What's this all about?

I'm a guy with way too many interests and way too much time on my hands. A while back I realized that I spend a lot of my time just telling people I know about the various media I consume, so I just figured what the hell, let's just lay it all out. On here, you'll see my reviews of video games, films, books, tv shows, and more, but I've also decided to upload my hobbies here as well because why not?

Banished: Finishing the Job

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The production quarter of what would become Brandthold's old town. This market has been serving the people of this small city for over seventy years, and all without a disaster.

Banished is one of those games that isn't quite there, always sitting in my Steam library in an unfinished state, and it will always be an unfinished game. The creator walked away from it years ago, leaving a deceptively simple city building game that feels like it has real potential. Fortunately, it has a small modding community that saw the potential of the easy to pick up grid-based gameplay. I'd strongly recommend the game personally, but in all honesty playing it modded is a must. Unmodified, the base game acts as a good tutorial, with basic buildings (seventeen in total with zero upgrades) and no need to refine materials. Once you've gotten the hang of the gameplay, I'd recommend installing Colonial Charter, which is a megamod (mod composed of other mods) that really ramps up the complexity of the game while offering a massive increase in options for differing playthroughs. You'll have to deal with supply chains and proper storage in order to ensure consistent production, and I found that for quite a number of buildings I had to build two or three other buildings in order to build the components or supplies needed for said building. It can be a pain in the ass, but the satisfaction of watching your bustling town thrive and grow is so much larger than in the base game, which largely consisted of building several smaller towns. It's not a very complex game (hence the unusually short length of this review), but despite the barrenness and unfinished nature of the base game, I'd strongly recommend playing Banished (modded of course), one of the games I keep coming back to every year.

Expanding Brandthold to the river for increased iron refining was just the start of a period of growing pains, and a slum of sorts with a new market would sprout up to house the new farmers, traders, ironworkers, butchers, etc. that would make the wealth of Bandthold skyrocket in time.



I know this one was short, but in all honesty it's a very basic game, next up will be 2019's Knives Out, and after that hopefully I'll have more time for these as the semester comes to a close.

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