Forge of empires is a great game. I have been playing this game from the start going into the fifth year. One aspect of the game is guild vs guild, this has been the most fun part of the game imo. But innogames ignores the fact that this part of the game has been wrecked performance wise. People have been asking innogames to fix this for over 2 years. In my opinion this is a bad way of treating your gamers. I hope they will start to listen en do something about this.
Every game I evaluate starts with a 10/10 and I work backwards to the final score.
First I'm evaluating this game for what it is. A browser based game. This means I put less emphasis on Graphics, depth of play and Sound. The reason: It's a browser based game.... Nuff said.
Graphics: Again It's a browser based game. I've seen slightly better and worse in browser games. Effect on score 0
Sound. Not too bad actually. I had the sound on for a while when I started playing before I set it to mute (Because I play this game while I do boring paper work in my home office) Score +1
Gameplay: This game is quite good. There is a PvP aspect but it is optional. There's a significant singleplayer part which is awesome. You can't lose everything you sunk your time into to another player and the game doesn't reset. +1
Progression: The Pay-wall... Always a negative. It's not as bad as in other games, but the limited space and how the game kinda sorta wants to force you to use (diamonds) to pay to get extra space... I saw this as a kind of negative... It **** to be in an age and literally run out of the ability to build stuff because you don't have enough space to make it work.. also a REALLY frustrating part is getting Blueprints for Great Buildings. There's a RNG component to it and it seems rigged.... You need 1 of each copy of 9 to build the building... and through the RNG I've had 6-9 of each copy except 1 is at ZERO... I've had this happen to 3 Great Buildings... So the frustration of this is a -3 to the score all things considered.
Social. Not so good... The messaging system is kinda poorly designed. You can't tell who is actively online unless they send a message or talk and they can't see if you're online. The Live-chat is ok... but kinda limited as well. Score -2
Design: The game is well designed and flows well. It's unique in the Browser based games : Score +1
It's worth playing. It does kill time, and paying isn't ABSOLUTELY necessary but the RNG is frustrating. They could work on the social aspect a little as it's a draw back and even with good IRL friends we end up talking on Facebook and not in the game
Free to play, but extremely expensive to be competitive. All of the good ("premium") buildings cost real money. You need to spend $200+ to advance very far. On the plus side: the graphics are nice.
I played that game when I had a problem with my PC during COVID period (difficulty to repair it where I was at the time) and found it moderately fun and complex to be somehow engaging, I liked graphics and music with an ambiance which was not bad (that is why I have given note of 4), still it is a typical mobile/web browser game money grab, that is why it is not a good game overall, and one should not give any real money to such operation; I stopped playing that when the lenghty timers and other obstacles pushed me towards paying anything for that, I have just found other funny browser games. Again, do not be fooled into spending any real money on such kind of games !
First thing this game pushes you to use diamonds at almost every turn. It is not necessary to, but your progress will be very slow and will probably be painful. If you do spend $$$ you probably would need to spend 1000+ to really see results.
Graphics are decent for a game like this so I don't really have any negatives to say about this.
Gameplay has a lot of good things going for it, but also a lot of bad. The turn based battles involve some thought and strategy to it. If you are a good strategist you can take on a city an age or two higher than your current age and win if they don't have decent defenses. Currently there are four game modes world map where you fight npc opponents, Guild vs Guild where you and your guild fight other guilds for territory, the expedition where you can send your troops to fight to gain prizes for you and your guild and last your neighborhood where you can aid or attack other players. If you choose the latter route and win you get the option to plunder a building. Sometimes you can plunder it right away other times you need to wait a while til you get the option. The neighborhood system isn't really the best. You can be put into a hood with someone with tanks while you are still using swords or if you are lucky it could be the other way around. Players have complained about this problem and a lot of other ones for years and the Devs have consistently ignored the complaints.
Communication options could be better. You have a Global chat bar with guild and neighborhood tabs under it that you can use to communicate with other players. A messaging system that you can use to talk to your guild or an individual player, but it seems very wonky.
Overall I think FOE is alright looking game run by lousy devs that don't really care about their players. Most of the negative reviews on here are still true today because the devs don't really listen and just listen half heartedly to make it seem like they care. If you want to play it go ahead, but I wouldn't recommend spending my money or too much time in this game.
SummaryForge of Empires is a browser-based strategy game that allows players to create a city and develop it from the Stone Age and onward throughout the centuries. Players can create a vast empire through military campaigns and skillful dealings.