I really wanted to like this game. I've had fun playing the game. But, I have so many complaints about it I can't recommend it and don't plan on touching it again.
The most glaring issue is that there is no UI or in-game guide. You can't tell how many people you have as each job, how many people are doing nothing, or even how many people you have at all. You can't tell how much money you have without counting each coin. There is no tutorial, so you just figure things out by doing them, which is a little frustrating at times. What can this baker looking special villager do? No clue. Oh, I have a fully upgraded arrow tower and happened to have him with me and now I get an option to upgrade the tower again? Clearly he upgrades the tower into some kind of defensive structure. Nope. He turns it into a baking oven that can no longer provide space for archers and has nothing to do with defense. Okay, I have an archer-looking special villager. Clearly, he upgrades arrow towers to carry more archers, right? Nope, he turns a max level archery tower into a ballista manned by a worker, kicking out all the archers. Clearly that'll help against fliers, though, right? Nope, ballista fire too low to hit fliers. What does this special mount do? Who knows, buy it and experiment and maybe you'll figure it out.
The game is finicky too. Will cutting down this tree destroy the refugee camp? Who knows! There's a wall build spot next to a tree. Can I cut down the tree? No. Can I build the wall there? Maybe! When you upgrade a wall, while it's upgrading, the wall provides no protection. Do people retreat to the next fallback position? Maybe! Where do the pikemen hire location and trebuchet fire barrel spots appear (they move to the latest active wall)? Who knows! Will they even appear? Maybe! Will that ruin a farm that overlaps them? It could! Also, will a farm field yield money when it finishes? Usually! Squires use money as armor - do they need more? Maybe! How can you tell how much they have left? That's the neat part, you can't! Can you drop money near squires so they'll take it when they need it? Sometimes! (But sometimes the archers with them pick it up to give back to you later instead. Helpful, right?)
The physics engine applying to your gold pouch is absurdly dumb and makes the max capacity of your money pouch random. If you are overflowing, it just falls out and into the water, and the max is really low for that mechanic to exist. Farmers will seek you out to throw money at you when you're already at the limit. If you drop money, villagers will pick it up to throw back at you even though you're full. If gems are at the top of your money pouch, you can lose them to the Greed, so you want to bury them under coins, which means throwing out your money and hoping the gem falls into the pouch so you can cover it with the coins you threw out. It's finicky as heck.
If the Greed are coming but trees are marked for cutting in that direction or buildings are being built, your workers will run past the walls toward the trees/build spots. They turn around when they see the Greed, but they're so much slower than the Greed that they will all have their hammers stolen. You can babysit them, dropping money as you go, and hope the workers don't pick the coins up for you to bring back to you. If you try to throw it beyond the workers, sometimes the Greed will jump and hit you even though there's money on the ground between you and the Greed.
Still, the above problems aren't game breaking, just annoying. What's game breaking was the last (and final) game of this I've played: We were playing two player and on the third island, groups of Greed late game included at most one giant or flying Greed, never more than one at a time. We cleared the island as completely as possible, filled up our money, filled the boat with squires, archers, and workers along with three special villagers, and set sail for the fourth island. Upon landing, we immediately built up walls on both sides of the main camp to the first level of stone, built further out walls to the second level of stone, and upgraded the main camp to get pikemen. We had four pikemen on the left, but the right side pikeman build spot never appeared. However, we had two squires there, a large pile of archers, and level 2 stone walls. Then a red moon rose and they sent out FIVE Flying Greed, TWO Giant Greed, and at least one Jumping Greed all at once. Everyone in the entire base died and the two Giant Greed were still going strong. The pikemen on the left just sat there until they died, never moving from the left wall even as the giant Greed hit them from the right.
This all happened maybe ten minutes after landfall. We were still trying to find refugees to become farmers for our one farming spot inside the walls when it happened. I feel like there's we did literally all we could have done and lost everything anyway. There was no way we could have known that our defenses weren't enough since they were as strong as we could make them, and we did literally everything we could have to upgrade those defenses.
So, yeah, I really wanted to enjoy the game. My spouse loves it and it's co-op. The premise is good and the basic gameplay is interesting. The problems just kept mounting though until the game stopped being fun. I could play through all the frustrations I had with the UI, but getting a game over when I can't think of a single thing we could have done better is just a deal breaker for me, especially six hours in when we thought we figured out how to play. The difficulty spike was sudden and we did everything we could have.
