.

EDIT 16/02/2024
A good friend of mine showed me it doesn't crash often for him. I do like the game, so i bought it again and made another attempt - it crashed still, for me. Around the time we were extracting iirc.

I did some reading and tweaking, and i have managed to get 4 missions back to back without my game crashing. Weather be a fluke or my tweaks fixed it, i dunno, i aint gonna complain.
(I limited my maximum FPS through my Nvidia control pannel to 90)

I can now do my part!

I like it so far - i bet money it'll only get better after optimizations and bug fixes (i hope saying that doesn't jynx it :D )*

HOWEVER!
As of now....
Modded CS1 OVERALL is better
Vanilla skylines experience; CS2 is better OVERALL

EDIT 29/01/2024
These updates sure are taking a long time, and not much is being improved upon as of yet.
Would i still recommend CS2? Eh! eventually, yes.. But not now.
i will be seeing how things are when mod support is in.

If by summer, no updates have fixed the games issues, then i'll be sad to have to change my review to a negative one.

Time is ticking CO

EDIT 21/02/2024
* So i lost this bet. Serves me right for having hopes i guess. The game in cities 2 doesn't introduce anything NEW that the first game already has. Money is still THE ONLY RESOURCE to be able to do ANYTHING in both games. When you have income coming in, thats it! GG, Game over! No challenge or ANY management needed. Just mindlessly plop stuff down and watch.

Why did you even make this sequal CO? The only improvement i feel CS2 has is the road building.
This should have been implemented into CS1 instead of making a whole new game that basically is the same damn game, but with many MANY bugs that breaks the game.

I understand fixing games takes time. But these Word of the weeks are not inspiring or interesting to me. Feels like you're delaying the fixes because you can't fix it. The whole simulation is a mess and needs redoing from scratch. Which you wont do.

utterly dissapointed. CS2 is shelved and can go next to simcity 2013... my shelf of shame

Really on the fence about this one. Its a shame. It looks good, but polish on a turd is still a turd.

after a couple of hours into the game i quickly realised that your ship isn't really a ship.... (dumb i know) its a fast travel point.
Upgrading your ship has no real purpose other than for space fights. You can only fly ships in space and never any where else.
So its not a space sim exploration game! So i tried to look at it as an FPS adventure game, using the map+ship to fast travel every where.
Sadly as the planets are all procedurally generated, theres nothing interesting to look at. You have set pieces of man made structures aaaaaaand.... well.... i think thats it other than the repetitive wildlife.

Enemies are bullet sponges so the combat isn't compelling for me either. This game feels exactly like Fallout and truth be told i didn't think fallout was that great either.
I'm happy some people enjoy the game, but i wouldn't recommend this game myself.

I usually find it hard to dedicate a whole evening to a single game. So many games dance in the back of my mind, beckoning me to play that whilst i'm playing some thing else. Call it short attention span, if you wish.

I was expecting the come off after 15-20 minutes of playing I Am Future....
My first time playing the game turned into an 8 hour session. I was very much involved throughout the whole time playing.

I dislike how many times blizzard lies, over promises and under-dlivers, and has been a running joke since OW1.
OW2 is OW1 but with cut content, and they reintroduce cut content as 'new'.

So, would i spend £12 on story missions which has no replayability, every time they make a new mission? Or would i ♥♥♥♥ in my hands and clap? Which would you think gives a better spectical?

Its Fun!
Its Good!
its Atmospheric!
It Works!

First off, let me say i dislike ubisofts mainstream games. I think they are terrible for a tripple A games company. HOWEVER Anno 1800 is its only saving grace. Along with the other anno entries. Not because i'm a city builder fan (i like many genres of games) but because the game offers a solid experience with a fascinating game play loop that can keep you entertained for hours.

The Steam RE-release has been a bit shaky with not being able to launch the game. But after a day or two i am able to play it again. Negative reviews i'm seeing is mostly around that, and people not being able to find the DLC's at a discount or something?
LET ME SAY THIS. I've bought DLCs on both a mix of Ubisoft store AND Steam store (while it was off steams market) and i've had NO ISSUES WITH THE GAMEs ADDONS. I got season pass 1 to 4 and i've been pretty overwhelmed with content in each season.

With that out the way, its time for a well constructed and insightful review...

If you like city builders with resource management, multiple different build orders to experiment with, procedural generated maps.... You will enjoy this game.
Ubisoft bad, Anno devs still passionate - it shows.

Thats the review.