Banished vs Hokko Life
Banished
Banished is a medieval-themed city-building simulation that can be pretty difficult to get into at first mainly due to its many nuances and lack of a comprehensive tutorial. But once you get the general idea of how things work (we'd recommend starting with easy mode), you'll start to truly appreciate the game as the challenge that it is. In some way, this game is quite similar to SimCity in many ways with the obvious difference being the themes and the lack of piping, waste management or electricity. Different maps will pose a different challenge and of course, the bigger your village is, the more stuff you'll need to manage. Although it does have some strategy elements to it - mainly in the form of village management, the game is not a war game. There is no fighting involved but your villagers will die from natural causes or disasters like illnesses or famine.However, once you've gotten the hang of the game, Banished becomes less of a punishing game and a bit more boring due to the same-y looking buildings and the soundtrack. When it comes to replayability, we'd say that the game has maybe tens of hours in it before you'll get bored and move on to the next game... and this play duration may be drastically reduced if you happen to be a pro SimCity player.
So, in short, Banished will appear to be a somewhat frustrating game at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it, the game might gradually becomes boring mainly because there is nothing else to do except to expand, expand and expand! However, we can't say that we didn't enjoy playing the game, and even for the shorter play duration it has to offer, as opposed to triple A city-building titles, the game is worth the money it costs.
Hokko Life
Hokko Life is a casual life sim that draws plenty of inspiration from the popular game, Animal Crossing, and is perfect for adults and kids alike to play. After finding yourself trapped in a remote town in the middle of nowhere, you turned it into your personal mission to revitalize the sleepy town back into its livelier version, before many of its residents moved to the city. Set up homes for new characters to move in, develop your own farm, design a host of furniture and items and share them with the community, collect butterflies and fishes, and most important of all, sit back, relax and have fun!There’s a reason why Hokko Life has been hailed as “Animal Crossing but on PC”, The gameplay is very similar to the latter and despite still being early access, the game already looks very promising for AC fans. However, do take note that the game has a really laidback pace, and if you expect to blaze through the content, you might want to look elsewhere.