I have 100s of hours in Banished, and I’ve been wanting to play a similar game, but with a slightly different feel. When I saw this one is on sale, I decided to give it a go, and so far I like it. The first person mode is a nice touch, and I enjoy using it every now and then. It looks beautiful too, the forests have a nice lush feel, which I appreciate as a plant-obsessed person. I decided to choose a no buildings start, and I was pleasantly surprised that I start with just two villagers, as I’ve always enjoyed the Banished CC Adam & Eve start. But, there are several things I would like to be added/changed:
- Resource mining is way too slow. As I said before I like the first person mode, but it’s not very interesting to mine some stone if it lasts so long. Decrease the amount of resource you get per item, or make buildings require more, but make mining faster because it’s just too boring to watch.
- On the same topic, the sound FX for mining isn’t synchronised with the animation, which is immersion breaking. Also, the lumberjack doesn’t seem to have a sound FX at all.
- The abilities in the first person mode are never explained anywhere in the game, except for the 1st one in the tutorial. I found on the internet that 2nd is planting trees and 5th is greeting, but what about the 3rd, 4th, and 6th? I prefer to know what something does before using it and then regretting.
- Some settings such as reflections are greyed out. I was surprised because while the default settings usually aren’t max for me (after all, my laptop has its age), I can change them to whatever I want. Then I googled it and it turns out it just is a placeholder and haven’t been implemented yet. It should be indicated in the game that something is a future plan.
- Speed up walking (at least in the first person mode) when villagers aren’t carrying anything. I’m not a fast walker myself, but even I’m not that slow.
- Add smaller storage options. When I start with two people, they won’t need a massive barn or a huge warehouse any time soon. Add a small storage shack, crates or stockpiles (for items like logs or stone), carts, barrels etc. Small size, small capacity, and better suited for the needs. In Banished I’ve always liked placing tiny storage places near workplaces for villages to dump their products quickly, and I’m not going to place a huge barn in front of my gatherer hut, because not only isn’t it necessary, but also doesn™ look good at all.
- Buildings should have smaller footprints, which match the model. Or at the very least, the decorative 3D grass should be removed only from under the model and not from the whole footprint, because now I end up with ugly barren stripes around buildings and I can’t even build a road there to cover them.
- Add ‘ghost’ decorative plants, i.e. plants I can place anywhere, even growing in the middle on a house if I feel like it. The shouldn’t require any resources or work or provide any bonuses – just eye candy for the player. That could also be a compensation for the footprints, because then I could just add the grass back.
- Add smaller version of the lumberjack (can be slower with production), and preferably other buildings as well. to cut a few logs for the winter I shouldn’t need a massive workplace, just a 1x1 tree stump. A 2x1 finishing pier for one worker, a 4x4 school for just few students and so on. We need smaller buildings. Mods for Banished that add tiny buildings are my favourites.
- Add education info to the villager panel. I still have no idea if my starting pair is educated or not.
- Add abilities in the first person mode that let villages interact on a different level with their family than just greet them like strangers, such as hugging their spouse or children, and it should increase happiness more than greeting.
That’s probably all for now, I’ll post more after I play longer and build a larger village, because I definitely want it!