izigame.me

I've got more than 300h of playtime across the 3 Kingdom games since 2015, and this felt like a huge step back from what we got with the Norselands DLC. I played this with the same friend I played throgh Norselands with and finished it in two long sessions.
The music was FAR from what we got with Norselands. Sure, Norselands music was probably expensive, but this was simply disappointing after we had turned the music up during Norselands. Not once did we feel that the music "kicked in" and made the atmosphere better.
It was laughable easy to beat(on cursed, game journalist difficulty) and no additional challenge islands to scratch the itch of being destitute and building up. I used all of the hermits, but i had to force myself to do it, never was there any need to use them and only my curiosity made me do it, which turned out to be a waste of time as they didn't do anything new that I could detect. "Cornucopia!" "nvm, its simply the horn wall again" Due to the ease which we cruised thropugh the game was never utilised.
It was buggy with a lot of desync issues between me, the one hosting and my friend. From spearmen turned the wrong way, to builders walking on water, greed masks hanging in air (invisible greed bellow them), to crashes and disconnects after a few hours requiring restart of the game, both with good computers and stable internet connections.
Playtime 11h on cursed difficulty, we didn't stress, we built up A LOT of unnecessary infrastructure (Backtracked ONCE to an earlier island to get slinger buff) and struggled a bit early due to taking on all the small islands first (no stone for tier 2 buidlings or "knights" for 5 islands...) so we had to bring the army manually, which for some reason spawned waves of slugs and crabs each time requiring one player to hold the army (so they didn't follow the other to their demise) while the other used mount ability which simply felt bad to use while at the same time being over-powered, wiping all enemies in seconds (on cursed dif. mind you). When we later got stone, we could send out knights and simply wait, no slugs or crabs spawned during the attack... I sure hope that it was a bug and not by design, which might make my experience outdated, but would point to the devs releasing an unfinished product.
The setting was nice and beautiful, but simply "less" than what we got from Norselands. White rock and blue water sure looks appealing, but think of the poor trees and grass that has to somehow cling to life on top of them in this sterile environment that fel truly empty by the time you expanded your walls a bit (no trees, simply white rock and hopefully som grass).
I don't remember where, but they touted the new merchant which would have a boat in this setting. However it was simply the old merchant with a mule dragging along a boat laden with goods, with zero impact on gameplay. The only change was that the merchants base stayed despite cutting down the trees around it which was a bad thing due to us wanting atleast a bit of a challenge playing on cursed difficulty.
The boats where nice, but what good is 4 boats with ballistaes when you can only ever use 1 in the basic game loop, at a huge cost (slug and crab retaliation when engaging portals)?