This was my weekend play. Got the first playset done w/all cheevos not to get them but since it was the first after the intro, figured it would give me a complete picture.
Pace for me was Slow start- Nice midgame- Slog endgame, pace felt like a Civ game with worse combat and a smaller tech tree.
It is pretty.
Managing the villagers goes from:
“YAY! no micromanagement!” to
“OK what you are trying is very stupid”
“ACK!, I can’t micromanage you to get you to stop the stupid.”
(or at least not easily and in some cases not at all)
Seasons matter (good and bad) as the variation is nice, so some is just learning not to queue things they shouldn’t do just yet. And one of the better ways of stopping the stupid is going to the Task manager and killing tasks. But even once you learn that it gets bad. I had people die from hypothermia from trying to move a far monolith in winter, from starvation from going to go do a far away task when they are already starving when leaving town, and starving in town randomly surrounded by four full granaries (?!?!?). So stupid, and stupid buggy.
I began to wish for more granularity in control like Rimworld or ONI gives you.
Speaking of Rimword, the fight AI leaves a bit to be desired esp. compared to that. You get more raiders later sure, but they are very stupid and difficulty just means “more raiders, stronger attack damage”. But it is good attackers are stupid, since the defenders are worse. And then you go back to the “not micromanaging” being a negative. The guy that ran up to the gate with a bowl of pulses equiped (???) could be made to attack rather than stare at the attackers and, I guess, wonder how to apply veggies?, by the select and right click. But the guys up in the defense towers too far away to hit the attackers are happy to stay there and let your guys be picked off. You can empty the tower to get them to the fight, often too late. The defenders sometimes all rush to the wrong gate to defend. You can send them to the right gate. Where they often dribble in and get picked off, and you can’t send the dogs (which are the literal meatshields), so they run over even later.
The worse part of the endgame was where you did have to micromanage. The animals. You need to micro the slaughter, and while you can see the detailed animal headcount in a nice list, you can only select them to slaughter by finding them on the map. I really missed Rimworld’s UI for that, or ONI’s automation, or even Banished sidestepped it by per field. No these critters are everywhere, half inside huts/structures only visible from certain angles, the click all only selects local proximity. I spent most of my endgame playing “find the goat”. The highlight view helps but not nearly enough.
But the mid-game is great, and it is pretty. For that price, I can get my money’s worth out of it and don’t feel bad. If these things bug you, wait. Once it has some more endgame and UI polish, and some AI improvements it has the potential to be quite nice. I can’t tell for AI, but at least for UI, some things already are nice, like the customizable bars, so I think they can improve it.