TL;DR it is unusable and makes this game seem like a horrible dumpster fire... but the game is not that at all. What happened? Why is this alpha app live?
2/5 overall
[tr][td][/td][td]Pixel 2 - Android[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Goals:[/td][td]Start in a new world[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]Restart in an old world[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Time spent in each:[/td][td]2 hours (New)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td]5 hours (Old)[/td][/tr][/table]
Most of what I am about to say is present in both iOS and Android but I will try to detail each respectively. And I did not look at any reviews or playthroughs of the app, I simply downloaded and began. (like I assume most of the new players will do) Even writing this has been difficult because the game has crashed many times in the process and keep in mind I have not installed the PC version, I am jumping straight in from years on non play to the mobile game.
Loading times are noticeable right off the bat. Each device was hooked into WiFi (work: 400mbs and home: 200mbps) and still took more than 3 minutes to get past just the splash screen. Once logged in it takes another minute or two to load the map. Overall, my whole experience has been buggy with connection issues. For roughly 30 minutes yesterday it did not update that my parish was free of disease despite me changing the view multiple times in an attempt to reload it.
Additionally, I seem to be kicked out every 15 minutes or so and I have to kill the app just for anything to load back up. It is not my connection, I have done this on two separate WiFi connections for the majority of testing but switching to Mobile data (no WiFi) did not fix this problem.
Interface (Overall)
- The interface is clunky at best. If you try to click an icon (menu, store, cards, etc..) there is a chance you will click underneath that because of the gaps between the icons. (Has happened about 25% of the time for me in world view and village view) Fix: Adding a layer underneath the buttons that players cannot click through.
- Building a castle structure is 1000% frustrating and unless I am missing something you can only use the on screen buttons to place walls (no more holding down and drawing) My question to that is why? Why take away that capability? It is possible in mobile games as many others use this functionality. Yes I know you can drag the edges but it only makes a square, you cannot draw individual lines without clicking place and reclicking the wall.
- Apparently the button with the timer on the castle structure means "Delete all structure".. at least there is a warning message but it should be labeled. But that can be said for the presets menu as well. Once you have a preset there are just buttons without labels. My favorite are the clouds, one means overwriting the preset with the one of your current castle, yet the other means deploy... these should really be labeled. Honestly this is where I ended testing the structure and simply enclosed the keep and moved on. I cannot imagine anyone building an actual keep as it would take forever.
- User Profiles are confusing because they do not fit the norm for other mobile games nor do they fit the norm for SHK. I have to click their shield to see their real profile? 100% honest it took me a good 15 minutes to figure that one out. Is it in the tutorial? I remember pop ups explaining other things but not on the user profile.
- Trading is very well integrated, my only pet peeve is how different it looks on the world map as opposed to in the parish.
- Parish interface: What is going on here? Why do I have all of these buttons if most of them you need to be steward to do anything with? No Parish chat? I influenced the vote on an older world but after 2 app reboots it finally allowed me to do some things with the parish. I immediately found out that as a sheriff you cannot vote in the county. Overall it is a decent adaptation, but I do not understand the steward mail button for those other than the parish steward sending a message to all.
- Speaking of chat, I cannot find the in game chat system. Am I missing the button?
- Your developer dropped this But seriously where are the back buttons? I know clicking off the focused element will bring me back but there should be a button saying that at the very least.
- For items in the menu that take you to the browser there should be an icon signifying that. I was getting to know the application and constantly being directed to my browser. Which would not be that big of a pain but half of the time the game freezes when I come back (Android/iOS)
- I will end this section on a good note, the design is very crisp and clean. Very well done but... the varied designs (between similar pages) makes me wonder what happened? It seems like production was stopped to bring in a new developer and he forgot to style it like the old guy.
- I have only attacked a few bandit camps and wolf lairs since I installed the game but wow is it a change. I do not understand how to aim catapults. As an already PC player this would be an instant uninstall because that would be useless to me. (Double clicking, two finger tapping, pinching, zooming... none of it worked to allow me to aim them.)
- Recruiting troops again is a chore when the existing system is already sufficient. Three buttons consisting of 1,5,MAX YOU CAN BUY is very odd.Fix:That last button should not be the max I can buy but a custom amount. When I click it, it would be nice to put in a custom number. Or hey, how about a slider? Take the captains tactics one, it does not belong.
- Captain tactics should not be a slider as no other attack tactic is (ransack, pillage, etc).
- Speaking of sliders, if I have multiple villages it only centers on the village when selected through the slider (not the arrows)
- Reports, there is no replay button? My only options are to close out of the report, reopen it and watch it again. Unless of course I wanted to watch it on everyplay. Additionally, if I have a lot of reports and click to view one (just view, not even view battle) and click the X it automatically takes me right to the top of my reporting. Which is not the end of the world but it is annoying.
- I cannot open mail at all, it gives me a null pointer exception for every single game world but on iOS the game crashes; android gives me the error message. I had to install the game on my PC just to answer mail. Yes, a support ticket was filed yesterday
- Every now and again the game will freeze (even the animations for mail, reports etc) and I will have to manually close the application, reopen and hope that it can connect to a world. It seems like more than half of the time I am closing the application 3 times before it finally gets past the splash screen.
- The freezing above happens when toggling between world and village views. Castle/parish views seem to work just fine.
- Cards... I played advanced logistics. Sent an army. Recalled the army. Played an expert logistics. Sent an army and no card was played. I had to recall my army and play the expert logistics again for it to work. It seems to do this for every "one time" card, requiring some time inbetween cards being played. Again, this is not valid functionality.
- Am I supposed to be notified when I am under attack? Notifications on, application running in the background(not closed) yet I have had a scout out on me for nearly 30 minutes and no notification. It is still blinking when I open the game as well.