Pioneers of Pagonia Review – Build and Expand

When we first spoke about Pioneers of Pagonia all the way back in January of 2024, at the time, we had some issues with how the city builder teaches its core gameplay mechanics to players while also praising the foundations that had already been laid. Almost two whole years later, the game has finally hit 1.0, and quite a few things have changed since then. So now, it’s time to take a closer look at the game and see whether the changes from throughout development have been for the better or not.

One of the biggest new things in Pioneers of Pagonia is that it does a much better job of teaching players how to actually play the game. It does this through its campaign that focuses on teaching you just about every aspect to some degree, ranging from the basic stuff like making sure your citizens aren’t homeless, all the way to more complex concepts, like how you can go about building a military that can then be used to further expand your borders. The title also hasn’t left behind one of its biggest gameplay differentiators when compared to other city builders out there: the fact that you have a border marking your own territory, and that you can expand this border to give you more room to build around.

"One of the biggest new things in Pioneers of Pagonia is that it does a much better job of teaching players how to actually play the game."

While the borders serve as an interesting way for Pioneers of Pagonia to distinguish itself from other city builders out there, let’s talk about the core gameplay first – the building. Generally speaking, it feels like something of a mixed bag. While things operate largely how you would expect, like putting down resource gathering centers for your citizens to start getting you more building materials, Pioneers of Pagonia still feels strangely incomplete even in its 1.0 form. This comes down to the fact that a few gameplay mechanics that one would take for granted feel sorely missing here.

Chief among this is the fact that there’s no universal “demolish buildings” tool, like a brush or construction mode where you could demolish several buildings in one go. As it is in the game right now, if you ever want to go about replacing some of your buildings, or even just move them to a new place, you are going to have to manually click on the building to find the demolish button. This also means that large-scale remodels of your town can feel, at the best of times, incredibly tedious. While landscaping tools being missing might fall in line with the overall goal of Pioneers of Pagonia to promote players building their towns to be in harmony with the natural world around them, it still often ends up feeling frustrating, since you’ll find your city building blocked off by the presence of trees or rocks. And while you can tag some of them as a major priority for your Pioneers to start chopping or breaking them down, this still ends up adding more waiting time to an already-slow game.

The closest thing there is to another solution to this problem is by creating blueprints—layouts consisting of roads and buildings that you can save in advance. Using these blueprints automatically tags any obstruction like trees or rocks that might be in the way for destruction. However, this feels like more of a workaround than an actual solution.

"As it is in the game right now, if you ever want to go about replacing some of your buildings, or even just move them to a new place, you are going to have to manually click on the building to find the demolish button."

These issues, along with the fact that the grid you use to place building feeling quite inconsistent start to feel especially frustrating when you’re trying to plan out your town when you first load into a map. These problems get further exacerbated when you eventually want to expand your town and population, and for some strange reason, there’s no way to upgrade housing to house more people without first demolishing what was first there and then putting down the bigger house in its old place. To that end, the larger houses also start feeling more inconsistent in how they can be placed along the grids, making what would essentially be a host of smaller issues spiral into larger-scale problems.

Pioneers of Pagonia is also an incredibly slow game. Now I’m not demanding that city builders should be as fast-paced as a multiplayer match of StarCraft that demands over 100 actions per minute to not instantly lose. However, Pioneers of Pagonia does have your buildings – especially in the earlier parts – often take literally entire minutes to build out. For example, at standard “1x” game speeds, it can often take well over 15 minutes for you to go from building your first house to getting some border expansion happening through Guard Towers. Building a strong military takes even longer, and even getting some basic soldiers rather than guards can extend the play time into the 30 minute mark. Thankfully there is a way to speed up time, but that essentially feels like more of a band-aid for a more fundamental problem with the game in terms of its overall speed.

It is also worth noting that Pioneers of Pagonia features co-op gameplay for up to four players, even in the campaign mode. While this is a pretty interesting addition to a genre that largely tends to focus on single-player gameplay aside from a few games here and there, the co-op in Pioneers of Pagonia doesn’t add much more than just giving you a chance to enjoy more time with your friends. Owing to the generally slow pace of gameplay, it’s not like there are many chances to delegate specific duties to different players—a faster-paced title would have been great where one player could handle military while another handles food production, for instance. Things can also sometimes start getting chaotic, especially in the early game sections since you have a relatively limited amount of space to build in until you expand your borders. While a co-op mode in any game tends to be a welcome addition, in practice, it feels like a way to just hang out with your friends more than something to sink your teeth into.

"The title’s focus on small-scale supply chains that we first got to see in its Early Access release is still alive and well"

Thankfully, there is still plenty to enjoy here for fans of city builders and management sims. The title’s focus on small-scale supply chains that we first got to see in its Early Access release is still alive and well, and has seen some excellent improvements thanks to the new tech tree that encourages you to keep building out your town and discover the things in nature around it. You basically unlock new tiers of buildings by discovering different materials; get your hands on some iron and you’ll start being able to make better tools and weapons, for instance, while building a quarry and getting stone blocks allows you to build grander buildings.

