izigame.me

A Good Premise Restricted By Frustrating Game Design

I'll start with the good before getting into why I despise this game so much now.
It's got a great graphical style. The pixelated look fits the game wonderfully. The soundtrack is banging. So many of the themes fit the situation you're in. Tough spot? The music quickly matches the tension of potentially losing the crown. Building up your walls and defenses while flourishing in troops and handymen? Soothing melodies rush to your ears. These aspects of the game are its triumph. They're quite good but fail to outweigh the cons imo.
Now onto the bad.
I have little to no idea what most of the game elements are. What do the signposts do? What makes the flying monsters appear? Why is it that the big monsters (called Breeders) don't disappear and retreat at sunrise? I have no idea why these things happen even after reading some bits of the wiki. And I think that's most of my problem with this game. It doesn't tell you a damn thing other than basic information at the start. Take the victory conditions for the first 5 islands. You need to build up the boat, load it with some people, and then ship it off to the docks to go to the next island. Simple, yes? Well, I didn't realize that was the goal my first time around which resulted in me dicking around for 20 days until I died on my second run on the first island. I had found the docks but not the ship. I had no idea what to do and so I had no end goal to work towards. Are you seeing why not telling the player how the game works is an issue? Let me add onto this by talking about it a little more (though this is mostly just to vent my frustrations).
I am practically forced to spend gold on things that I don't know what even are. Water stream here and the game is asking me to spend 3 gold? I guess I'll spend it and oh, look at that it's a farm but it's only usable if I have a farmer. I spent 6 gold on a shack and now I have a catapult? Cool but it needs 2 handymen to use so this item really needs 12 gold to be fully functional. I could go on but you get my point. There's so many examples of this and I'm baffled the devs made this decision to make the game this way. I'm not sure why they decided on this route but hey, it's their game and not mine.
The AI sucks ass. Why do the workers constantly put themselves in danger by not hiding behind the walls they just built? Why do the archers sit in the towers next to the center of home base and ignore the enemies charging in to fuck stuff up? I don't know. Another thing that really pisses me off is when half the camp's archers ignore the other side even when we're being stormed. Why do they do that? Also, why the hell does the villagers i just paid a gold coin to take their sweet time walking to the base camp? My guy, I hired you to go there and I need you to put your ass in gear. Run for fucks sake! My empire is crumbling before our eyes and this dense motherfucker is just taking a stroll. I hate the AI in this game with every ounce of my heart.
Another thing, why am I unable to control them? Am I not their ruler? Can I not give my archers orders? Why am I unable to tell people to do things? I am astonished that I actually need to pay each knight 4 gold coins just to do their job and destroy the portals after I already paid 6 fucking coins to hire them!!
Okay, I need to circle back to the not explaining thing because what the fuck. Why does the game not tell me that chopping down even a single tree next to the merchant camp or other camp make them permanently disappear? It's not like I can even skip over them and continue building stuff past them because the game forces me to destroy their camps to build stuff. Why is it like this? I am missing out on free gold and more villagers if I don't expand and that's kind of the key to winning.
I ran into a bug where I didn't have the option to hire knights and after reading the wiki page I somehow thought I didn't have the right upgrade for it and so went through 3 entire islands thinking I was missing something. Nope, I just had to save and quit and then start the game up again. It was hell trying to get through them without knights but I suppose that one is my fault for attempting a simple fix.
Why do my islands reset after death? I have died a number of times on different islands and I came to realize that the past 1-2 hours I just spent were wasted. I was left with no people and no structures. Why? Why would you do this to me? Are you wanting me to stop playing your game? Because you essentially saying 'yeah, you just wasted that time for nothing lmao' is a great way to do that.
Bottom line, I do not recommend this game. It's frustrating beyond belief. After the first island I loved the game. After the second I thought it was okay but a fair enough challenge. After the third I hated the game. After the fourth I was just playing so I could mark it as completed. Don't waste your money. Do listen to the soundtrack though because my god is it good.