izigame.me

I really wish I liked this game as much as I did the demo. The full game is somehow worse because it's just... messy. The demo was streamlined and easy to follow/progress, whereas in the full game the mechanics just don't work because it's so difficult, and not in a challenging nor engaging way. For example, there's so many occupations that when you try to match a villager up with someone you have to cycle through multiple people, wasting hearts, to find someone that's useful. Someone who is proficient in acting is not going to be helpful when the theatre is unaccessible until so far down the building chain. Repeat this multiple times and it just wears your resources and your energy down. There's also little reward in making your villagers interact with each other for the cost of hearts when a random event will trigger causing them to dislike eachother/cheat/etc. Same goes to enhancing their relationship, it's not worth it. Also, the traits/stats of villagers matter so little? The interaction with their aspiration and resulting proficiency in their occupations do not intersect well. Eg. when you unlock the prank house and the other negative generating buildings, even if your villager is 4 starts in prankster, if their stat isn't good then they'll mitigate less of the negative effect. This applies vice versa, with a villager not specialised in prankstering with higher relevant stat being better at mitigating the effect. It's also annoying when you can't mentor kids to be pranksters/etc. so if one of the villagers in these roles dies it's better for you to cycle through and find one via matchmaking to fill that spot. But then you waste hearts, and the negative effects affect your production and life expectancy of your villagers, so it's a never-ending cycle where one prankster/thief/assassin dies, the stat plummets, ruining your production/killing off more villagers, so the game basically punishes you for not having luck when generating random villagers to fill those positions. It really sucks when you're early/mid game and the theatre/jousts? (for safety? idk) are locked so far down so your villagers are committing suicide because there's so little entertainment even with all prankster slots filled by 3.5/4 star pranksters.
Also, super weird to have children have bolded stars for "man/woman of the evening".
The matchmaking is also clunky; why pay Tindra 50 hearts for hints when they're vague and you can answer wrong anyway? For example, if it says that Feasting means positive when agreed/negative when disagreed (which again is not helpful because obviously it will be negative when disagreed? why even state that?) and the only dialogue options are related to Feasting and something not listed, you can choose the Feasting option and still be wrong.
Backgrounds also are of little relevance aka peasant, noble or artisan beyond I think tax purposes once castle is unlocked.
Gaining resources is also such a headache; you need gold to improve production but early/mid game making gold is only via the alpaca man and he only gives you SO LITTLE; like 100/200 max for your resources, and you have to keep waiting for more. It's this never-ending cycle of fast forwarding until you have enough gold/resources to build more buildings and then upgrading etc. It takes forever to reach the later buildings, adding to the issue of wasting hearts matchmaking villagers so they fill those spots.
The game just isn't fun. There's no feeling behind the characters' interactions or any relevance to any matches you make. Traits/stats don't feel very relevant to any useful degree. It feels as though the devs didn't really put much thought into how the game would actually play upon release. it's less of a "game" as there's no real interactivity behind it... Just a bad RNG, cycling through endlessly to find a character that fits, fast forwarding until you have resources. But perhaps that's what the devs realised, so to stall the hours you spend on the game they lock buildings behind ridiculous resource requirements which are difficult to achieve even with maxed out buildings because your production is significantly affected by the negative stats that you can't even mitigate properly mid game. You again are just at the whims of an RNG; sometimes there's random cutscenes that can affect your villagers, some with no significance. What do I care if Olivia is offended after falling from a horse because it means their relationship can falter? Another cutscene might happen where she cheats on her spouse anyway. Again, really wanted to like the game but it's just so convoluted as opposed to what was shown in the demo, to the game's detriment.
For almost $20 this game is absolutely not worth it. Play the demo instead.