Sounds positive. Not quite a BotW/TotK-banger, but I didn’t expect such a quirky concept to score big on the first outing. Only spotted one truly critical review in there, and even that was more “It’s a neat idea, but doesn’t truly pan out all that well”.
If Anno had somehow managed to channel the narrative of Snowpiercer and the compulsive clicky crunch of Clash of Clans it would be this.
Depending on how you read it, that explains why FP1 did not have the staying power nor depth nor draw of Anno. 😛 Still enjoyed playing through it once, but as far as best-paced goes, I don’t think the granted-much-newer Against The Storm can be beat in that regard, successfully managing to remove the rote nature of most long-tail city building from the genre - even FP1 sadly has that, more on account of how shallow its underlying systems are though, not that the campaign is done too long.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve promised mutually exclusive things to a bunch of council members and I have to somehow navigate a multi-party system without being forced to use the elderly for food.
This is kinda what I mean, actually. FP1 sells its narrative and atmosphere and story super well, even if once you try the waters, it becomes painfully obvious stuff like that is just a story-cover draped over a very rudementary core. These decisions are trivial in their nature and effect even as they sell themselves as being sweeping. The core directional decision sounds gruesome, but never truly amounts to much mechanically, so it peels off pretty quickly, too.
Either way it’s just about maxing your tree depth so you essentially “beat” the game as people no longer become unhappy, and then optimize grid layout a bit (not even much) to survive the ending.
Don’t get me wrong though, FP1 was fun to play. In hindsight it’s a mediocre city builder polished to an absolute gleam, which makes it “good”. I would not say it’s more than that, tbh, but then again it kinda doesn’t have to be, either.
I would say that if you non-jokingly talk like that, you got bigger issues than any specific gaming sites or which consultants are brought in to work on which game.
It’s a fair bit dated low, but also by far the best of the three IMO.
The second was quite good in a lot of ways but also very obviously super rushed and partially unfinished.
And then the third was just a sad grindathon with a Dragon Age mask pulled over it. Some good ideas again but covered in the worst gameplay of the three.
Sure, but how do you solve the problems that patents in turn solved (and brought new problems with them of course)? That as kinda my point, if we just ban patents we can just look back to know which problems we need to solve in another way.
24 years ago, I decided that instead of going into video game development like I had always dreamt of in school, I’ll go into business software because at the time there was only one nearby game studio (Blue Byte), they weren’t looking to hire in the next few years and I wasn’t really willing to move very far at the time.
Looking back, that decision was one of the best branching-path decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
Thanks, Blue Byte! Indirectly you got me an amazing job! 🥂
Note that since you claim the DLC permanently on GamePass, it’s cheaper to get it via that especially if you still got a free or €1 GamePass month or three about.