Farthest Frontier

Mountain Biker said:

This comes out as early access on August 9. The couple of videos that are available make it look like it should be pretty solid, and knowing what they did with Grim Dawn, (still making regular updates to this day) it should have lots of content once it's eventually finished.

I'll definitely be picking this up on August 9.

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Same. I watched the Splattercat video on it and was disappointed that I couldn't get it right now. I've been flailing around looking for a game to play, and this will definitely consume a few days/weeks over time.

I bought it and played it for a few hours last night. I'll give my impressions, which might be a little long-winded. tl;dr I like it, but it needs work (which it should be getting anyway, being early access).

I like it, but I'm gonna say that it is a little slow. Even playing it at maximum speed, I felt like not a lot was going on most of the time. It also doesn't help that there is currently not really any sort of tutorial at all beyond maybe the first two buildings, so you don't really know what you should be building. Obviously food is always a priority, and then you realize you need a well, and you need more houses, etc. But except for a couple of times, like when you run out of water and something pops up telling you to build a well, there isn't much easing you into the game. It just sort of plops you in and lets you build whatever the fuck you want. Which will eventually be good, but you'll restart colonies many times early on once you realize you missed something vital.

Playing at the normal difficulty it takes a bit before you have to worry about raiders, which is nice. Aggressive animals can be a thing, and bears will fuck your shit up, but overall it isn't something you really need to worry about until several years in. Once again, however, there is no actual tutorial saying, "Yo, raiders might start coming soon, build a tower or something." The raiders just appear. Again, not a huge deal once you experience it the first time, but that's how almost everything in the game is, you find it out when it happens. In the meantime, you build a Pub for instance, because it gives a big bonus to desirability of homes near it. Only to find out that a Pub requires Beer. Beer is made in a Brewery. A Brewery is a Tier 3 building, whereas the Pub is a Tier 2. Tier 3 requires leveling up your Town Hall again, which will take a pretty significant investment this time (the first upgrade wasn't too terrible) and likely isn't going to happen anytime soon. So now you have a worthless Pub sitting there until you can upgrade that Town Hall, then make a Brewery, which will also require grain or honey or whatever else (no clue, haven't made it that far yet). That could just be an early access thing where some of the paths are screwed up, but I doubt it. A minimal tutorial would at least tell you that you don't need a Pub until much later in the game, and don't waste time and resources on it now because holy shit raiders are coming soon so build that fucking tower first!

Some other things have similar issues. In order to build a Windmill (Tier 2) to grind wheat into flour, you need a part from a Smithy (Tier 3).

Despite my complaints above, I still enjoy the game, and like any others of the ilk it will just take getting familiar with the optimized build paths.

A couple of non-build complaints that immediately occurred to me, that I hope get modified at least a little. First and foremost, trees. Technically they are an infinite resource, but just like the real world if you clear cut an area, it ain't growing back anytime soon (or ever for the purposes of this game I'd imagine). If you selectively harvest, in theory they will grow back. How much that actually happens in the game I am having trouble determining. I selectively cut out some areas, leaving plenty of trees all around, and I don't notice anything growing back. Maybe it is and I'm just not aware of it happening really slowly or something, but it isn't something obvious. Almost every other game of this sort has a forester or similar building that will carefully maintain a grove of trees for you, and this one badly needs one. People need firewood (or charcoal, which comes from firewood) to stay warm during the winter, and all the buildings need wood, so you are constantly going through wood. The game has a fucking Nightsoil Collector for composting human poop and making fertilizer for the fields (oh holy shit, don't get me started on how confusing crop growing is the first time you try it), I think it can have a Forester building pretty easily.

Stone will eventually run out, as will the other nodes like clay, iron, coal, etc. No clue how big the actual maps are though, so perhaps you'll never use enough for it to matter?

Animals are a fucking pain, in that they are too scarce, even with it turned up. Animal hides are fairly important for shit like shoes, and sometimes it is practically impossible to get them outside of random wolf attacks. All the animals have specific nodes where they can be hunted, so let's say you find a sweet deer node. Well, it can be over-hunted and depleted completely. How do I gauge that though? I had only one hunter out hunting, and he decided to kill off all the deer, and despite exploring pretty far out I couldn't find another node. There is no setting that I can find for "leave enough to replenish the herd." There is literal crop rotation stuff including pest suppression, disease resistance, clay vs. sand content, etc. but there isn't a button to tell the hunter to not overhunt? You can take away his job and leave the building unstaffed, but that requires manually keeping tabs on the deer. For that matter, you build a firewood chopper and that motherfuckers starts chopping like a champ. How much does he chop? As much as he fucking can! Same with the plank cutter. If you don't pay attention, suddenly you're all out of logs. Which then leads to the whole, how many trees can I safely cut down dilemma. Again like most other games, there needs to be a quota you can set so they stop at a certain stock level. Maybe there is and I just don't know where it is...which is where some sort of tutorial might be helpful.

I know I've talked a lot of negative here, but it really is a very good game. It just needs polish so that something stupid doesn't blindside you. Like people's shoes wearing out and them not being able to work because your cobbler can't make new shoes because your hunter killed all the deer and you have no more hides.

In reflection, I *think* the intent might be to build a Trading Post (which I have done, but it doesn't tell me shit about how to use it, just have to fuck around) and trade for some of this shit with gold. Like the Windmill above that needed a part from the Smithy. Maybe I'm supposed to decide if I want to wait until Tier 3 or it is worth spending gold (and waiting for a trader to have one) to get the part I need for the Windmill. Same with beer for the Pub, or hides for shoes, etc. Maybe that is the intent. But if so...not thrilled. It takes a lot to generate a lot of gold, and many later buildings even have a gold upkeep that if you can't pay it, it stops providing the benefit. Most decorations, the intent of which is to increase the desirability of homes so they can be upgraded, require gold as well. So not excited about paying gold for other stuff. Oh, and I'm pretty sure soldiers will need gold for pay, but I haven't made it to actually building them yet so I'm just assuming.

Anyway, that's my long-winded review after playing for several hours last night. Maybe I'll change my tune on some of it once I learn what I'm really supposed to be doing, or maybe enough people will say the same things I do and a patch will fix them, or maybe that's something other people enjoy just the way it is.

I do think $30 is a little steep for where it is at in early access too. I was expecting $20, but paid anyway because Grim Dawn is amazing and I got hundreds of hours out of that. I am not upset I paid the cost because I feel pretty confident they will work on this game for years to come, improving it along the way. But it does seem a bit high for where it is at right now.

Hateyou said:

If you guys didn’t notice, you can get 15% off if you already own Grim Dawn and buy FF through the bundle instead of on its own. Nice way to give previous supporters a little discount.

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Why can't I triggered reaction this? Fuck, I didn't see that. I bought it the moment it was released so I don't know if it just wasn't available or I was too dumb to notice. Past the two hour return window at this point of course. Oh well.