Game: The Hundred Year Kingdom
Genre: Simulation, Strategy, Board Game
System: Nintendo Switch (also available for Steam (Windows))
Developers | Publishers: kaeru-san games | Chorus Worldwide Games
Age Rating: US T | EU 12+
Price: US $12.99 | UK £13.49 | EU € 11,99
Release Date: February 3th, 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to Player Two PR.
The Hundred Year Kingdom is a civilization builder game that pits players against a hard, 100-year timeline. You have to cultivate land, build up towns, orchards, and other items to raise up a world that can live on successfully once you disappear after a century.
The Gameplay and Story
There isn’t a whole lot of story in The Hundred Year Kingdom. Players are some kind of god with a helper called an Oracle. They are tasked with upgrading pieces of land, making cities, and growing their parcel of land up in the short time available to them.
Each move a player makes moves the world forward a whole year, and each upgrade adds to one or more of three categories. These categories are culture, food, and production. These resources decide what you can build next.
To begin, players choose which style of Oracle they want as a helper. There are several different cultures available, including an ancient Celtic Oracle named Arianrhod, a Viking named Freya, and a Japanese shrine maiden named Amaterasu.
Each has their own look and style, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of a difference in them in regards to gameplay. Each Oracle has its own unique upgraded city that they can build, each with its own unique buffs given to the player’s overall resources. Oracles are unlocked by playing the levels of the previous one.
Players can also choose the type of world they want to be part of, and more of these can also be unlocked. For example, there is a world that is mostly vegetation, which uses fewer resources to cultivate than mountains, Worlds of Culture which has ruins of previous civilizations with treasures hidden inside, and more.
Choose your World
Once you choose your world and your Oracle, the game begins. The Hundred Year Kingdom gives players a 6×6 grid of land to begin trying to cultivate, and they have 100 turns to make the most of it. In a turn, players can upgrade a currently cultivated piece of land, overtake a new piece of land, or wait out the year to gain more food, culture, or production to afford better things.
There is also an Offering section that is a reward system for completing challenges. For example, upgrading one of the pieces of land to an Estate might grant players an additional 10 food as a bonus. After the 100 years are complete, players will get a summary of how their civilization goes on without them and a rating.
The Pros of The Hundred Year Kingdom
This game is simple, quick, and pretty. Players can sit down for just a few minutes and complete a world or two. Unlocking new women and new world types can take a whole lot of time, but spending hours playing isn’t necessary to complete games and make progress.
For busy adults playing games, this ability to play just a little at a time is a blessing. It’s a fun and simple puzzle that is quick to learn and easy to pick up and then put down.
The art style is very anime and cute, so that can also be a plus if players are interested in that sort of look.
The Cons of The Hundred Year Kingdom
The Hundred Year Kingdom is a little too simple in my opinion. There is not much to do in the game, and I find it a little boring to play. The years are really repetitive, even down to the lines that Oracles speak in between each action. Not a whole lot changes and not a whole lot happens.
This game doesn’t seem to require a whole lot of strategy; usually, I only had enough resources to do one thing. This made the game seem like I had choices, but in reality, I could either wait a year and build resources or build the one thing I could afford to build.
I played through a couple of the different Oracles, but they didn’t seem to make enough of a difference in gameplay to make unlocking them worth it. Perhaps if I had unlocked more of the world types, it would have been different. Overall, there didn’t seem to have a whole lot going on in The Hundred Year Kingdom
Conclusion
Overall, The Hundred Year Kingdom was just kind of boring to me. I liked the look and the idea, but it didn’t feel like any of the decisions I was making actually mattered. There wasn’t a whole lot to do except look at the cute anime girls. I didn’t really get the whole idea of the game.
Perhaps I didn’t play enough of the game to get to the fun part, but in my humble opinion, games should lead with the fun part.
Final Verdict: I Don’t Like it.
