Kaiserpunk Review - An Ambitious Blend Of Anno And Hearts Of Iron

It took me at least ten hours before I started to understand what I was doing in Kaiserpunk, and even then I only had a rudimentary understanding. This is an ambitious city-builder and war simulator that blends together the logistic supply chains of Anno with the soldier micromanagement of Hearts Of Iron 4.

There are dozens of moving parts - I need to build a navy because I keep getting attacked from the sea, but to build a navy I need steel, and for steel I need workers, and those workers need bread, ale, and homes to live in. It is overwhelming at first, and stays that way for a long time.

I bounced off of Kaiserpunk more than once during this review. Its gritty art direction and howlingly repetitive music don’t make for the most comfortable experience. But I had to give it another chance again and again, because the scope of the game is impressive.

Kaiserpunk’s world map reminds me of Rise of Nations, an RTS that I spent hundreds of hours with when I was a kid. There’s a touch of nostalgia here for me that I’m desperate to tap into.

I turned the music off, set the weather to always be sunny (it felt like it rained for the entire time during my first playthrough), and really got stuck in. I finished the lengthy tutorial - you need to follow this tutorial, believe me - and began a fresh campaign in central Europe.

The Campaign

Even in the solo campaign, there’s a loose framework you can follow that directs you with objectives. I wanted to play a relatively peaceful campaign for my first go around, so I opted into the agricultural route. I went about my years building farms, feeding my workers delicious ale, and slowly building up my manufacturing capacity. Kaiserpunk’s city-building is nothing to be seriously impressed by, and it often feels like you’re just placing buildings for the sake of it. I quickly lost interest in any attempts to min-max the location of my buildings or my supply chains, and the game didn’t seem to punish me very much for small mistakes. This will appeal to some and be a turn-off for others.

It may also be that raising the difficulty makes the game more punishing, and there’s an extensive customisation menu if you want to do so.

Kaiserpunk’s art direction is a tricky one to judge. At times the game seems pretty, as you zoom in on the factories and trucks going about their business on the busy streets. But at other times it’s really quite ugly; grey and morose. There aren’t many building models, which means your city starts to look like you have copied and pasted entire districts. The world map is a grey blob with poor textures and cheap-looking fonts. The user interface is serviceable at best, and at times I struggled to find the information I needed - particularly about my troops and resources. Both are hidden in separate menus that you access from another menu, for some reason. The whole UI could probably do with a rework.

War Begins

An hour or so in, I was attacked by a small navy from the north coast of my territory. It was time to properly test out the war mechanics. I deployed some tanks, field guns, and militia to defend my territory, and began work on a couple of corvettes to protect my coast. When I repelled the invaders, I developed a taste for war, so I quickly invaded the West Balkans. When you conquer a new territory, you can quell rebellion by building a propaganda bureau and other upgrades. As you conquer Europe, your job is to keep the regions stable while also optimizing them for production of resources and troop management.

Again, I’d recommend raising the difficulty fairly early on in Kaiserpunk, as I had no real issues taking over most of Europe with just a few tanks, planes, and ships. The process became fairly repetitive, much like the city-building: another bakery, another factory, another water tower. Even the advanced mechanics, like trade, diplomacy, or your nation’s ideology, all feel arbitrary. Press buttons and things will happen.

I didn’t feel the impact of my choices at any point during my multiple playthroughs. This lack of meaningful choices makes the whole experience feel spread very wide, but very thin. You’ve got all these mechanics and detailed logistical supply chains, troop management, and region control, but ultimately you lack the granularity that fans of Hearts Of Iron 4 would adore, and you lack the polished city-building of Anno.

Kaiserpunk is awesomely ambitious, and I respect the game a lot for what it’s attempting to do. Fans of both the series it draws from will find aspects of Kaiserpunk they’ll enjoy. However, I just feel like I’d rather play either Anno or Hearts Of Iron - both games that are available on Steam often for the price of less than a pint. I hope that work on Kaiserpunk continues and the developers flesh out some of the systems, rework the UI, and work on both key aspects of the game (city building and regional management) to add more detail. There’s a lot of potential here, but Kaiserpunk’s just not quite ready for war.

Kaiserpunk

WHERE TO PLAY

• Decent city-building and war simulation
• Detailed logistics supply chains

• UI needs work
• Wide reach of mechanics but not very deep
• Gameplay starts to feel repetitive