The food, Mason, what do they eat?
Kingdoms Reborn is a quasi-4X, Civilization-styled, real time game focusing on your ability to manage the beginnings of a new civilization in quote unquote post apocalyptic world. These civilizations are inspired directly after real ones on Earth, such as Japan's Shogunate or the Nordic Norsemen. There's no tangible narrative, only a loose framework and minor flavoring as Kingdoms Reborn focuses entirely on its gameplay.
Said gameplay focuses on the management of the population, their infrastructure, and the means by which they can produce things to survive and thrive. Compared to many other games in this genre, I found Kingdoms Reborn to favor simplicity over complexity. Rather than drilling into a spreadsheet, you have a handful of concerns to juggle, solve, and then keep solving as your population continues to expand.
I do like this approach, though I feel it can be undermined by how lopsided it can be. Luxuries, for example, are a critical good needed to improve your population's housing, which increases their wealth and science output. There are three tiers to luxuries, and you must make more of different types of luxuries in each tier to improve housing further and further. However, not all luxuries are equal.
Tulips and cannabis are Tier 1 luxuries and very easy to produce as they're simply grown in a field then harvested. Furniture is also a Tier 1 luxury, but it requires the harvesting of wood, then processing of said wood into furniture. Other luxuries may be slightly more complex with an additional processing step before the luxury itself is created. Since the consumption rate of the luxuries are apparently the same per-tier, this means ones like Tulips become overbearingly powerful because of the cost/effort ratio in obtaining them.
Concerns like this are prevalent throughout Kingdoms Reborn, as there are a lot of systems that are functional and make for gameplay, but have obvious pitfalls or weird balance considerations that makes distinctly 'good or bad' choices. This is compounded by the game's difficulty model, where consumption rate of food and goods are escalated in multiples--completely changing economic importance and relevancy at higher and higher difficulty levels.
Vestigial systems, such as spying or diplomacy, exist in the barest proof-of-concept manner. The AI is not well-equipped to compete with the player, and seems to function on an arbitrary resource clock in order to maintain parity. Competition with other players would come down to raiding provinces, directly conquering them, or trading resources that one has the other needs. While it can be good to have as an option, this area is obviously massively undeveloped. Those expecting a competitive challenge may be disappointed compared to purely surviving and growing your civilization.
The artstyle is clean and comfortable to look at, with some interesting choices for stylization that make it approachable. The music is unintrusive and pleasant for long hours of play, though as a result can be uninspiring and easily forgotten about; not a terrible thing in itself, though.
Conclusion
A reasonable stand out in a genre that easily trips over its own feet, Kingdoms Reborn can deliver a fun and streamlined civilization building challenge. It has the promise of greatness with some of its ambitions, but struggles to live up to them. As it stands, while there are some systems I find troubling, such as the card deck being hilariously superfluous, they do not actively detract from the core experience. I think with some trimming, refocusing on core values, and building upon its strengths, it will grow into a solid contender one day.
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