Overall and Final Verdict
After reading my gameplay section you might feel like you would have to hate yourself to put yourself through all of the frustrations of your settlement failing like I did. That might be a little true, but I haven’t played a game in years that has pulled me in like Banished has. The combination of strategy, risk, and reward keep me glued to my game planning out my next project and slowly chipping away at the achievements that are built right into steam. Even when things go badly and I have to start over I can’t wait to jump back in and give it another try.
I’m unsure what kind of life I will end up getting out of the game over an extended period of time, but even just a few days after launch I have no doubts that I have already gotten my money’s worth out of the game. Other than the few bugs I ran into. My biggest complaint about the game is the lack of multiplayer. It’s not that it NEEDS multiplayer, but having the chance to share the experience with others would bring an additional dynamic to the game. I would also like to see the games end or at least ask you if you want it to end once your last people die off. There are a few launch day bugs, I ran into an issue with my main map that causes a crash when auto saving. I hope that the developer will be able to work out the issues that come up, but even so I have had a lot fewer issues than I had with the new SimCity for example.
Banished isn’t for everyone though. You really need to have an interest in city builders and strategy games. If you don’t I doubt you are going to enjoy the game to much. It also isn’t the type of game that you can jump in and play for a little while and then stop. Once you get going, much like a good game of Civ 5, you might look up to find that it’s not even the same day or even week as when you started. When I started playing Banished it was launch day and now look it is three days later and I have 43 hours on record, you do the math.
