Quite frankly, I'm disappointed.
I would rather play Age of Empires 1 or 2.
The game loads slower than a full 5000+ modded Sims 3. The graphics are fuzzy, blurry, and flicker relentlessly. The frame drops are abysmal.
The opening menu looked promising. The UI is nice, and the daily quest area is a nice touch. I'm really enjoying games these days that encourage you to open it each day and do a challenge or quest. Loved it in Slay the Spire.
This weekend beta is for stress testing their multiplayer servers, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a look at the game to see if I would even like it. Considering it's a $100 game in AUD.
I didn't want to join other people though, so I set up a private server -- just me and some AI -- and prepared to play.
Now, I'm sure the following is just because it's beta and therefore we don't get to experience all the things we could, but I was severely disappointed to see that we could only play as one of four civilisations. I couldn't adjust the map much either. Could only choose a gigantic size and a basic map layout and biome.
I couldn't choose the colours of the players. I usually like choosing yellow for myself instead of default blue.
Once selecting the very, very, very few choices available, I sat in the above loading screen for nearly two minutes.
That's nothing to do with my hardware. My hardware is fine. My partner had the same issue and his hardware is better than mine. It's just that incredibly slow.
These screenshots really do not show how bad the game looks.
Move the camera, and shadows would flicker like mad. Would hate to be an epileptic attempting to play this.
Zoom in and out, and even though you're supposedly getting 60fps it would look like you were getting 15.
I, unfortunately, didn't really get a chance to actually try out the gameplay. I set up a lumber camp, mining camp, built a couple of houses, and advanced to the next age.
I like how when you advance to the next age, you get the option to build a building in line with how you'd like your civilisation to proceed.
I couldn't get much further than that though without subjecting myself to the risk of headaches and migraines. I just can't look at bad, flickering, god-awful graphics. I am NOT a graphics snob. I happily play pixel games, things from the 90s and early 2000s, etc. But when it comes to unoptimised things like this... my eyes just can't handle it.
This was meant to be a stress test weekend, but judging by Reddit and the Steam Discussions pages, a lot of people are highly unimpressed with the general state of the game and its highly lacking optimisation.
May the devs not rush out this game as soon as possible. 🤞
Until next time. 🙃
All screenshots in this game are courtesy of me, 