Llamamoe

Hi. I'm perhaps not the best person to be writing a review, as I'm a vast bit more cynical and critical than most fans of any game, especially such a niche genre as Spiderweb Software games, but I'm hoping you'll find such an outsider's perspective useful. Because I really do think that what you're making has merit, even if not so much for myself specifically. First off, I was really disappointed by the low amount of open-endedness. I was hoping that you'd have something like topic-based dialogue with many outcomes, individual characters liking or disliking you whether through banter, or favors, or trading with them, rebuilding forts and shops giving you strategic option for interacting with your soldiers, citizens, allies, enemies... at least the discovery of novel gear or skills(beyond the 3 unlockable cultures), or just, you know. The ability to manage things some more, make it about more than just whether you have cleared a location or not yet. Secondly, the combat. I'll probably be told off, since I don't like the usual turnbased tactics action economy spiel, but I don't like it for a good reason: It covers up lack of natural tactical depth with the risk management naturally borne from outcome RNG. Also, it's basically the same as every other 9000 turnbased games out there: Crowd Control to limit enemy Actions Per Turn, and otherwise area damage to maximize your Damage Per Turn output. There was a little bit in the way of repositioning, and player agency but all in all not enough to make things fun for me. I played on iirc Hard and the game was still very easy for me, and not because I'm a veteran at this kind of games, but just because I can apply the usual powergaming strats that work for most games that don't do anything clever enough to make numbers secondary to human adaptability. Thirdly, the storywriting: The mentioned lack of player agency and choices is I think what killed most of it for me. In itself the writing wasn't bad, although it felt too... I don't know, inorganic? Like lore that was there for the sake of being there rather than glimpses into an intricate world, if that makes sense. Fourthly, the overall progression and management: Being too easy aside, I really quite disliked how big a chunk of your income upkeep ate up and for how little, meaning it was essentially(probably, I didn't try as I didn't need to) best to wait to get as much income as you can without buildings between clearing locations, and save up a vast sum that you then spend at once. It would have been amazing if in addition to Stone/Wood/Metal/Quicksilver, you also had goods production by shops, which you could then use to negotiate trade treaties, buy resources, etc. with limited storehouse capacity to incentivize keeping things moving. Or... I dunno. Anyway, sorry for my resounding negativity, I'm well aware I'm overflowing of it, but I hope this feedback will be somewhat useful.

Testing testing to see if I can post anonymously, this obviously enough is not the review.