Townsmen Premium is a medieval-themed city-building game created by Handygames.
It is available on various platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Microsoft. This review is about Townsmen Premium mobile game on Android platform, downloadable from Google Play store.
I found this premium game when I had to spend my Google Play balance that was about to expire. Even tough the balance was a gift, I still wanted to trade it for something that's worth it. After comparing several premium games within the budget, I decided to choose Townsmen Premium.
Reasons to Love Townsmen Premium
Cheap
Townsmen Premium is normally sold at $2.99 on various platforms. I think the normal price is already quite cheap if you compare it with other similar mobile games.
If you plan to buy it from Google Play store, you can get even more deals. It's usually on sale at $0.99 and sometimes you can also get extra special discount offer from Google if you rarely buy apps there.
Decent City-Building Game on Mobile
If you love city-building game on PC like Age of Empires, but you don't have much time to sit in front of your computer to play it, Townsmen Premium can be an alternative to temporarily quench the thirst. It gives similar experience, albeit so much simpler, and you can play it anywhere even when you are commuting.
In Townsmen Premium, you can grow the city population, build buildings, produce and manage resources, trade to supply your townies' needs and make profits, decorate your city, collect tax, deal with fires and natural disasters, heal sick townies, and defend your towns against bandits.
Townsmen Premium actually surprised me. I didn't expect much considering their cheap price, but it turned out to be a great mobile game that you can play for long hours
Cloud Save Using Google Play Games
I always appreciate games that offer cloud save feature using Google Play Games account because it's easy to backup and restore the game progress only with few clicks. It's not only helpful for when you switch to a new mobile phone, but it can also help you to create a backup save point.
Townsmen Premium automatically saves the game progress on your device, but not in the cloud. So, if anything goes wrong, you have the option to go back and "undo" the progress by loading an old savegame from the cloud. Trust me, you are going to need the backup save point. Townsmen Premium sometimes generates random disaster challenge that can feel overwhelmingly hard if you still have limited resources. When you are facing the hard challenge, just load the savegame from the cloud and usually the challenge will not appear again or you may get different challenge (remember, it's random). So, when you feel everything works well, save the progress into the cloud -- before the disaster suddenly strikes!
The Annoying Things
Slow Progress
Everything feels so slow. Activities such as producing and collecting the resources, building things, and trading in marketplace require time. The slow movement of the townies doesn't help to speed things up.
There are several workarounds for that issue. After reaching XP Level 8, you can do research to make your townies move faster. Or, if you want to just speed up everything, you can use the Fast Forward feature that will speed things 5x faster for 60 seconds at a cost. The first two usages of the Fast Forward feature are free, then after that, you can get another one by watching a video or spending 15 Prestige. There is also option to get unlimited Fast Forward forever by buying the add-on with real money.
Pop-up Distraction
Buying this premium game will automatically remove ads in the game. However, you will still get pop-ups offering the game's premium add-ons, such as the Unlimited Double XP add-on. At the beginning, it just appeared occasionally and still tolerable, but as I progressed further in the game, the pop-ups became more frequent. It's quite annoying for me. It made me feel that the ads removed are only the 3rd party ads, but not ads for its own add-ons.
Is it worth it?
If you love city-building games, I say it's worth it to buy Townsmen Premium on Android, especially when it's discounted!
