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- Kalypso
- Kalypso
- Kalypso
- Kalypso
Urban Empire
Released On: Jan 20, 2017
62
5.3
All Platforms
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 21 Critic Reviews
62
5% Positive
1 Review
1 Review
86% Mixed
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
5% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 21 Critic Reviews
62
5% Positive
1 Review
1 Review
86% Mixed
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
5% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
While exploring the many intricacies can be downright frustrating, and the political game can get difficult, Urban Empire is a game unlike any other in its genre. I’ve never played a sim that actually follows the rules of the democracy we have today. That alone makes it a unique enough title to at least try out. I just wish there was a little extra polish or at least a more thorough explanation on how the smaller intricacies in the game work.
Urban Empire takes from kind of titles, like Cities: Skyline, Civilization, Democracy and Crusader Kings, but its interpretation of the city building games is not completely successful.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 39 User Ratings
5.3
31% Positive
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
36% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
33% Negative
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 39 User Ratings
5.3
31% Positive
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
36% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
33% Negative
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
This game is fantastic. I will admit, it has a large learning curve. The creator of this game made an excellent new genre of City Building, Real Time Strategy, and Turn based gaming. I have been playing city builders since the original Sim City. This game has all of the fun of those games, with an added element of politics. You must learn to work with, and destroy, the political parties to get the things you want passed. This makes it a very realistic game, and fun once you get the hang of it.
I really believe that those who gave this game a low score should take another look. It definitely takes several plays to figure it out. But, that is OK, because once you do, it is a ton of fun.
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PC
After a complete play-through, I believe I can judge the game in its entirety. For a strategy lover like myself, it was honestly a very refreshing experience with different elements of gameplay than what we're used to see in this category of games.
Obviously, it really lacks polish on some aspects that were largely reviewed by other criticisms (lack of explanations, uselessness of infrastructures, weird taxation system, shortage of data sets ...) but overall, I was positively surprised by the mechanics and delighted to see my economy flourish.
I believe the game tries to paint an accurate picture of the life of a mayor having to lead a city, with multiple statistics at hand without knowing exactly what investment will modify citizen needs. Another thing most reviewers apparently dismissed was to spread large investments as institutions on multiple districts. I continued to create districts at a fast pace and ended up covering the entire map around the middle of the IV era and I can tell you money flowed (I ended up the game with a capital of 76M and a monthly net income of 1450k), the key is having your city grow by creating new districts (without any infrastructure, at least before the last era).
10 is maybe not an accurate note but I did put it to offset the abusive 0-2 scores. The game is worth a solid 8.
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PC
Overall, Urban Empire is a solid outing for Kalypso and has a nice blend of city building and political management that players of the genre should find interesting. It has flaws but its new perspective on an old formula is something that can be explored further in the future.
If you always wanted to experience boring council meetings first hand, Urban Empire got you covered. The political machinations of this so-called city ruler are presented way too dry to elicit any other response than eye-rolling. While the part about building a city and researching new technologies is way more fun, there simply isn’t enough feedback for players to penetrate the game’s intricacies. With only a few, small maps to build on and no mod support, Urban Empire makes a poor case for itself.
Urban Empire aims to offer an interesting mix of political intrigue with city-building creativity and management. However, it doesn't give anywhere near enough information or allow enough freedom to make it as compelling as the idea could have been.
Quotation forthcoming.
To some extent, Urban Empire is a game that plays itself. Buildings grow higher and higher, factories crop up on empty plots, citizens open up new shops - all without your input. It could've been a fun zen experience, but everything is artificial and lifeless, and, despite milktoast graphics, the game at times is too sluggish.
Urban Empire has ambitious goals in trying to work as a city builder and political simulator, yet by attempting to cobble a game that will appease fans of both genres, it ends up being a rather restrictive and confusing city builder, with a rather bland political layer. Sure, the soundtrack is pretty good and I love how you can roleplay as generations of mayors that belong to one of four dynasties, but those are the only things that are really going for this game. Tropico seems to be the preferable choice if you want something that strikes the perfect balance between city builder and political sim; Reborn Games have given their best shot at it, but they're not quite there yet.
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PC
Urban Empire is not a city building game.
In Urban Empire your main goal will be to stay in control. If you want to place something as trivial as a police station, you have to be able to pay for it, pay the service costs, have your political allies and enemies approve it during a vote and be sure that the running costs don't kill your city long time.
Personally, i didn't have any technical issues but there's some reports in the Forums you might wanna check out. The overall gameplay is fine but feels lacking in some aspects and now and then it's not exactly clear how some things play together until you've done some trial and error. However, overall it still makes for a good and unique game.
If you're looking for a city builder, there are better options available. If you're looking for something you have to work into and quite time intensive, but is quite rewarding this might be for you.
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PC
For a more detailed review, find "LordMalloc's" review but to summarize, the game's concept has potential but it was poorly executed. The game does a poor job explaining itself. It is as if they failed to test the game with actual gamers before releasing it. Anyone testing their "finished" product would realize that a lot of the concepts are poorly explained. Explaining the concept is very important for a game that is basically a new genre.
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PC
This game is great in concept, and poor in implementation. I have played 3 games now, trying to work out various strategies and can say this:
1) This appears to be based on some designers idea of how politics work. Choices you make may or may not do what you think they do, and there is no information denoting what the overall effect might be. I don’t need the game to let me min/max, but I would like to at least understand who supports various initiatives, and what they are likely to vote for. It feels like there is some formula, but it is very unclear what that is. This makes every decision very frustrating.
2) When information is presented, it is done in an awkward and confusing manner. For example there are lots of stats about each district available, but none of them cover “what does this district need?” or “How do I address problem X?” So even when there is info available, it is still frustrating just trying to make sense of it.
3) The engine designer must have done the UI also because the way things like bonuses are presented is horrible. “Sales Bonus! Demand -10%!”. Even if the engine calculated a bonus as -10% for something, why in the world would you present it like that. Its just backwards.
4) Citizen desires, which they call The Wheel of Life are presented as offsets to the current era target. So you have a hard time understanding how much better you need to make things. They should just show it as “11/15” instead of “-4”. Even then, once you learn to understand what it means, how to solve that issue is unclear.
As I said, this game could be really good and after playing it a few times I can see where they were going with it. But the developer just did a very bad job of putting it into action in a way that makes sense to most people. Sure you can learn how to read their numbers, but I should have to work at learning the strategy, NOT at figuring out how to read their statistics.
This is a $10 game with more polish than you would expect from that price range and a big publisher.
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PC
Summary Urban Empire is a ‘City Ruler’, pioneering a new breed of strategy game that combines city builder features with political scheming and adds profound social and historical events into the mix, creating a whole new gameplay experience.
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Jan 20, 2017
Developer:
- Fragment Production Ltd
Publisher: Kalypso
Genres:
