I think playing on realistic level is the only fun here. But I dislike the UI with passion. Everything is seemingly a bit random and the game is heavily leaning towards "learn from failure", because it really lacks good or even just consistent descriptions for how each thing works.
Tutorial - absolutely pointless.
Campaign - the actual tutorial.
I'll say, I don't really care for the campaign, it's kinda boring and it doesn't teach the realistic mode (as far as I'm aware). So going custom, building and failing, and using reddit is basically the only way to play this game early on.
The game starts at the beginning of the year and you have pretty much the whole year to prepare for your first winter. It's been painful to play the beginning because everything is so slow. Until you figure out that each building has "mechanisms" to speed boost the construction. Great. The game doesn't tell you what type of vehicle can be used to speed boost, or even prompts you to buy them, you just have to "know".
What you also have to know is, well - everything else.
Wanna build train tracks? You need a specific vehicle for that. Okay. You buy the vehicle? Not enough, it needs *something* else. Reddit says you need trucks to move them from place to place, the cheapest one is 5t, which is light enough to go on a car, but like... I can't get it on a car, it's supposed to be on tracks to build... tracks, but I have no tracks and it's just stuck at the border, like whatever...
Water system - it's not enough to build a well and a water tower and a substation or whatever. You have to build a well, and then build a pump, and then build a switch, and then build a water tower, and then build a pump (or maybe not, who knows), and then maybe build another pump, and then build a substation or whatever so it can distribute water. Like, "some" buildings have an "i" icon on them and they have a description, but usually it's just to explain what the building is or how it differs from the other building that's basically the same building. It doesn't show you diagrams or anything. Like, show me what a complete system is supposed to look like. What am I supposed to be using to make it work? Except, you HAVE to build, and fail, and then fix, and every step of the way, you take forever to build ♥♥♥♥, because it takes forever to build ♥♥♥♥ in this game.
Like don't get me wrong. The system being complex is NOT the problem. I enjoyed the way I have to basically do everything,. Having 5 different things built into the system before a tap works is good. What's not good is the UI and lack of any sort of description.
Also vehicles just get stuck and there is absolutely nothing in place to tell you there is a problem. Or construction offices will just randomly lose association to the border so they do nothing.
Workers are very limited in numbers (especially early game) and they just sort of are a mess, causing most of the problems. Like, in the game where I have to worry about every aspect of energy, heat, water, waste etc. I kinda just have a bus, and it picks up workers, and regardless of how much work is done, they pick up ALL the workers and they take it to the construction zone, and then they hopefully finish in like 3 seconds because it was so little left, and then they just despawn.
Or like the bus kinda just carries people back and forth between two stops and instead of fixing the AI of workers and passengers, the game basically just goes "so click "force unload" to make sure people have to get off at the stop". Like that is NOT a good system. It will work and then randomly some time later I'll check why every construction is slowing down and it's just because the bus is carrying a 100 workers hopping between the two stops, and like why? Who the hell knows. But there are basically no workers left in the world, because they're all in a constant loop of a bus loading and unloading. And there is nothing in place to be like "Hey, there's a problem".
Or even the priority in construction. It's kinda messed up and doesn't really matter.
Or like, if you wanna build a heating plant and it takes coal. The building comes with a vehicle parking spot. So after constructing the building, you kinda just make a line to deliver coal. And the trucks goes to the border, buys the coal, brings it into the heating plant. And it just does nothing the heating plant doesn't work. So your only solution is to go online and google, why it doesn't work. And then most likely you'll find a reddit post where somebody was asking this question already, and you find out, you need an aggregate construction attached. Because the building cannot just take coal from the vehicle, it's not that type of game. You have build extra ♥♥♥♥ to take the coal. So at this point, hopefully you've left yourself enough space around to build that truck aggregate, since you cannot move buildings, you have to destroy them and build again. And ultimately I wouldn't care so much about this, if, either, the building itself didn't have a literal parking spot with coal holding facility. Like it creates an assumption that it'll just work, otherwise why can I deliver my truck there without an aggregate? or like idk... MAKE A DIAGRAM AND SHOW ME WHAT A COMPLETE SYSTEM IS SUPPOSED TO ENTAIL.
I think there's a good game here, but I really hate its UI, it just either works or it doesn't and you're just supposed to know this stuff. And it gets to the point where you don't know if what's happening is what is supposed to happen or if it's a bug.
