Banished

EurogamerPaul Dean

I liked playing Banished. It was complex, but never fiddly, difficult, but rarely cruel, though it would benefit from a little more transparency. But as soon as I had a handle on it, as soon as I'd started to see through some of the fog of its complexity, I wanted to grasp for something bigger, something greater. Banished is satisfying, but never spectacular. That's not quite enough for me.

IGNRowan Kaiser

8.3/10

As a city-building game, Banished is dazzling. It combines simple charms with transparent, complex systemic interactions, and a tough-but-fair difficulty curve. My only real criticisms of it is that it left me wanting more, such as strong overarching long-term goals, like a campaign mode. That might have pushed Banished into the top tier of amazing strategy games, but instead, it'll have to settle for being great.

VGChartzVGChartz Staff

7.3/10

If you’re into games like Keflings or the Harvest Moon series, there’s no reason you can’t find hours upon hours to lose in Banished.It’s not often that a game will begin with the members of a town being banished to live [...]

PC GamerPCGamer

70/100

I killed a lot of people in Banished. I saw them born and I watched my decisions kill them. Stripping the land, building homes, and planting vast swaths of crops seemed like a good idea, but things got ugly when a hard winter set in. Firewood stockpiles were meager and the distance to new trees was too great to keep up with demand. Then tools started to break, and I don't know what happened to

GameWatcherAlex Donaldson

0/10

If you put the lack of missions aside as a consequence of the budget price tag, Banished is still a flawed game. There’s brilliant concepts and a core that shines, but a troublesome interface and a general lack of breadth of content is clearly an issue. With all that noted, there’s still something strangely and subversively compelling about it in the end. Knowing and feeling all I do, I still want to go back and play some more - and that is likely telling.