Ikariam

Henry February 28, 2021 at 03:14 pm

I played this game a long time ago, I couldn't remember why I quit. I remember now. Once your beginner protection is over you will quickly become a farm to a larger player and your game is over, don't bother.

DeadlyErnest December 13, 2016 at 11:36 pm

I gave it a day and it soon became clear that this is a sloooow game

M March 15, 2016 at 05:36 pm

I have played Ikariam since 2013 and so while I have not been around since its beginning and seen all the changes, I do have thorough experience with it. I have been active with building, fighting, and trading so I've also tasted each aspect and have given the game 3 stars. I reason that while it is fun, it is not a game I would go out of my way to recommend. I shall explain.

Fighting aspect: While the fighting aspect is developed and it is nice testing your skills against other players, it is certainly not the top combat system you can come across. There are good parts to the combat system, a variety of unit classes, necessary tactics, and you can often continue to improve your game due to its complexity. In addition you aren't likely to miss a battle so long as you are smart with your troops or have a large army. The downside is that combat takes a long time. Combat happens in rounds, with 15 minutes between rounds. A five round combat, which is very short, takes 1 hour to complete. The longest battle I've heard of happening took a month to finish. While those long round times allow you to send in your troops in waves and enact proper tactics in addition to increasing the chances you'll come online for a battle, it does make it a long and tedious process at times.

Building: This aspect of the game is like many other games. In the beginning it takes a while to collect the resources to build something because you're tiny but the build times are quick so you can build a few things a day. In the later game it takes a long time to collect the resources to build something because they cost a lot and the build times are long. (11 days and 3 hours is the longest build time. Most of the latter buildings take 18-48 hours to complete.) So this isn't really different than any other game you come across.

Trading: This is a hit or miss. If you're in an area with a lot of people who are trading, trading can be fun if you enjoy coin in your pocket and getting a high ranking even if you aren't a paying player. I sincerely enjoy this aspect of the game when I can. But if you're not around people or there aren't other people trading, this part is nonexistent.

Social Aspect: While I play on the US community and cannot accurately comment on other communities, there is a decent community and those social interactions make the game quite interesting. Some players who are bored with the game mechanics stick around just for the social aspect.

Piracy: One part of the game is piracy. Piracy involves a server-wide competition, though not everyone partakes in it, to collect and raid Capture Points (CPs) to rank. The top 50 collect a large amount of resources as their reward for placing. This part of the game is overall disliked by the community because the people that win piracy, which was added a few years ago, collect vastly more resources than could be collecting by pillaging and natural collection. That leads to the pirates being significantly larger than other players and leads to a score imbalance.

Server Merges: There are server merges that happen. Be prepared to go through one if you join Ikariam. They are fair to the people being merged as people are given the ability to establish their merged account on the new server as they had on the old, but it can be stressful and there is the possibility your account won't be as well situated post-merge.

Community Management: GameForge (GF) is overall disliked by the players. There are numerous pay-to-play features that cause an imbalance between paid and free players. While there are good updates, there are also disliked updates and there are things GF does that raise eyebrows. (For example listing a bug fix as a new feature.)

The Mobile App: There is a mobile app for Ikariam you can install on your phone. This has been out for numerous years and is still incomplete with many features missing from it. (The tablet app is complete.) If you play Ikariam, I would recommend installing the app to get some free ambrosia (the paid currency) but using your phone's browser if you need to play on the go.