Recent reviews by NightLizard

This has to be one of the most satisfactory Indie experiences I had.

However I noticed the recent version of the game, after the coop update... the city hub has major fps meltdown gpu and cpu usage aren't even at 50% yet the fps struggles massively below 30fps on my 4070ti super & my friend who uses a 4090 had the same issue so it's a game bound issue. However it was only at the city hub issue notably at chapter 2.

I had played the game in 2025 until the underground city section... at that time performance felt better however it was a singleplayer EA at that stage.

- Art Style
- Game has unique builds and progression
- *Monkee Neuron Activation*
- Gravity is the biggest enemy
- YOU CAN PET CATS & DOGS
- You can buy houses in this economy
- Improving the city with your effort
- Daily & weekly rewards

As for negative traits
- Requires performance patches
- When you're at the endgame...resetting your character it's burdensome. Isn't an issue you will notice early on.

So I feel the negatives can be polished and tweaked for the 1,0 version of the game & The history itself is quite good, I won't write anything related to it as to avoid Spoilers for new players.

MTX offering less content than free mods ER has atm.

ER:
- No region lock matchmaking
- EAC fails to punish hackers yet it impacts FPS from legit players forcing you to play seamless coop with your friends.

Those are but small ramblings, however if FS don't improve their services for costumers their next title will be worse than ER & this might be the beginning of their downfall similar to Ubisoft.

Sharing some of my nitpicks i had with the game & positive feelings. Overall it's a good game.

If you like Minecraft, NMS, Vampire survivor and etc etc with building bases it's good, you're also able to be a farmer and create a barn similar to stardew valley to an extent.

Buildings
- Most of the rooftops finishing touches are either :
" Don't use windows - closed building"
"Use windows but requires to build a wall and remove block by block( 1 by 1) to create the window space (the tracking system to delete is bad)"
- Lack of curved blocks and different shapes, requiring you to be creative with illusion building.
- You can create floating bases with gardens (this is extremely cool )

Fishing
The game seems to be lacking, you can catch and release a fish in a water pond but you cant see them yet, plus if you get a water bucket, makes a hole in the ground, fill out the hole with water, magically there's fish in that hole now....

Farming:
- Make rare resources common and food buffs goes BRRRRRRRR
- Pressing E A LOT OF TIMES.(There isn't an automated option as of yet)
- You can automated the watering-irrigation system and that's a PLUS

Barn/animals:
- Some are cute( & you can pet them)
- Getting 2 or more they can have babies
- Good resources
- AI path is dogshi, i left food for my goats in 10 spots, with 2k food portions available, of my 10 goats 6 ate from their bowls and 4 refused to eat, I bothered to google it and it's a bug... therefore this needs to be addressed.
- I feel like the rabbits/hares should produce something, they never produced anything, as of yet they're mostly cosmetic

Coop features
I feel like we should have more options for coop settings, for example if I open my world for a stranger to get into it, either I allow them to edit the bases and have access to storage or I don't allow them to be able to have a storage and this results into them have limited freedom into the world outside of combat/mining etc...

Combat:
It feels coop oriented or archer wise etc, playing as mage is powerful but some enemies pisses me off cause they're outside of range of wands, and their attack window doesn't allow usage of staff spells, aka making wizard slighty bad to play SP, however wizard has some really cool skills such as Radiant Aura and i wish we had more styles of Aura magics for different enemies than the Fell Faction.

If not playing with Wizard and instead you customize around archer-warrior or different styles of hybrid builds, you can have a fun build, as the game provides with tons of skills points as you progress, enabling you to customize your style of gameplay.

Experience
You get doing quests(its whatever), scrolls( doesnt even show up the amount you get..), mining(most efficient one), combat and if playing with radiant aura, Killing the Fell is the best method to XP farm.

I believe, if we got XP from farming, cutting trees, fishing etc. Would feel more immersive/natural as progression than instead of only mining and killing stuff.

Summarizing :
I think as it's EA title, it needs more polishing, but it's a fun experience, specially if playing with you friends. If some of the issues are addressed properly it will be a major game for people to enjoy for years to come, that's for sure

I highly recommend it for people which enjoy cozy games+small amounts of grinding+crafting sim/cities & the most important with a group of friends.

I reckon if playing alone at the current stage it wont be fun, whoever playing with 2 or 3 people is extremely fun, and it's possible to play with more people.

Overall a fun coop game.

Pro tip : Stack carts together for exploration runs away from your city and bring back resources :D
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3738599512

That's the biggest impression the game left on me.

I think a lot of info people would already be on the loop, I've played the game with extended version which adds some interesting chars and doesn't disable achievements(i would recommend it for what it's worth too).

I never played it before/at launch, 'cause I was waiting for a coop experience? In the end played it as singleplayer, it was very interesting to play blindly and 1.6 update has different approaches vanilla or modded, you don't need a vineyard META to get rich, you can become rich af with PIGS/Fishes/bees without having to do the excel min-maxing IQ usage.

