I very much recommend this game. I have only truly sat and played it twice but the time seemed to pass so quickly. I have found this game to be compelling to the point that this review is my first additional interaction with steam outside of its market and mods. I have really REALLY enjoyed myself. However, the game is not perfect, and pretending that it is especially so early in development would be a disservice. The custom faction creator is restrictive in some key ways that make it seem less like I am crafting a new unique faction and more like I am making a Sub-faction or offshoot of one of the starting cultures. The first screen in the custom creator is the "general" screen where you choose the name of your country and the model that will be shown in the diplomacy screen and the leader of your country. The problem is that the only options are the existing leaders, you can't alter their name or title and there is no blank slate nondescript black question mark option either. The representation of your people must be one of these premade options. your genocidal racist lizard people have to be led by a curator instead of a king. The next screen is the "affinity" screen where you choose the look of your main race and choose an affinity. My problem here is that I must once again choose one of the Pre-existing Affinities. This is far more egregious in my opinion as it goes beyond the cosmetics and corrals how one plays the game into one of the five premade options. Suppose you wanted to make a society of normal people that were just semi decent at farming so you could throw them into the meatgrinder whilst cursing at the world, you couldn't. Your people are forced to be either coral, one of two flavors of religious fanatic, robot knights, or bugs, and the answer was right there. Each of the affinities cost a certain amount of your points to pick so just give me the option to click on the black question mark and save my points for later and the problem goes away. Perhaps the culture would be underpowered compared to others but that's fine I can indulge in the challenge, turn down the difficulty or just deal, but please give me the choice. (and some red text warning me about the potential weakness of not choosing something) and if the extra benefits of having those points for later means I won't be weaker on average than I see even less issue with having this as an option. Next is the "military" screen whare you can do two things, choose the appearance of the units and choose a Battle affinity. The only options for unit appearance are the other factions' existing loadouts which is not ideal but I understand modeling is expensive and its ultimately cosmetic anyways the real problem is once again with the affinity system, all my previous complaints once again apply here. It alters how the faction will feel and be played in battle and it is completely unavoidable. My proposed solution is the same too, give me a button to chose none of them and keep my points with some red text stating that I might be underpowered. The final screen is the "traits" screen that lets you choose some tenants, bonuses, and features for your society in exchange for points. It is beautiful. I have no notes, there are no glaring issues here. I wish everything including the affinities were inside and formatted like this menu. I would like to reiterate that I recommend this game, you don't even need to interact with the creation menu at all to enjoy this game but as things stand I would like to see changes made to this feature to allow for more Custom into my Custom faction.
