2.5 hours played
Written 28 days ago
I think it's only fair to say that I was only able to get a first impression from this title. As such, it's very possible that some of my negative review is because I did not find it interesting enough to sink enough time into the title to unlock all of the buildings. But part of that issue comes down to game design, especially early game design, and not being interested enough in the title to progress far enough to see if these issues are addressed. Regardless, the early game does not give a good first impression.
It's possible that after the learning curve is passed that there's a fantastically balanced city builder beneath what I saw. Much of that learning curve seems to be from shadow-mechanics that just don't behave the way you'd expect them to in a city builder: especially the fairly casual type that this seems to be. Perhaps the tutorial for what seems like a fairly casual city builder was a last minute, half-assed effort. I get that. Regardless, my first impressions of the jankiness were enough to say "I don't think this is worth investing my time in learning" when there are multitudes of much better city builders in my library.
The biggest issue with this title are strange design choices for a city builder. This is not a sandbox where you can build anywhere that you want. For whatever reason, the developer decided that there are only certain areas buildings can be placed and buildings of different types have different areas. If you look at the videos, you'll see just how strange road pathing etc., becomes due to its hex-based aspect (it's actually quite unique, but not in a good way). Think of it similarly to residential vs. commercial vs. industrial zoning. This leads to there being herds of animals who should be huntable, but no area to place a hunting lodge because perhaps I put a road or a tent there. It's just very strange and janky and sadly I doubt it's something that will be touched 10+ years later with something like a zone overlay. The end result? It completely takes away the element of planning, because once you've placed a wheat farm, you may not have the ability to place the mill and bakery next to it.
The game was also plagued by poorly done tutorials. Like many city builders, you start the "tutorial" levels with few buildings and receive more and more as you play more. With Valhalla hills, the issue is that the tutorial levels seem really janky for completion due to food shortages. I don't quite know if this remains a theme in late game, but something just felt really off and it isn't a great first impression to make me want to invest my time to learn more. I mean, if the tutorial levels are that poorly balanced.. what can I expect from the gameplay loop for the end-game to be like?
As such, my experience on the first and second level basically felt like a cheesy forced attempt at victory (and I succeeded) because I ran out of food, my production shut down completely, I was not able to equip my actual military units like directed, and I just sent off my villagers to succeed at a villager rush of the portal (which had no enemies). I won. The second round was much the same, but this time I prioritized my only food building. Meanwhile, knowing I had limited time before I ran out of berries, I tried to equip my military with weapons.. Of course, since I had been trying to pursue a sustained economy with fishing huts (who needed fishing poles - another tool), I also ran out of food. Again, I YOLO'd the portal and won.
The third round I knew I was playing the clock, but I got a wheat farm, flour mill, and bakery up with a couple hunters. I don't quite know if I'd have been in the green on food for infinite sustainability or for how long, but once I equipped my military with stone axes I decided to trigger the portal. Only to discover that my military behaved more like a tower defense title and did not leave their "zone." In this round, I figured out several other very non-intuitive mechanics that just.. didn't seem to make sense again? For one, military units only get equipped with weapons if a tool maker is in their zone. I thought that couriers may address this (who distribute things), but they too seemed to have a limited zone. However, you can't really build couriers close enough to each other.. (again, ghost zone rules). So my conclusion was that I needed a second toolmaker in my army's radius. OK. Army equipped. We got this right? Activate portal. Only then did I discover that the military behaves more like a tower defense game, where they only attack things in their area of influence which is small. So for the third time, I relied on a villager rush (and succeeded). [b]After this gaming session I did learn that I can move the military building and presumably some other buildings freely, which may address a few of the jankiness complaints[/b] But given that I wasn't quite getting that dopamine kick of satisfying end results and have noticed a pattern of very strange design choices, I just don't know if I care enough to play several more maps, unlock several more buildings, only to find other janky mechanics.
Further, gather rates seem to be way to slow and would benefit from splitting the dime into nickles and pennies. What I mean by that is sometimes I'm just not sure if my buildings are actually producing or being built, because it's so slow to produce something. To be fair, it may only take 4 lumber to build something.. but I'd rather produce 10x faster and it cost 40 so I know everything is actually responding how it could.
Even <$3 I paid for this title and its DLC, I just cannot recommend it relative to other city builders out there. Now that I know I can move the army building, which is easy to overlook, I may give it another session. But if I don't give it a second try and my playtime remains at 2.5 hours, that speaks even more because of the minimal entertainment that I've felt there is to be had from the first attempt and all of its questionable choices.
In all fairness, I think there is a playable title here. It's not purely just completely unplayable indie vapor ware and might hit the right spot for some people. That said, I think a title like Banished, Endzone, Against the Storm, Oxygen Not Included, or Timberborn just has much more fun to be had. Albeit, most are also much larger productions and newer.
