Chinese Frontiers Steam Charts & Stats

The game is buggy in places, but I still enjoyed it. TL;DR up top: I'm torn between a negative in the hopes that the feedback is taken more seriously, and a positive to encourage development, because I'd love to see a more polished sequel. I'll opt for the latter for now - I really hope they expand on this game and take into account feedback. [b] The Good [/b] Lets start off with the good. The reason I bought the game in the first place was for a relaxed, solo building game, which is what it does. I like the automation. I like that the schematics are fixed - it keeps the designing minimal, it keeps things thematic and simple. After you're finished you can genuinely stand back and feel some virtual pride in building a village or bell tower. Its not really about expressing your creativity, but it's satisfying nonetheless. Also the environments are pretty. [b] The Bad [/b] Separating this out by intentionality, around all the building there is a frustrating amount of bloat. If feels like under what is promised there is very generic bloat, which is a shame because I believe that could've been used to lean into the core game. [list] [*]The fetch quests just feel like pointless busy work - I don't want to explore the desert or market or whatever, I want to build. [*]Worse still, is that they are for some reason MORE rewarding than the main quest. Once I unlocked all the recipes/seeds/vistas, I didn't do anymore because that was already frustrating enough because... [*]The character level rewards seem arbitary, and the benefits felt marginal. I stopped harvesting as soon as I could. The building boons were okay, but most of the time I could get the pile in the build site, so placing 5 vs 2 per 2 second trip was a convenience at best. The movement buffs was the biggest benefit. The rest were just ways to diminish my next gripe. [*]The cooking and survival aspects are contributing nothing for me when the obstacles are sourcing ingredients. No more open world survival elements. It's finished. We don't need that in every game. I've had enough breathing in the wild, I'm here literally creating civilisation, which is arguably the exact opposite. It's all been done. No more. I made the first set of purple tier food, and made my village make like 100 and that's all I ate the entire game. I just saw that it refilled hunger and thirst completely and that's all I used. [*]Some of the build materials you can just steal from areas and no one around cares? On the one hand, I felt dumb for automating the production of 100s of bricks and tiles, but it did come in handy later. Would it have been faster to just steal them from the zone instead of creating them myself? unsure... [spoiler] probably :( [/spoiler] [*]I don't know why the foundry isn't automatable? Feels like that was an afterthought, since you don't need it for much, but why should I shovel coal when I have a dozen mooks sitting on their hands around me... [/list] I wish all those sides elements played more in sync with what your actual purpose is - to build, instead of playing errand boy. I'm loathed to be back seat game designer in a review, so all I'll say is I found myself wanting more and bigger build sites (industries, villages, etc), or even maybe company management instead of the existing bloat. To that end, I wish you could hire labourers to help you ON site. My village ended up with 41 workers, but I never needed more than about 10 at a time. I should mention to those that it matters to, the story is forgettable and there is no combat. Some may consider this a deal breaker, but I think it's better for it. China will grow larger. I was initially frustrated when I discovered there was a second round of builds at every location after you finally finish your "apprenticeship". I was ready to put the game down at that point, but then it felt like a victory lap (or keystone if you will) so I thought I might as well. I quickly realised THIS was what I wanted the entire time - just to be pointed at a big project, with a list of materials needed. It brought me back on board, and I felt more motivated to just lay bricks and sand for 3 hours to be able to sit back and think "damn, that's a nice wall". [b] The Ugly [/b] Finally, the parts that are unintentionally bringing it down for me. There are bugs, as has been complained about, including new ones introduced post release. Here's a few that I personally experienced: [list] [*]uncompleteable quest: "wait for worker to return with wood". The community solution to rollback the game version to when it was completeable wasn't worth the effort imo. [*]main quest line in the fortress doesn't provide you with the required materials. [b] You can resolve this by talking to the NPC again, and they will offer to "reset your materials"[/b] [*]general frame drops and stutter. For me it was thankfully only annoying, and not game breaking like it is for some. Collisions are odd, so that might be related. [*]the compass orientation was off by 90 degrees at the fort and bridge (and it seems to scroll the wrong way relative to objective markers, which is confusing) [*]respawned with death menu still open. Had to save/reload. [*]there were points where I was immune to thirst and hunger depletion but not stamina. This seemed to happen after completing a main quest build, but it wasn't clear if that was intented or not, which is fine. However bottoming out stamina also seemed to prevent it from regenerating. Resolved when changing zones, but still annoying when side/regional quests involve a lot of running around. [/list] The devs have mentioned the reception was less than they hoped for and due to this resources are stretched, which sure sounds like corpo babble for abandonware. However, I will give them the benefit of doubt since my time was mostly positive in the end, and ultimately knowing this in advance, I would still likely purchase it for the $15 or so (as part of a bundle).

Relaxed building simulator with detailed and well researched buldings. I never got the impression that a building step would not work in reality. The core of the game focus on builiding and resource collection can be automated before it becomes tedious. It could use some quality of live features like pinning required resource on the HUD or improved skaffolding construction.

Cosy, uncomplicated, and decently pretty. Like assembling LEGO sets with some extra wandering around.

Quite a fun little game, if a bit buggy. The only real complaint i have is that i want more monuments to build, they really don't need to be related to the Great Wall like how it is currently. I'd easily pay $5 or $10 for a Forbidden City dlc, but let us build the entire thing and not just the centerpiece.