Football Manager 26
Football Manager 26
Game
Game2025
Pioneers of Pagonia
Developer Envision Entertainment
Rebuild hope in a world that was lost in the fog. Lead your Pioneers across the isles of Pagonia, unite scattered tribes, raise thriving communities and discover the history of your people as you reclaim your world in the new story campaign. From the Steam store page
284 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Oct 26, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
57
Mixed
135 positive · 101 negative
95% range 51–63%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 135 | 101 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 6 | 1 | 22 |
| Lemmy * | 1 | 0 | 11 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 1 | 6 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
1,178 of 1,602 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
58% recommend · 137 yes, 98 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 235 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (4,499 of 5,531 positive).
Many players praise the game as a worthy successor to The Settlers, capturing its nostalgic feel. [1][2][3] Some reviewers find the game slow, tedious, and lacking depth, especially in combat and economy. [4][5][6] Several players criticize the early release of paid DLC, feeling content was withheld. [7][8][9]
Liked
Disliked
Representative posts
- [4]
Just not quite there yet. It looks like it should be awesome, which is maybe why I'm being so hard on it- I expect more. I get this is early access so I'll come back to this some day, but right now I can't recommend this game. It's got all the traditional fixin's you'd expect from a game like this. Build buildings to harvest resources and produce goods to support your population. But there's nothing really …
- [6]
Not the Settlers 2 Successor We Hoped For I desperately wanted to love this game. As someone who grew up on Settlers 2, I hoped Pioneers of Pagonia would be its true spiritual successor. Unfortunately, while the game starts with a decent challenge, it quickly devolves into a boring time sink. The foundation is simply missing the depth that made the original games in this genre timeless. An Economy on Autopilot The …
- [1]
Pioneers of Pagonia brings back everything I missed in modern settlers games: You can simply build, relax, and watch your pioneers buzz around. Each pioneer has their own small routines, from harvesting crops to going home for lunch breaks, and they all feel alive. It's clear that the developers put a lot of effort and thought into these small details and animations. The things I missed the most in Early Access were …
- [3]
Pioneers of Pagonia is a gem. As a lifetime settlers fan this variation from Mr. Wertich & Team provided. There are many city builders, but only this particular game, like no other, hits the settlers spot for me personally. The last time I had similar feelings playing The Settlers 7 for hundreds of hours a long time ago. I'm happy I decided to give it a chance despite being skeptical. The game is beautiful, performs …
- [2]
Pagonia is slow, a bit awkward, and sometimes weirdly ugly, but I had a really good time with it. Overall, I’d say this is a very good game and a worthy successor to The Settlers. It has issues, some of them quite obvious, but considering this is the studio’s first game, it’s a decent and promising start. I’ll definitely be interested in future expansions. The game starts off a bit overwhelming because there are so …
Summarised from 34 of the 294 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Pioneers of Pagonia sits at 57% positive across 236 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Reactions
60 of 284 · most liked firstJust not quite there yet. It looks like it should be awesome, which is maybe why I'm being so hard on it- I expect more. I get this is early access so I'll come back to this some day, but right now I can't recommend this game. It's got all the traditional fixin's you'd expect from a game like this. Build buildings to harvest resources and produce goods to support your population. But there's nothing really challenging about the way it's implemented. In this game, just go build one of each…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought Pioneers of Pagonia in may of this year and immediately fell in love with it. Being able to play it with my friends made it even better. So in the beginning I played it a lot and would have rated it 10/10. After that I came back to it every couple of months to check out the new content and changes made to the game. Some of them I was really excited about but the ones made in regards of how the game progressed unfortunately made my gaming experience worse. Being so restricted in terms…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!. And I've rated them all below. I'm very glad Steam decided to do a big promotional event around them- it helped point me toward a lot of games I would have never tried/heard of otherwise. Some of the good ones might not be good the entire game, but they were at least good in the demo. I would recommend trying any demo I rate 4/5, and maybe purchase the full game if you like it. Anything lower, and it's probably down to personal…
