Tribe: Primitive Builder Review (McBrite)
Having to thumb this down actually pains me... I wanted to love this soooo bad!
In the beginning of the game, this sets out to be a 10/10 or 9/10 game!
Graphics aren't brilliant, but fast and pretty enough to enjoy with all the different buildings, harvesting and stuff...
Where it hits a COMPLETE WALL is toward the end of Act 1, beginning of Act 2...
There you notice you only ever had the ILLUSION of choice.
If you haven't played the game EXACTLY how the dev intended it, you're screwed now...
And since it's your first playthrough, you won't have been playing it like that, so you're done. Might as well restart from zero or basically tear down 50% of everything you built and reroute your entire economy...
You'll be walking back and forth forever... And it's not like you haven't been doing that so far...
You've been pinged back and forth between the elder and the cave countless times already and that's not a short, easy walk, either... But now you walk EVEN FURTHER, it's like 10 minutes one way. Unless your setup magically matches what the devs envisioned for it to be.
Then there are the MYRIAD of tiny annoyances and weird/stupid balance descisions, that make no sense whatsoever...
- Level system is pointless and the boni are really stupid... Example harvesting: You get 2 rather than 1 resource every blue moon... That's at level 40... Why not just make me harvest faster? That's all I ever wanted in the first place?
- Why even give me the illusion I can build my stuff where I want? All of it really only makes sense in certain places, set up a certain exact way. Either fix that, or just make it set locations like the building for end of Act 1.
- Walking simulator deluxe: Not THAT bad in the beginning, since you'll be harvesting everything along the way, but I just spent 20 minutes running literally from 1 end of the map to the other... TWICE... Autorun you say? No auto run...
- The 5 little buff shrines make literally ZERO sense and I found them WAY after I should have done. Pointless, just remove them or add a proper amount and explain them to the player...
- It's like only the dev EVER played/playtested this before release.
- Economy is ALL messed up... You'll build the exact same building like 5 times only to find out that you still can't automate it fully...
- You get the medium house way to late in the game. Not game breaking, but feels really weird.
- Why is (for example) the Axe called "Crude Axe", I thought I'd be able to build better Tool versions later on. Nope... So just call it Axe, don't make the names imply there will be more.
- map feels really weird in places. Example beginning Act 2: You run and run for ages on what's basically a highway with nothing on it. Just make the map smaller and denser and/or give me fast travel way earlier... Maybe with a special building for it...
The list is literally endless, but I'll stop it here.
I HOPE so much they'll fix this AND even make a Tribe 2 with much bigger scope, maybe procedural generation, less weight on story and so on. The concept I'm completely in love with! But currently it just get's let down by the lack of polish, bad balancing and gameplay descisions and so on.