EDIT: This was made before the 0.7.9 update, so things have probably improved since, but I know not to what extent (as I'm gonna wait before restarting a playthrough) so will leave this up at the very least as a timecapsule for the game's improvement:
As others have mentioned, there are plenty of fantastic elements to this game and it has the potential to be at least a 4.5/5, but it's already gonna be a long review and that's not why I downgraded it:
The Grind. The main way players increase in power in any game like this is stats; in this game you can *have a (low) chance* to improve 2 stats in one day by a single point (some of those 'chances' cost money), but you also have a chance to *loose* stats randomly just from sleeping - sometimes 2 stat points at once - on both you and your slaves (2 of whom you also have to level up for combat) as well as loosing stats (often 4-5 stat poins) when you loose a fight and also loosing stats (sometimes as many as 3 at once) when you go to work; just keeping your and your slave's stats as they are is hard enough - let alone increasing them.
As for money, at best, with as many upgrades to passive income as I can get minus the relatively small costs for merc companies is 75 dollars a day (because 18 dollars a day is little compared to the 2500 dollar hiring fee) - throw in a job at the factory (only reliable job early if you don't have specific stats stupidly high) and you get between 105 to 200ish depending on the day and your luck in stealing. The best armour you can buy for the player costs 6700, for your slaves it's 6500 which you'll want to do twice and then the best armour upgrade for mercs costs 2200 which you might also have to do twice - so that's 24100 just to get armour - throw in weapon and ammo costs as well as merc hiring fees, medicine and skill training you're probably looking around 28-30k-ish to get started.
The reason for that is difficulty - now, the grind wouldn't be too bad if, say, you didn't need the BiS or super-high stats just to play the friggin game. To give you an example, the first bountry quest you can pick up from the town hall; with the best mercenaries I could find upgraded with the best equipment I could give them, the best gear I could get for myself and around 4 hours of grinding stats on myself and my slaves(save-scumming to prevent stat loss), in a 5v1 fight, we barely got him to 2/3 hp before he wiped out my entire squad. Why? Because like many enemies he had more powerful armour and weapons than I have access to atm as well as very high stats. Remember, this is the first bounty in the starting zone. Also, the reward for defeating him? 2k dollars.
You aren't grinding to become more powerful than your opponents, you're grinding to get a competitive disadvantage so that maybe you have a 30% chance of victory that you save-scum to get - and that's just unsatisfying and makes everything except BiS irrelevant. Now it might be that it gets better, but after 12+ irl hours of play I still feel like a level 3 character in a level 10 area with level 15 bosses. I'll keep going because under those issues lies a good game, but you should be aware of the difficulty/timesink before you download!
As others have mentioned, there are plenty of fantastic elements to this game and it has the potential to be at least a 4.5/5, but it's already gonna be a long review and that's not why I downgraded it:
The Grind. The main way players increase in power in any game like this is stats; in this game you can *have a (low) chance* to improve 2 stats in one day by a single point (some of those 'chances' cost money), but you also have a chance to *loose* stats randomly just from sleeping - sometimes 2 stat points at once - on both you and your slaves (2 of whom you also have to level up for combat) as well as loosing stats (often 4-5 stat poins) when you loose a fight and also loosing stats (sometimes as many as 3 at once) when you go to work; just keeping your and your slave's stats as they are is hard enough - let alone increasing them.
As for money, at best, with as many upgrades to passive income as I can get minus the relatively small costs for merc companies is 75 dollars a day (because 18 dollars a day is little compared to the 2500 dollar hiring fee) - throw in a job at the factory (only reliable job early if you don't have specific stats stupidly high) and you get between 105 to 200ish depending on the day and your luck in stealing. The best armour you can buy for the player costs 6700, for your slaves it's 6500 which you'll want to do twice and then the best armour upgrade for mercs costs 2200 which you might also have to do twice - so that's 24100 just to get armour - throw in weapon and ammo costs as well as merc hiring fees, medicine and skill training you're probably looking around 28-30k-ish to get started.
The reason for that is difficulty - now, the grind wouldn't be too bad if, say, you didn't need the BiS or super-high stats just to play the friggin game. To give you an example, the first bountry quest you can pick up from the town hall; with the best mercenaries I could find upgraded with the best equipment I could give them, the best gear I could get for myself and around 4 hours of grinding stats on myself and my slaves(save-scumming to prevent stat loss), in a 5v1 fight, we barely got him to 2/3 hp before he wiped out my entire squad. Why? Because like many enemies he had more powerful armour and weapons than I have access to atm as well as very high stats. Remember, this is the first bounty in the starting zone. Also, the reward for defeating him? 2k dollars.
You aren't grinding to become more powerful than your opponents, you're grinding to get a competitive disadvantage so that maybe you have a 30% chance of victory that you save-scum to get - and that's just unsatisfying and makes everything except BiS irrelevant. Now it might be that it gets better, but after 12+ irl hours of play I still feel like a level 3 character in a level 10 area with level 15 bosses. I'll keep going because under those issues lies a good game, but you should be aware of the difficulty/timesink before you download!
