At the time or writing, I have about 70 hours in this game and have been having an absolute BLAST.From managing your estate(s) to managing your farm(s) to managing your province(s) all the while cultivating and increasing baselines for your clan and strengthening them from one generation to the next is an addicting gameplay cycle. Developers are incredibly active and responsive to the community which is actually why I decided to post this review at this time rather than waiting as I had intended. I love this game SO MUCH that as I'm playing I find myself thinking of improvements and things I would love to see in the most whimsical and non critical way possible. Along that vein, I decided to post those ideas here, maybe some other people will resonate with them, and perhaps the devs have some of them in the plan already even, they are intuitive devs as well! I want to make it clear that nothing in this post is meant as criticism as I've done nothing but immensely enjoy this game and the improvements made already in the short time I've had with the game. I would HIGHLY reccommend this game to anyone that's even slightly intrigued, it's worth the sticker. That said; here are some things I have been thinking about as I engage with the game: First off, I would love to see an expanded Fief management system, maybe your village or town can become its own Province and enter the political stage, or maybe village and town management can offer something that provincial and farm management cannot. I love the hunting feature, almost wish there were an optional mini game that i could play for higher might yields for the effort invested? I'm sure the devs have big ideas for fief management already, but the idea is to include every improvement I would like to see, even the obvious ones just in case. When shopping in province, there should be a tooltip that displays how many of an item we currently have and where they are, IE which estate's library vs in general inventory. This would be helpful in determining which books we need to buy when combing the bookstores. along that vein, a "Collections" or "compendium" page that provides a list of all possible collectible items would be helpful from a discovery and completionist standpoint, I have no clue if i have collected all possible books in the game, for example. Regarding Libraries specifically, the "fill to max" function should cap at a certain number of copies of each book, rather than stack in 65 copies of the same book from the general inventory. Items that give more environment score, or perhaps simply an expanded asset catalog for customization options, as well as a mechanic based off of environment, like a hidden luck mechanic but it influences relationship gained during parties instead, and perhaps there are unique events based off of this mechanic that yield unique or rare items. this provides more of an incentive for the party mechanic than relationship with semi-random clan members and would also help to provide a money sink for our basic level currency. secret society mechanics for the skills, medicine, sorcery, etc. introducing more political factions than just Empire and Rebel would increase the complexity of intrigue and the fact that there can be sorcerers or doctors from both factions in the one society overlapping could create opportunity for very interesting intrigue. I have a few ideas regarding the Family Tree screen as well. There should be a search function so I can easily find the one specific clan member I opened the screen to find. In the News Menu, the bracketed names should also provide links that directly open the family tree with that character profile when clicked, and mouse-over would ideally show that same information as a tooltip for quick info. (the model for this would imo definitely be crusader kings III, with the little timeout circle that locks the window open if you hover the mouse for a few seconds, that mechanic is SO SMOOTH.) I would love tabs in the family tree screen that allow me to pivot the view of the tree based on location of their residence, so I can easily see which branch families are residing at which estates. I would love a new tab in the "teach" interface for an individual that shows total monthly yield of all their stat gains from various sources so I know exactly what kind of growth I'm looking at from the cumulative efforts of the school, their reading, and private tutor, for example. I can see those gains individually and add them up, but it would be nice to see them all summarized in one place, this would really help in predicting mastery timelines and optimizing when to switch their reading subject from the library of swap out a differently specialized private tutor. I would like character portrait editing, it would be helpful to have a visual way to discern branch families, by dressing all the members of one branch in blue and another in red for example, or all Might main stat characters wear yellow while Writing Mains are in pink; however each player would like to utilize a color coding system, this would be helpful in that regard. for "noble" or royal family members marrying into your clan, perhaps they have different assets for clothing but still afford color changes to this end. I should be able to change the book a character is reading even when they are in progress with one book already, provided that character isn't away from home and would have access to the library otherwise. sometimes they auto assign a book that is too complex for their level, or I realize that they have maxed a skill and need to focus elsewhere and it can be tricky trying find out when they are going to finish their current book and make the change, or risk forgetting that they have been taken off auto borrow and then loose skill gains for however many years until I realize what happened and remedy that. I'd love it if progress in that book were saved and they could return to it late and pick it back up though, perhaps with a penalty of completion percentage for contrast, as if they had to re-familiarize themselves with the content. on a related concept, it would be nice if the auto borrow function were a little more in tune with skill level, it seems they love to take out +4 books that will take forever to finish rather than start with the lower level books according to their skill level. I should be able to assign clan members and their spouses as teachers/private tutors to underage clan members and it should cost their monthly stamina to do so, and consume any auto function they would otherwise have. Adult aged clan members that do not have a government post or are not on active military deployment should have a monthly task option to complete gig work in province towns to increase their stats slowly over time. as a branch to this concept, we should also be able to assign "go hunting" as a monthly task once the fief is unlocked. In the Province screen, I should be able to pin clan members to the top of the selection screen so that I can manually grind their stats a little easier, rather than scrolling halfway down the list to find that one clan member I want to write this letter because their writing stat is just THAT low When the emperor issues a quest to reclaim province within one year, that notification should be date-stamped so the player knows exactly what sort of timeline they are working with. either a tooltip, countdown timer, or just a simple date-stamp would suffice I think. When dispatching troops to quell rebellion in a province that you govern or are Marshall of, there should be a results screen for that interaction. when i dispatched the troops, the rebellion fires on the world map disappeared so I figured the mechanic worked, but confirmation would be nice, and this is also an opportunity for random events to trigger for Military or Political efforts. I cannot recommend this game enough, I am LOVING it and cant wait to see more!
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