Granted I've found fish to be the most profitable and aesthetic wise, as each legendary fish changes the color of the Fish Ponds...bringing profit and beauty to the farm at the same time. Again it's your own choice how to get your money going to build your farm/family, but it's nice nowadays we have different options besides wine maxing to generate wealth for the farm :) .

I presume coop has extra positives points but i can't write on those as of now. Def recommend for the singleplayer experience and would think the multiplayer one would be the best approach specially with SVE

I was genuinely afraid this game would run badly with Denuvo. However unlike Dragons Dogma 2, I had an amazing experience by the few hours I've played so far.

I bothered to take a look into some of the negative reviews, I can speak in clear conscience they're hating a game for just hating it.

I have no idea why tbh.

It isn't a masterpiece, but it's a solid 8 gameplay wise (which is what a game is meant to be at the end of the day).

(Later I'll edit when finished)

It's like a beatiful cake yet without any flavor.

This game is extremely bland, if you aren't getting it for screenshots you're throwing money away tbh.
Coop tag should also be removed as multiplayer doesn't work anymore.

I wont recommend current version of the game due to the fact you can't get all achievements without doing extra work.
You need to do both of these commands :
WIN+r: steam://open/console
download_depot 461840 461841 6624381179162561744.
Then copy and paste content in depot window at "C:\Steam\steamapps\content\app_461840\depot_461841"
So as long this isn't updated i wont recommend.

Overall i think this game is worth it if you enjoy city buildings, i saw my friend had this on his library, i decided to give it a try and enjoyed it.

The pros of this game :
Graphics/aesthetic for city building, very nice.
above avg IQ to enjoy it properly
dopamine boost when you get things done correctly
CHILDREN CAN FIST FIGHT WOLVES AND BANDITS
very minimal micro management, from the start there's a lot of automated settings you can use to save you time and QoL

there's a lot of fun mechanics to play with, i noticed i was more well versed in producing firewood/educated workers/gold etc etc, but smh i wasnt a successful farmer, so i had a city full of rich IQ individuals yet who would often get hungry unless i bought food from the traders ( it kind worked for what its worth it).
My friend in another hand, had a city full of food, but everyone was depressed and would kill themselves/leave or something similar to it, different people will have different struggles i would say. You ought to try it out and find yours!

Cons of this game :
1#
- Raider mechanic is a chore with literally 0% rewards and 100-200% penalties it exist to make you mad, there's "clever" ways to counter it, but all of them are gimmick and well, worthless. There's a mod which fixes it, but it should be in the base game : "Spoils of war"... the gist of it, enemies who attack your city don't drop loot for some reason??? The game doesn't provide you with loot when you kill invaders but they SURE can steal/kill your villages(the more years went by and more villagers you have the stronger they become in % of villagers) meaning for your village work well most of them will be food producers or something like that, but the game will invade taking into account children/farmers as threats.

So let's say you have 20 soldiers you actually can get 80 raiders to fend off at once for example, and above 20- raiders they sometimes split in two groups to attack from different fronts. BALANCED. i won't spoil the game mechanics because you can win, but the point is, even if you do win you don't GET anything out of it & very often i would have 1-4 deaths at most( when i got 60 raiders invading with horses i was like, well that was it ). [ I really hope this is organically changed by the devs in an update, otherwise install a mod to give you loot from bandits, you DESERVE IT].

2#
Children can fight enemies but they don't produce/work until they're 16yo. Until then, they're all free loaders, ok they're children, but how tf i'm able to set children to fight with bandits with their fists. I even had a toddler 5yo fighting a bandit, yet i cant set "avg child of 12yo to pick berries for them to eat :D"

3#
While i love the automated resources the game provide to us, they don't give us a tool/way to look which workers are idlers or free loaders, you use a mod to fix it, but again this should be default in the game similar issue but different, i wish i was able to selected everyone from the same profession, such as "i want to select all hunters at once", we can't do that if you want to use hunters to defend a strategic point, you need to manage each one at the same time(this is cancerous ) BUT hunters are the MVP in this game.

If they changed those points in some ways i believe the game would be 10/10, otherwise it's a very solid 7/8.

Well, campaign and operation mode are legit good, didnt tried PVP and i don't care about it(yet).

So what isn't exactly written in the storepage & it's a bit misleading you don't need to buy DLC/cosmetic to get nice better cosmetic parts for your armor ingame, as in different chapters and stuff, i felt weird trying to understand this as some dlcs had champions and others dlcs are only cosmetic wise, but everything doesn't impact standard product so if you want to experience the game you can get everything it has to offer without bleeding extra amounts of money. (You do so, if you really liked it or whatever- i'm gonna buy salamander chapter dlc even thought it has less content...but oh well they're the good fellah and i loved the lizard decal it has).

As a sidenote, playing with bulwark is very testo inducing, charge mid waves of enemies just to resurrect your brothers in battles is an experience, making a lasting standing so they can retreat to next area where you get swarmed in higher threat levels is another experience. Overall very fun to play as tank, i can protect my friend while doing damage, highly recommend.