7/10/2022
Banished is a city-building game released February 18, 2014 by Shining Rock Software for PC. You direct a group of exiled peoples as they strive to survive by gathering resources, building dwellings, farms, and other structures.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Price: Paid $6.79 out of MSRP $19.99
Recommended: No
One Word Description: Stagnant
- Pros: Good bones, good tutorials, intuitive, initially fun, many mods to significantly help
- Cons: Frustrating building system, difficulty, slow game speed, sound effects
Game Review
Before I start, I need to admit that it was not clear to me until I started writing this that the game was released back in 2014.
OKAY, so, after about an hour of gameplay, I found myself needing to complete all of the tutorials. That did the trick and the game flowed smoothly…at least for the next hour or two. For the record, I played on the easiest mode. My first city was going swimmingly until I realized I was missing some very important buildings and then everyone died, and I was left with no workers, dooming me. I then tried a second game/city which I restarted a few times to get a more favorable map. For that playthrough I was paranoid and would save constantly in case catastrophe struck. I did have to load the save once. There is a flow you have to figure out timewise to avoid widespread death. First, establishing several (really, all of them) food sources is necessary, then make sure you don’t clear-cut too much because the workers just do whatever, nothing in a particular order as far as I could tell. Then, a trading post is necessary for emergency low-food times (which is often), and then quickly establishing a blacksmith before everyone’s tools are broken and things go even more slowly. And then as the resources start to dwindle, you have to quickly build a quarry and a mine. However, the return on that isn’t too much and not only that but the death rate is high and mysterious if it wasn’t from starvation. Eventually, things go smoothly, though, and sometimes nomads will appear at the Town Center (if you’re able to afford building one) that you can allow to join the settlement or not. They provide much needed labor until they randomly disappear or demand housing even though there are already houses.
Just like any city-building/survival game, you need the basics: shelter and food. Banished successfully illustrates the significance of these two elements to survival. Everything else is just a side thought until those are taken care of. Graphics are fine, not the best or the worst. The music starts out good until it–and especially the sound effects, damn cows–grate upon the ears. In fact, that about sums up the game in a nutshell: Enjoyable initially before becoming aggravating.
My gripes are many.
- Building anything is supremely frustrating. Buildings are best built one by one because it is unnecessary to have all of the resources before setting the building plots. This in and of itself is not the problem. The major issue is that there’s no way to prioritize any particular building. For example, if you set the plots for 2 houses and a farm and in total you’d need 40 wood amongst the 3 buildings, the builders will allocate the wood slowly amongst the 3. They will still build the first house you set first, but not until the resources are spread apart. Apart from removing the plots, you can’t tell them to go build that farm first. And then, when they are finally building the house, it takes sooooo loooong for them to finish because they have to go get food or rest or get more items? Even though they already have the items there?
- That brings me to another gripe: it’s confusing how the villagers operate. Say that Jackie is the blacksmith and there’s an option to follow a particular villager around the map. Well, then later, Jackie is a miner and Lemmy is the blacksmith. Why? As I mentioned prior, the builder will randomly travel around the map instead of finally building that bridge that’s been in the works for the past 3 years.
- Housing is a problem, too. Each house as several slots in them for inhabitants. So, say that each house has 8 slots and there are 8 houses for a total of 64 openings. Even if there are 55 people, several people will complain of no housing despite there being 9 available slots.
- Mysterious dying. If there is a “low food” alert that’s been going on for too long, or “too cold” complaints, then people will die. You are alerted to their deaths. However, sometimes, people will disappear, but you get no notifications except that a farm plot has no worker all of the sudden. Do they leave? Do they die? UFO body snatchers?
- Unexplained elements. I guess the mysterious dying goes under this heading, too, but there are others like a pasture will get an infection. The game tells you absolutely nothing about how to fix it. The worker there will just disappear and then appear and then disappear. It never explains how to get more villagers. They have children, but it is not a controllable element. I can’t encourage or discourage growth. When there’s an excess of supplies, there seem to be no children born, but when there’s hard times, there seems to be way too many babies who end up dying.
- Mines and Quarries vs. Gathering resources with laborers. Both the quarries (stone) and mines (coal and iron) are both expensive to build but seem to not be worth the effort. The production from either one is by far slower than gathering in the wild with laborers and seem to yield much less, too. Perhaps they are last ditch efforts after exhausting the map.
Max playtime before quitting and uninstall: 5 hours.
Overall, it feels like a fraction of a game. The bones are solid, and the core mechanics are good. However, by the time all buildings are built, it just…stagnates. There’s nothing left aside from watching the villagers scurry about complaining of broken tools, the temperature, and hunger. I found myself wishing I could build a military or have some enemy come so that I could fight them. It needed an upgrade element to keep it going. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have that. The replay value is extremely low. I understand that it is now an 8-year-old game, but games like Age of Empires have been around for 25 years and offer much more! Therefore, I cannot recommend this game. I’m glad I bought it on sale because it is definitely not worth $20 MSRP to me. The initial allure quickly fades into frustration and soon into dissatisfaction.
