Marathoned the “New Hope” campaign in 48 hours and beat it first try.
It runs and looks great, and I like the premise. The gameplay loop is very anxiety driven fixer, which scratches an itch. Unfortunately it’s not very deep and lacks any sort of meaningful choices at least in the beginner campaign. I assume that the expansions will require more “hard choices” especially if you turn the difficulty up, but haven’t found it that gripping. Hard choices here mean sacrifice one for discontent when scripted. Game lays bare that you have to be amoral sometimes but doesn’t really feel like it penalizes you, you just have two abstract bars that go up and down. I think it needs a few more systems, more laws, or a longer tech tree. Or the expedition/outpost system needs more risk/reward. My favorite strategy games like Civ, Total War, Hearts of Iron allow you creativity in approach. Here, it’s all the same by the end.
Premise is good, just the writing is a bit hamfisted about climate change and social policy. Doesn’t really have an edge or something new to say.
Also late game meant destroying almost 50% of the buildings and just hunkering down / producing infinite coal. The UX could use some work as it was unclear a lot of times why stuff wouldn’t build (roads in the way) or I couldn’t find one building that does something easily, or I couldn’t find the buildings that had overtime enabled and turn it off. Needs more top down policy choices and less bottom up. Good for $10 but I don’t think this is amazing. Hoping Frostpunk 2 will be Anno 1800 in terms of length, but Hearts of Iron in depth.
It runs and looks great, and I like the premise. The gameplay loop is very anxiety driven fixer, which scratches an itch. Unfortunately it’s not very deep and lacks any sort of meaningful choices at least in the beginner campaign. I assume that the expansions will require more “hard choices” especially if you turn the difficulty up, but haven’t found it that gripping. Hard choices here mean sacrifice one for discontent when scripted. Game lays bare that you have to be amoral sometimes but doesn’t really feel like it penalizes you, you just have two abstract bars that go up and down. I think it needs a few more systems, more laws, or a longer tech tree. Or the expedition/outpost system needs more risk/reward. My favorite strategy games like Civ, Total War, Hearts of Iron allow you creativity in approach. Here, it’s all the same by the end.
Premise is good, just the writing is a bit hamfisted about climate change and social policy. Doesn’t really have an edge or something new to say.
Also late game meant destroying almost 50% of the buildings and just hunkering down / producing infinite coal. The UX could use some work as it was unclear a lot of times why stuff wouldn’t build (roads in the way) or I couldn’t find one building that does something easily, or I couldn’t find the buildings that had overtime enabled and turn it off. Needs more top down policy choices and less bottom up. Good for $10 but I don’t think this is amazing. Hoping Frostpunk 2 will be Anno 1800 in terms of length, but Hearts of Iron in depth.