Plebby Quest

Plebby Quest tries to be a more casual take on the grand strategy genre, probably most inspired by Crusader Kings. I figured that since my main problems with Crusader Kings were its excessive micromanagement and too large a focus on roleplaying, then something like this might be a fun little alternative. How wrong I was.

Plebby Quest definitely does have more of a focus on gameplay, with interpersonal relationships and successions not even being a thing. You simply control a country and fight against other countries. Diplomacy still exists with trade and alliances though. The second biggest difference (after not having to worry about succession) is the heavy focus on individual generals and troops. Both can level up, giving more troops to generals, and increasing the stats of troops and even allowing them to learn new abilities. You also take personal control of all battles, issuing commands to all your troops, giving you more influence over the outcome. Further, the game is not real-time, but instead is played in turns, with each general giving you one action per turn to be spent on combat, gaining resources, research, or something else.

There's more stuff in addition to what's listed above, but there's no point in going into all the little details. It's still much simpler than any grand strategy game, while having a somewhat similar feel. While the simplicity is fine, there are two major problems. One is that there is somehow even more micromanagement. I can not set things up according to some rules. Every turn, I have to tell every general what to do, and if it's not combat that I have to oversee, it's some other little minigame that they decided to insert because they thought just playing the main game wasn't fun enough? I don't know. The minigames were fun the first 10 times, but if I have to do them every turn, they get quite tedious. Secondly, the clicking. Oh god, the clicking. I have no idea who in their right mind decided that everything needed to have, without exaggeration, three times more buttons to click than necessary. I should not need to manually dismiss each source of income every turn. I should not have to listen to some character giving me three lines of dialogue every time I buy a medal for a unit, which I can do three times a turn. In fact, all the dialogue they added is insane. Flavor text and descriptions are fine, but I have to dismiss every single dialogue like a pop-up box.

I can't comment too much on how good the game is outside these problems. It's probably fine - I didn't see any balance issues or anything like that. But the two issues I listed above make the game unplayable. I, again, do not exaggerate, when I say that the turns could probably be around 10 times shorter if pointless clicks and minigames were excluded. After just two hours, I was beyond frustrated. I was angry that I was wasting my time and the game wasn't progressing. Sadly, these issues are far too deep ingrained into the game. It's hopeless, and I can't recommend anyone play this.