Thank you to Xobermon LLC for providing the steam key for the game. My thoughts about the Noble Fates game are my own and I will do my best to give a fair review. Now, let's dive in.
What is Noble Fates exactly? Think Rimworld meets the Sims meets Civilization all melded into one colony building game. The game is in Steam early access so I took that under consideration as I started my noble adventure.
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| Starting the adventure! |
The introduction to Noble Fates is interesting as it sets the scene, explaining that you are a divine being with the power to influence mortals and control their decisions to a degree. At the start of the game your demigod self is resting upon the corpse of your long dead champion. I noticed the artwork for the game has its own unique style which I really liked.
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| Get ready to use your divine powers. |
The first thing you have to do is choose a leader among several outcasts from a randomly named kingdom. Each person has a different set of skills and alignments ranging from cooking to building. You can choose whoever you want to be your leader, but no matter who you pick at least one of the party members will not be happy with the leader who is picked and will want to leave. This is where the intricacies of Noble Fates truly begins. You have some choices here and the big picture of Noble Fates is each choice you make has consequences which means you can decide to be a good and fair ruler or you can decide to be evil and a tyrant. One of the choices is you can let the person leave with all their supplies or you can decide to execute them. It is ultimately up to you and whichever choice you make, you have to live with it and the opinions your other party members will have of you. Personally, I let the person leave with all their supplies in my game.
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| Choose your own leader. |
Once your leader is chosen, it's time to start building your kingdom. It's strongly advised that you enable the Guided Experience in the game especially if this is your first world building game. The guide acts as a tutorial for you early in the game and will make things easier for you in the beginning until you get the hang of how everything works. Make sure you save and save often as well as you go on your journey. You have to find a good location to start building. I went with a flat area because it made for easier building and less digging. Once you have your location, it's time to start foraging for building materials such as wood and grass.
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| It's time to chop some trees! |
The in game style is cute with fluffy trees and people. Building for me was a little frustrating at first because it's not always intuitive, but once I figured it out I had a good time with it. The opinions of your followers will also affect how you build. First, they will absolutely need shelter, beds, and food. Each decision you make has a ripple effect and if a follower doesn't like your decision or they become too unhappy with you, they will desert. When you add in rival factions who may attack you, it adds another layer of fun chaos to the game. Will you come out on top or will your kingdom fall? The big thing in Noble Fates is to always be stockpiling. You never know when you're going to need wood for more buildings or materials to build defenses to ward off attacks. I really enjoyed the fact that I could do a top down perspective in the game so I could see everything which made building easier and I could switch to third person view when talking to followers. I was grateful for the guided experience because it helped immensely with learning the ins and outs of building and how the game worked. Building is fun and Noble Fates does give a lot of freedom with your creativity in how you want to build your kingdom. It really is all up to you.
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| Building a shelter and a kingdom. |
Now, it's time to talk about the things in Noble Fates that I feel could be better or could be improved upon. One of the big things is the accessibility. When I started the game and checked out the game settings, there are not a lot of options. Accessibility is a concern for me personally because I have arthritis in my hands which is why I play a lot of my computer games with a controller/gamepad because it makes things easier for me and does not add stress to my hands. The default keyboard controls can be customized through the main menu at least which is a point in the games favor. I did play the game with my controller and frankly, the controls are not great. They're very clunky and sometimes they would stick with a lot of lag which could be incredibly frustrating. The zoom in and zoom out for the camera can be a little temperamental at times causing terrible camera angles and sometimes would spin wildly which would create some weird viewpoints. The loading times for the game can sometimes be very slow which is not ideal. Noble Fates has a lot of potential and if these issues can be addressed, it can be a great game. Now, I have more kingdom to build!
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| Let's build more kingdom! |
*Noble Fates is available in early access on Steam
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