izigame.me

I do not want to be exceedingly harsh on this game, but I feel I must be brutally and unfailingly honest so that potential players/buyers know what they are getting into and signal the developers behind the game that there are problems that need major fixes. As I do on a lot of these reviews I will break my points down into a positives section and a negatives section. With that, here are my thoughts on the game after 80+ hours of playtime.
Positives
1. The game is exceptionally technically polished for the most part. Loading times are reasonable and often tolerably short. Also, being able to change how far you can see off into the distance is a good call, something more games should implement by default and often forget to do.
2. The art style of the characters, animals, and environments, while somewhat cartoony and childish-looking, is pleasing to the eye. The world, regardless of the time of year is beautiful, vibrant, and colorful. I just wish there was more to explore than just three zones (grasslands, forest, and desert).
3. The dinosaurs and other prehistoric life feel alive and unique from species to species. Apparently, there was a paleontological consultant brought on for the designs of the animals to make them as accurate to current science in terms of appearance and design as possible, which is a plus. Despite the cartoony art style, I can confirm that each animal does feel authentic in this regard. Feathers are also properly given to dinosaurs where they should be (pretty much all theropods that should be feathered are, Psittacosaurus has its characteristic quill sail along its back and tail, etc.). Overall, the animals are fantastically modeled and designed.
4. The named characters within the world all have their own personalities. Also, through completing quests related to the named characters, you can build your relationship with them which has differing effects (shop discounts, additional overnight sleep points, item rewards, etc.).
5. Different creatures have different abilities that help with farming, ranch maintenance, and navigating obstacles in the environment.
Negatives
1. The day and night cycle is way too short. A single day goes by in like less than half an hour. This means that you only have so much time to accomplish all the tasks you want to do for a day before the game literally forces you to go to bed. I think the day-night cycle needs to be greatly extended because as it is, it makes it extremely frustrating to have to pick and choose tasks (some of which like tending to your creatures by restocking their food, cleaning poop, watering crops, harvesting crops if they are mature, weeding crops, clearing respawning debris, and other such things have to be done on a daily basis which eats up valuable time). Yes, I get this is a farming simulator, but you should be able to accomplish all the tasks you want or have to do in the same single day-night cycle. Even if the day-night cycle of each day was like an hour or two, that would be a vast improvement.
2. Shop owner characters can often not mind their stores randomly when you really need them to be there because you need to buy something or complete a quest objective. This becomes especially egregious when you open the paths to the forest and desert areas up as such NPCs will often vanish without a trace for a day or more, so you can't buy things you need from them or complete quests related to them until they show up again.
3. The quest system in this game is very rudimentary and weak. Most quests in the game are simple fetch or delivery quests, which when they bombard you with 10+ at any given time, can get extremely repetitive, boring, and mindless very quickly. You also have no good way of distinguishing main quests from simple fetch or delivery quests as all quests are in the same tab in your journal. This can make it hard to concentrate on specific objectives. Some quests also require you to obtain specific items or other conditions that you might need to wait multiple days, weeks, or sometimes months on to be able to complete, which is infuriating. Tutorials too at times can be extremely vague and confusing.
4. There are some bugs in the game that need immediate attention. Firstly, when completing objectives where different named NPCs come to your ranch in a sort of cutscene, this can randomly cause all your creatures to scatter and wander about your ranch outside their pens. To correct this problem, you either need to herd all your creatures back to their proper enclosures with you flute or else go to bed to advance to the next day. Second, I think the Music of the Night subquest related to the main quest to find more Parasaurolophus other than Lucky can cause a game-breaking bug where you cannot complete that subquest and advance the game. I was in the desert one night taming some creatures to bring back, we didn't get back to the ranch in time, so the game forced me to bed, going to the next day. It then triggered the interactive sequence where you are supposed to play music near the tablet at the entrance to the desert canyon to attract more Parasaurolophus, only it did so at the ranch. My game then went to a completely black screen where I could still hear music, but couldn't do anything. I forced closed the game using the Steam overlay and then restarted the game, which seemed to fix the problem. However, I have come to realize that quest may now be completely bugged out because every time I have gone to the entrance to the desert at night to play the flute, nothing happens. Suffice to say, I really do not want to have to restart my second playthrough because of this bug and I am afraid my game's progression is now completely broken because of that issue.
5. There were approximately 11 species cut from the game's launch (Amargasaurus, Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Dimorphodon, Diplodocus, Pteranodon, Pterodactylus, Quetzalcoatlus, Sarcosuchus, Spinosaurus, and Tupandactylus) which explains the lack of sauropod dinosaurs and pterosaurs. The developers have apparently expressed the desire to add these species back in later, so hopefully that does happen.
6. As others have stated, there are several things that point to missing features. There are resources like wood, stone, and fiber, but no real crafting mechanics. There is no fishing. There is no aquatic traversal. There are no additional areas to explore outside the three already mentioned.
7. The Dreamstone system is, I'll be blunt and unashamed to say, infuriating and senseless in its design. There is only a certain amount of them (45 in total) period. I'm not even sure at this point if you can even tame one of every creature in the game (there's 38 unique species in total). Some have claimed that it's due to engine limits or because the devs wanted each creature befriended to feel unique. To that I call their bluff. Players should be allowed the freedom to tame as many creatures as they want, they should not have to sweat if there are enough dreamstones to accomodate all the unique species, and if this game had been designed properly, it would be able to handle such things.
Overall, while there are aspects of the game that are fun, there are things that feel unfinished, the quest system is extremely weak, there are game-breaking bugs present, the hard cap on how many creatures you can befriend is utter lunacy, and the day-night cycle is so short and the tasks so repetitive that it feels pointless at times. This honestly feels like a big-budget mobile game at times. I do think the game has some fun elements, but for right now, my review remains neutral, leaning slightly more towards the negative until some of the major bugs, glitches, and other problems are fully addressed to my satisfaction. To potential buyers, I would wait until some of these things are fixed. To those who have already bought the game, we need to continue to make the devs aware of these problems in our reviews so they can be fixed.