Farthest Frontier Review – Refined City Building Experience

Being a Survival and Strategy based City Builder game, a lot of expectations riding on the Farthest Frontier because the genre has been with us since the late 80s and has amassed a massive fanbase behind it. Therefore we have prepared this review to inform you of whether this game does justice to the genre and whether it is worth it for you or not.

After developing the well-known Action RPG Grim Dawn, developer Crate Entertainment decide to try their hands with a different type of title. And so Farthest Frontier is the first City Builder game developed by the studio.

So, without further ado, let’s get into our Farthest Frontier review.

Setting and Overview

Farthest Frontier is a medieval-themed city-building title that does not hold your hand throughout the experience like most other titles in the genre. The goal is simple. Players need to start a settlement and develop a town from the ground up.

Players have all options available to them that are usually found in similar City Building titles such as hunting for resources, fishing, mining, and maintaining the people to keep your settlement running and prospering.

Before starting the game. Farthest Frontier will first ask you to choose a map. This will be the first significant choice players will face as every single map in the game is uniquely designed and can affect your experience drastically. Let me give you an example.

The Low Land Lakes is a map filled with resources and wildlife. The land is fertile and the lakes are filled with fish which makes it an ideal map for beginners or for players who want smooth sailing. The Arid Highlands is the exact opposite of Low Land Lakes. The land is barren and difficult to tame. This map is reserved for experienced players who want a challenge.

Farthest Frontier does not have a story. Your only purpose is to manage your settlements and improve them over time by establishing new buildings, farming crops, improving agriculture, and generally doing anything possible to improve the welfare and the survivability of your settlement.

Gameplay

Seeing how the Farthest Frontier is also a Survival game set in a medieval era, diseases can spread in your settlement very quickly if you get careless. Raids can also happen anytime, therefore you need to always be prepared for the worst. These are optional however and can be turned off completely if you use the Pacifist mod available in the game.

But we would recommend against that because these raids are where the real-time strategy element of the game really shines the best and makes it stand out from other world-building titles.

There are 50 different types of buildings in Farthest Frontier. Players can use these different types of buildings to turn their small settlements into their dream cities in due time.

As your population grows, you will need more space and more buildings to allocate the population. You will also need to improve productivity by upgrading your manufacturing facilities, and you will need to produce more food. All this work will result in more people being available to work so you can keep the economy running. 

The game revolves around this never-ending yet non-repetitive loop. Overall, these elements are what world-building games are known for, and what we intend to highlight in this Farthest Frontier Review.

The game also gives the players the option to observe every individual in the game, whether it is a miner or a person fighting bandits. Players will obtain numerous resources that they can use to construct different buildings that offer different advantages. Some buildings can be used to store food for a longer period of time, while others can be used to store more resources.

Players can also build roads that workers can use to transport items more efficiently. Farthest Frontier features all of these small aspects which makes the game feel more immersive and detailed, and it certainly makes it one of the most interesting world-building games released in recent years.

Another element that really brings out the real-time strategy element in Farthest Frontier is the food system. Unlike other games of this genre, you cannot farm as much food as you want, and then store it so you never run out of it.

In this game, the food will rot over time. If you farm too much food, it will end up wasting valuable resources. If you farm too little, it won’t be enough to keep your settlement running. This element can either be good or frustrating depending on what kind of player you are.

But one thing I Know for certain is that this feature does justice to the survival and real-time strategy aspects of the game.

Since we are on the topic of food, players can farm 17 different types of it in the game. Even farming in Farthest Frontier is more complex than in other world-building games. Each type of food will affect the fertility of your soil in a different way, so you can’t just keep growing the same crop over and over again. Players are expected to get creative with it.

Visuals And Performance

As far as visuals go, everything looks fantastic and as good as you would expect in a world-building game. The game features four different maps, they all have a distinct vibe to them and feel different in their own way. Animations do not feel clunky and everything seems organic, just as what you would expect in a world-building title.

The world of Farthest Frontier is detailed all the way from the building in settlements to the wildlife and nature. Overall the game looks breathtaking and I do not think that players who tend to focus more on visuals will be disappointed.

As for the performance and optimization, the game currently has near flawless performance on PC. Some players may experience a few performance hiccups but they are not significant enough to disrupt or affect anyone’s experience.

Verdict

Farthest Frontier promised a survival, real-time strategy-based world-building game and it delivered. The game features everything a long-time fan of the genre would hope to see in a World Building game. All the way from managing things as little as which crops to plant to preventing epidemics and saving your settlements from pillagers. 

Farthest Frontier has blown away expectations with its diverse and detailed world. And giving the players a true survival real-time strategy-based world-building experience. The game is indeed worth it and the fans of the genre will not be disappointed. That concludes our detailed review of Farthest Frontier. 

The Good 

• Elaborate Setting and World
• Diverse Gameplay Mechanics
• Overall, one of the finest world-building titles

The Bad 

• Some tasks can get too complex and tedious

Farthest Frontier Rating – 4/5

We hope our Farthest Frontier Review helped you in deciding whether the title is worth it for you or not. The game is available now on PC through Steam.

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