The military systems have also seen some major improvements since the Early Access release with the addition of a host of different kinds of soldiers and heroes you can hire to be part of your armies. Each one of these soldiers even has some specialities. Rangers, for example, are stronger against thieves than regular guards or soldiers would be. Blade Dancers are similarly strong against well-armoured foes who can tear through your Rangers. While you still don’t get fine control over your soldiers like you would in an RTS, the added options to make up your military does end up offering some level of depth. Don’t expect that you’ll be waging wars against other cities, however. Militaries are largely only useful for taking on progressively-stronger variants on raiders and bandits.

There have also been plenty of upgrades made to the overall UI of the game, especially when it comes to how the various buildings are grouped up in specific categories that end up making quite a bit of sense once you get used to them. The only thing missing here would be some more hotkeys to switch between the different categories, or even a specific hotkey for just the road tool considering how often you have to use it, but these are all minor issues in what is otherwise a pretty fun game.

"While, just like most city-builders, Pioneers of Pagonia is especially fun to play in its more free-form sandbox mode, the campaign also adds plenty of worthwhile gaming time."

Pioneers of Pagonia’s exit from Early Access also marked the fleshing out of its main campaign mode, and it is absolutely a massive addition to the game. While I briefly mentioned the campaign earlier in this review in reference to how it does a decent job of teaching you the basics of gameplay, the campaign is also a generally fun adventure in its own right. Over the course of its 30+ hour campaign, you get to learn about the history of Pagonia – a continent that was shattered into several islands and enshrouded in fog due to a mysterious magical event. Large parts of the campaign revolve around you and your merry crew of Pioneers sailing around the islands to find other Pagonians in an effort to establish friendly communication, trade and unity, especially in light of dangerous raiders, bandits and thieves popping up that are trying to take advantage of the situation to line their own pockets. While, just like most city-builders, Pioneers of Pagonia is especially fun to play in its more free-form sandbox mode, the campaign also adds plenty of worthwhile gaming time.

The overall objectives of the campaign tend to be largely simple. While the first three missions focus on teaching you all of the mechanics, future missions tend to revolve around you hitting certain production thresholds, taking out a specific number of bandit or raider camps, and sometimes finding a specific character or town. Every now and then, however, the campaign starts focusing more on the military aspects of the game by presenting boss fights. While these bosses can often be simplistic, essentially demanding that you throw every single soldier, ranger, and other military unit you have at them, they can also sometimes offer more interesting objectives, like fortifying a position before the boss gets there, or even just defending your own town until a timer expires. These tend to do well to shake things up in what is otherwise quite a slow-paced game.

"Things are a lot more detailed this time around without Pioneers of Pagonia having sacrificed any of the distinct personality it had built up thanks to its art direction and style."

The campaign also presents unique challenges that can throw some wrenches in your plans to wrap up objectives. This can come in a variety of forms, from a strange fog blocking any option you have for exploration and expansion—prompting you to find another path—to the presence of terrain or bandits. Along with this, the campaign also places a bit of emphasis on finding magical artifacts which further drive the story forward, while also giving you some neat bonuses here and there. Generally speaking, however, these unique challenges aren’t major mechanics so much as simply being more interesting ways to frame objectives.

Pioneers of Pagonia’s campaign also comes with the option of various difficulty modes, which could make things simpler or more difficult depending on your choice. While difficulty modes on their own aren’t a particularly major thing, there is also a special Story difficulty mode that pulls back on the challenges, allowing you to simply focus on building your idyllic towns without too much stress. While there are still bandits and raids to handle, they aren’t nearly as aggressive in Story mode than they would be otherwise.

Along with the sheer amount of content you already get through the campaign and sandbox modes, Pioneers of Pagonia also features a full-fledged map editor that lets players come up with their own unique islands, which can then be shared in the form of challenges to other players. While the 1.0 release having just happened means that the custom maps section of the menu is largely populated by the studio’s own works showcasing the map editor’s capabilities, the feature is bound to foster a strong community to further strengthen the amount of play time you can get out of this city-builder.

"Pioneers of Pagonia’s campaign also comes with the option of various difficulty modes"

In terms of visuals, the differences between the Early Access release and the 1.0 release are quite obvious; things are a lot more detailed this time around without Pioneers of Pagonia having sacrificed any of the distinct personality it had built up thanks to its art direction and style. It’s also a lot easier to tell different gameplay-related things apart, be it trees that provide different kinds of lumber, or rocks with veins for different materials. It also helps that Pioneers of Pagonia is not a game that is particularly demanding on your hardware. It was quite easy to manage a steady frame rate throughout my time with the city builder on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM. However, this hardware is obviously well over even the recommended specs listed on the Pioneers of Pagonia Steam page. It is also worth noting that even developer Envision Entertainment has made a note of compatibility issues with Intel Integrated Graphics chips across the UHD and Iris Xe lines. The studio has also warned that the company’s Arc graphics cards might also face similar compatibility issues.

All in all, Pioneers of Pagonia has definitely made quite a few improvements over its Early Access release. However, a universal demolish tool along with better ways to deal with overgrown forests would go a long way in easing some of the frustrations. Aside from that, however, Pioneers of Pagonia can be quite fun thanks to its emphasis on small-scale supply chain logistics and simple military systems.

This game was reviewed on PC.