Farthest Frontier is a detailed city-builder from Crate Entertainment, the acclaimed developers of Grim Dawn. As the leader of a small group of pioneers, you are tasked with building and protecting a thriving settlement in a dynamic, untamed wilderness.
At its core, the game features a deep simulation loop of harvesting resources, crafting goods, and managing production chains, all supported by trade and nuanced town management. But survival is not guaranteed. Beyond the typical environmental challenges, your town faces a constant, tangible threat: merciless invaders who can lay siege to your walls and bring your hard work to ruin.
For a while now, the game was in Early Access stage, but finally it faces the full release. Let’s see what it has to offer and was the long wait worth it. In general, at first sight, Farthest Frontier appears to be a mix of many classical and more modern elements of strategy and city builder games. Some people can find there some references to Age of Empire, others feel the vibe of Northgard or Stronghold. However, the game still managed to preserve its own identity and charm, bringing familiar experience dressed in new clothes.
The game starts from the choice of the difficulty level, offering players to select the game mode they want. There are more casual settings and the most difficult trials, however, it won’t change the core gameplay too much. As the choice is made, the game starts from the City Hall placing, and here the endeavor to expand and survive begins.
At the start, the amount of units is limited, and the player can’t hire more of them. The population expansion happens through the natural birth rate, and sometimes a refugee will ask to join the settlement. This mechanics brings probably the biggest limitation of the game, since there is no direct way to influence these events. Basically, if the conditions of life are good, the birth rate will rise and the new people will come, but there might not be enough people to improve these conditions to begin with.
This reminds of the old strategy game The Nations, where the population had to grow naturally as well. Even more, in both games, the babies need time to grow and then study to get a profession and take a place in the corresponding building. This system brings one simple rule – the number of people does not truly equal to the number of workers. Players should always keep this in mind.
At some point of the game, players can find themselves in the situation when there is no other option but to wait for the villagers to reproduce. The town hall update is tied to the population, which can slow the future development. However, it’s not an issue of the game, but rather a bit of realism implemented into the world. The city can’t grow without people, while people can’t be simply spawned of thin air and some meat.
To keep the population growing, the players have to develop the city and infrastructure, which leads us to the harvesting and production mechanics. In the Farthest Frontier, only specialized building allow the units to gather resources without command. When it comes to common wood or stone clusters, the player has to give the command and mark the zone which should be cleared. In a way, it’s a bit tiresome, as you always need to watch for the wood amount and mark new areas as the old are empty. However, the resources select system is pretty flexible and allows checking the boxes of the resources that should be marked in the zone.
The resources themselves or, rather, the places of their spawning are generated randomly at the start of the game along with the map. While wood can regrow over time, iron or gold can be really tricky to gather even with the needed technology. Especially when it comes to gold, which is also needed for some buildings to function. But the simple trading system can balance the lack of resources or gold, if treated carefully. The best strategy there would be focusing on producing some extra items like clothes and selling them to traveling merchants.
The game’s strongest side is these small details, which make it so appealing and realistic. While avoiding complicated politics or social engineering, the developers recreated realistic life of the medieval city. The production and trading are key options to prosperity, while food and resources determine the quality of people’s life. And the player is the manager of every element.
From the detailed crafting system, where players have to choose wisely what crops to plant, to the deadly diseases that can lower the population in no time. The game isn’t really forgiving if the player doesn’t plan head. Even on the easy mode, there are plenty of events which can slow the progress drastically. For example, if people don’t have enough wood to smoke the fish or meat, the spoiled products can lead to diseases and eventually death.
When it comes to the building system, there is nothing groundbreaking. But to be fair, it’s hard to invent something new for such a classic gameplay element. What matters here is the number of the buildings to chose from. Separated to special categories, the structures unlock after meeting special conditions. Either the knowledge should be unlocked, or the set of other buildings need to be constructed or upgraded beforehand, the system won’t allow creating something ahead of development time.
However, the construction window is a bit clunky and takes some time to get used to. The scrolling with a mouse wheel doesn’t work and to lower the window to the grade four building the slider must be moved manually. Moreover, when the top sections of the buildings are open, the lowest one can’t be reached without closing everything atop. Not sure was if it was made like that intentionally, or I’ve managed to catch a rare bug, but it’s still just a minor nuisance.
The research system is probably the most complicated and flexible part of the game. There are many branches of development, but the situation on the screen affects the decision more than the player’s personal preferences. When there is not enough food, the investment into crop development is essential. When the diseases are spreading, the corresponding research branch is begging to be explored.
Looking back at the experience with the game, probably the most challenging event still stays the raiders invasions. In the early game only towers can protect the settlement as the military is hard to contain without proper material well-being. The raiders can swoop through the city and leave its people without means of subsistence, even if they won’t kill many on the way. The raids are unpredictable and always aim at the most valuable resources the settlement has.
Players have the option to launch retaliatory raids against enemy encampments, if they have mustered sufficient manpower and resources. These raider camps are scattered across the map and can yield valuable loot, including substantial amounts of gold.
However, success is far from guaranteed. Without proper investment in your settlement’s military capabilities, the cost of such assaults can be devastating. The resulting losses in soldiers and resources may very well outweigh the plunder gained, turning a potential victory into a costly and unsustainable endeavor. Which creates a compelling risk-reward dynamic for those who like more dynamic gameplay than just building a city.
The visual side and aesthetics of the game is on a great level, surprisingly with no major impact to performance. While featuring an isometric view, the models can allow himself to be relatively low poly with a corresponding resolution of textures.
However, the developers didn’t treat this aspect as a secondary one. If set the camera to the maximum close-up limit, the models still look nice. Even the chickens are not just copy and paste of one model but have different color palette and sizes. This gives the impression that developers truly loved their creation and nailed even the smallest details.
As the Farthest Frontier was in Early Access for a long time, there is nor surprise that the technical side of the game is polished. While playing my campaign, I didn’t face any major or even minor bugs. Perhaps the fact that the raiders once got stuck on the building site and couldn’t proceed to my vault can be counted as a bug, but as it saved my gold, I can’t complain about it.
The only problems the game still has are some localization and item ID mistakes. Though it mostly creates some funny touches rather than ruins the game process, and a few are likely already fixed in the recently released patches.
