Urban Empire

« 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. »

« 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. »

« Urban Empire's focus on politics and invention through history provides an interesting take on the genre, although it can get a tad repetitive in the later parts of the game. »

« Interesting city builder concept with a political focus, but it lacks information and fine tuning. »

« 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. »

« It is not your run of the mill city builder and it is hard to market something so different from the norm. That difference is not just a weakness, though, it is also a strength. I can guarantee you that you’ve not played anything like this before and the community - is - figuring it out, slowly. Urban Empire is a breath of fresh air and for that reason alone it is worth checking out. »

« For now, I would strongly recommend this game for those that enjoyed Cities: Skylines and other similar simulators such as Tropico. For the almost £30 asking price however? You are better off getting Cities: Skylines if you wish to simply focus on a producing a productive and interactive city. In a few more patches this game could be something great. »

« It's hard to rate Urban Empire. On one hand we get a really cool mixture of economics, ideology and politics, and the entire game is well made with minimalistic graphics and an excellent soundtrack. On the other hand playing through 200 years o history takes up to 6 hours, which are surprisingly dull. »

« It is not fair at all and it is very complex. Also, this complexity is unnecessary. They messed up a very good idea because they couldn't balance the mechanics. »

« While playing this game I was having fun. I bought it for 3$ or something like that, and it's good game. I didn't expect to much, and Urban Empire surprised me very well. »

« 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. »

« 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. »

« 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. »

« 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. »

« It has many things to adjust (as many reviews say) but the main idea of this game is great and it has possibility of improvement much. I expect additional patch that it will be great game. But not just now. »

« After spending the last week playing this game, 42 hours in total, I have found the game to have some serious issues. The game economy is completely unbalanced. The infrastructure, like electricity, for example, has no positive net value in the long run and costs way too much. You end up spending way more money on infrastructure upkeep than you get back from benefactors (like industry) in return so the game forces you to increase taxes which kills city growth. The game also has issues with zone density. Increasing the density of a zone should not cost any money or have any upkeep, but the game developers decided that rezoning a district from light density to medium density should completely wipe out whatever funds you have saved up, with an upkeep so high that by the time the area develops with medium density and money is flowing again, you're in the hole 3 or 4 thousand (which is a lot in this game), and you're not making a whole lot more than before the rezoning. So the incentive to increase city density (which should be really fun to do), isn't there. In fact, it's the opposite. You avoid rezoning to higher densities, and that to me defeats the purpose of a city building game. I do not recommend this game unless the developers fix these disastrous game-play issues. »