izigame.me

Pre-review disclaimer (why do I even need to do this) : In an effort to reduce toxicity and people throwing bricks at each other in the comments, let me preface this review with a few words.
Yes, I know the game just released, and yes I know it's early access (and what that entails). This review is here AND negative because it has more chance for the devs to see it and do something about it since it sticks out. Yes that might lose them a few sales, but honestly, you can't make a good omelette without breaking a few eggs first.
I genuinely believe the devs will make this a great game. That's why I'm pointing these flaws out because they WILL turn a lot of people away and they need to be addressed ASAP in my opinion. If you also believe like I did, then buy the game. You'll pay it at a lesser price and you'll help fund the devs. If you are cautious however (which is understandable because of the literal SEA of games that never got out of Early Access), then don't buy the game yet. Wait for these issues to be fixed. This has all been mentioned in the comments by me and other people but since comments slide away really quickly, I decided to put it up here at the top.
Be nice to each other. There's enough strife in the world as it is.
Now for the actual review :
I like this game and the idea of it, but with all the praise it's getting I have to play devil's advocate here and point out the obvious flaws that needs to be addressed. This is going to be a wall of text, sorry about that.
Here's the TLDR;
1. Camera controls are very annoying
2. City Karma system in it's current state feels pointless and, once again, annoying.
3. Specific information is hard to get.
4. Progression is heavily unbalanced.
5. Content is unbalanced and inconsequential.
1. Let's start with the worst offender, the camera.
Right now, it's in a weird state of wanting to be character focused but also give the possibility of looking around like in a management game. This is VERY annoying because trying to use controls that usually works in management games (i.e.: WASD or the arrow keys) moves the character instead AND cancels their interactions, but then trying to control the entire game focused on the character doesn't work either, because you can't interact with things around you unless you click on them with the mouse, like in a management game.
I think there needs to be either a split or more customisation possibilities. Either have the game in "Management Mode" where whipping the camera around is a breeze with all the usual controls of a management game or "Character Mode" where everything is focused on the character will all the features of a third person game when you can interact with stuff around with a keyboard button like E, etc. And let us either switch easily between these modes or add customisation options to allow more complex configurations.
I want to be clear though, I really like the fact that we can have a more character focused control set. Don't get rid of that. It's novel and interesting.
2. Next up is the City Karma system.
This one is really confusing, because when overall Karma in the city is low, the game keeps threatening you to do something about it or you will meet the CEO and there will be consequences. But when you just want to control one character and, once again, do character focused things, this just gets in the way of that and moves your attention towards something you can barely even control. What if we WANT to play a character that is an absolute jackass? Now this one is a bit less bad because I've seen sliders that can be controlled for the overall city, and there are sliders for pushing people to be more karma positive or negative, but why even have the threat then? Why not just let a city degenerate into horrible Karma if the player wants to? Whats the point of the system if it can be countered by moving a slider to the right and another to the left?
And also, doing this makes everyone a goody two shoes, which is just boring to be honest. It's problematic because even with just the default settings, the city almost immediately becomes bad with Karma and you get the CEO threat. I've seen no amount of positive interactions with problematic Zois really "put them back onto the right path". It's really annoying when all you want is mind your own business and do your own thing, which is the whole point of the genre in the end IMO.
3. This is more abstract, and it's about the amount of specific information the game gives you.
How long will University last? Who knows. All you get are the days and time you'll go there. What do you get for completing University? No idea! Is it even possible? How much does it cost to attend? F if I know. It doesn't seem to cost anything but I always get that weird feeling that there's going to be a price tag somewhere at some time.
University is clearly the worst at that one, but not the only offender. This one we can easily put under the "Early Access" excuse but it still has to be mentioned.
4. The progression. (Edited already, since I had no idea we could change day length)
Days are 4x longer than the direct competitor, Sims (96 minutes on normal speed vs 24 minutes in The Sims). There are ways to adjust that, down to 2x longer (48 minutes) and up to a full one to one 24h long day. That's pretty cool, but its one hell of a whiplash when you compare these possibly MUCH longer days to how fast you can get things done. You can very easily become super soul-mates with someone else in about 4 to 5 REAL minutes, regardless of how you set the time. School and careers advance super quickly as well, making you THE best student/employee in about 3 in-game days (on 96h setting, no idea if other settings change that).
Edit : There is a way to tune relationships now it seems, but careers and skills are still a no go.
Right now, setting the time to 48 minutes seems to have the best balance although I haven't tested much, but it seems already balanced to be at 24 minutes days like in the sims even though you can't even get to that setting. I wish there was ways to tune the progress just like you can tune the time, because it all feels a bit too fast right now. Also a 24 minutes option would be nice, as it'd give a more sims-like pace for those of us who have been used to "The Woke 4". (thank the troll bots in the comments for that one)
5. And finally, the content.
This one can also be blamed on Early Access. Right now there's a bunch of things, but it all seems inconsequential and/or not really fun to accomplish. There is a clear imbalance in the usefulness of skills as well, where the writing skill "Critical Thinking" seems very important, but you can just sell books for about 50 to 100$ most of the time even with pretty high skill and you don't really get any royalties. Meanwhile, with painting, you can make 4000$ worth paintings in about the same time and investment spent. There's also a skill about coffee making, for some reasons. Priorities seems to be very scattered for now, and the whole game has a very "rough" feeling to it compared to other Early Access games I've played over the years.
Overall, with the current price tag, I'd skip it (edit : if you're cautious of Early Access.) Especially since all the BEST features of the game are literally in the demo (edit: which was just available for a short time when looking at streams of inzoi, which leads me to believe that the developers might know this as well).
I'll be waiting a couple updates, and I'll edit this review when stuff gets fixed and/or broken as it does.