City Builders are one of my favorite video game genres, and frequently my first choice for a relaxing single player game. I waited until Farthest Frontier came out of early access to give it a real run through, and although I did end up spending a good amount of time here, I don’t think it was worth the wait.
The positives – there are a lot of buildings, development tiers and an interesting research tree. This provides for a lot of customization at the beginning of the game, and frequent feelings of progress. The art is nice and the scenery is well developed. Although there are a few bugs, the raiders that challenge your base create a meaningful military component to the game.
On the other hand, the pacing for the game is quite slow. A lot of time is spent waiting, even if you have your speed increased. Even more frustrating, for a game that gets this complex, it is hard to stay on top of the critical components of your city. For example, you know how many months of food your city has in storage, but there is no readout on how much food is going to be made in the next year. Are your people going to starve? Maybe! Find out soon. Similarly, you can’t see whether any of your other resources are going to run out, leaving some building useless until it is too late. A more detailed resource analysis would make the entire process of waiting for time to pass substantially more tolerable. Instead, much of this game is just waiting to see what part of your city breaks down, instead of being able to plan for eventualities.
It’s a fine game still, so I give it a 5.
My Score
OpenCritic Average