Kingdoms and Castles Review (Dr. Thomás Turbano Romeu Pinto)
I think this is a good game with potential to be even better. The gameplay is fun, the graphics are nice, it's relaxing but not to the point it gets boring, planning do have an impact in your efficiency.
That being said, I'd like to point some things that could make the game better IMO.
First, some small tweaks
1- Roads (normal, stone and garden) should be separated from the other constructions, have their own menu
2- The ESC key should close the Advisors Panel when it is open (instead of opening the game menu)
3- All the menus (I'm looking at the upper-left one here) should be minimizable. The game is too beautiful and sometimes I just want to look at my city doing its own thing.
4- We need some kind of Clock(current year, year progression and time before/in winter), somewhere, but preferably near the speed options
5- The map editor should be available in both game modes before you accept the map
Now, some bigger features that I would like in the game:
1.1- Either some kind of elevation in the map or the terrain generation should create stone barriers in the maps. It's really hard, almost impossible, to protect the kingdom from all sides until the very late game, because you always start either close to the ocean or in an open field. Elevation in the terrain could make the starting point more strategic and planning more complex and meaningful. I know there's a mod for elevation, but it should be a core feature of the game, and it should allow for construction in higher elevations
1.2- Some kind of building piece that allows you to build on top of it, stackable (could be the castle walls)
2- A more complex industry, specially for latter into the game
3- Different challenges in the late game, A lot of city builders suffer from a problem that's somewhat across the genre, that is, after some point (usually in the very early game) it's almost impossible to lose the game unless you mess up really bad. And mostly of the late game problems revolve around scaling up small solutions, but don't offer qualitatively new challenges
And finally, some variety
1- Houses specially should have more models for each tier (even if they are just tweaks of the same base model),
2- Farms and orchads could have more visual options (even if they have no gameplay impact, just different colors would be great)
3- Different road visual models for each tier
4- More beautification items, like statues, gardens, squares,
5- More tiers for each building kind (library, medic, church)
And the beautiful roads mod should be a core feature. This game has the potential to be really big