neutral · AI labelView post →A promising but unfortunately, in its current state, boring and tedious game that still feels unfinished. I bought it in early access to support the studio, but after playing the campaign on difficulty 3 I have to conclude that it simply isn't much fun yet. -- Good parts: - Feels like a real settlers game! Goods are physical objects that have to be stored and carried for processing and you can actually see them all. Very cool! - Production chains are mostly automated so there isn't…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this for the Settlers nostalgia, but instead of polishing the base game and expanding the content, they just pushed out DLC. That’s a hard pass from me; I won’t be buying it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm sorry but the game took years to finish (1.0 release) and the first thing you do is add an (mediocre) paid DLC? Hell no. You've earned yourself this review.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this game in early access because i had hopes it would full and finished with its 1.0 release. It was still shallow, lacking content, unbalanced and just really easy. And now releasing a dlc to basically fix the content that was left out this soon after that? Seems like they did the good ol tactic of pay walling content that should have been in the game. then to also say in their post they are being nice by giving you a crumb of it to play it is just gross. This game is not worth your…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This fails to reach the mark of settlers. It rushes too fast to too many specialized units making you vomit out buildings left and right. Here's a new enemy, you need this unit to counter it, here's a landslide, go get hammers, here's.. blegh. the fun of settlers was that you worked out a way to beat the level, get the appropriate resources. here that's drowned out by noise. Replay / retry is annoying because all the progress is blocked by endless mini dialogues which you have to click…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yo! 2025 is nearly over but we have one month left when it comes to new game releases. For December I have a list of 55 notable new releases for you including Horses, Pioneers of Pagonia, Metroid Prime 4 and Skate Story! I wish you happy Holidays and see you in 2026! 3 Pages:
neutral · AI labelView post →Not the Settlers 2 Successor We Hoped For I desperately wanted to love this game. As someone who grew up on Settlers 2, I hoped Pioneers of Pagonia would be its true spiritual successor. Unfortunately, while the game starts with a decent challenge, it quickly devolves into a boring time sink. The foundation is simply missing the depth that made the original games in this genre timeless. An Economy on Autopilot The biggest overarching issue is that the economy eventually runs on infinite…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Once again I'd wish to be able to have an option for neutral reviews. It was/is extremely hard to choose the thumbs up or down but after playing several more hours I'm with the thumbs up. But it is close... I love the game’s art style and its many well-developed ideas and concepts. But as it stands, there are so many things in the game that make it really hard to enjoy. The UI feels extremely overloaded, and managing the flow of goods comes across as needlessly complicated. The game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Expected a good successor to Settlers 2 --- failed The campaign is too shallow. Buildings don't have too much variation in design, so it's hard to identify most of the buildings when you try to find a specific one. Now they started to released paid DLC just to add few more buildings and few chapters of campaigns .. it's not worth it, I'm not going to pay anything more ...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall: I have mixed feelings about this game. I love the look of the game and the superb animations as the village grows and the complexity around the resource chains get established - really does remind me of the countless months playing Settlers II & III, and I so want to enjoy this. You can see I have put in >280 hours or so. There is a quality game under here… but Somehow it just misses the mark. For me, the biggest miss is the combat and enemies on the map. I just don't get the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →1.4 review, bought in early acces. [I edit 27.07.2026] Overall, spirit of The Settlers is here, but game still feels incomplete and is overcomplicated in crucial things that made The Settlers games unique. -Buildings are not telegraphical, i often need to check which specific building look like. - Campaign Story is blend, not interesting, mainly examines development of tech tree (wasn't attached to any of talking characters, because they only exist in dialogues or hints, they represent…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I gave up after 3 hours. Game is okay but ig gets boring. You have no competition at all. It is not like the good old Settlers 1 and 2 where you had to take care of transporting the goods, managing the paths and fighting against others for the goodies. Without other factions and war, this game is not near the good old settlers.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Genuinely terrible for one very simple reason: The combat. If the game was just building up your settlement and growing your economy, attacking static camps to expand as you go, I'd say its like a 6/10. But someone decided that 70% of the gameplay loop resolves around recruiting units and then losing those units on a neverending tide of hostile incursions. Even if you match up the rock-paper-scissors thing (And you have to, unless you literally want to lose twice as many of your guys), you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not even 8 hours in and I have to admit that I probably will not add any more game-time. Somehow this game failed to impress me at all. The graphics are great for such a game, however the writing is cringy at best. The "storyline" is already boring after the first 3 sentences. I dont particularly like most types of buildings - markets and the like. I am also missing clear info on how many resources are produced by whom and how many in what amount of time. Some diagrams are thrown at you but I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pioneers of Pagonia was meant to be a spiritual successor to The Settlers, but it completely misses what made that series work. Where The Settlers thrived on intuitive systems and elegant simplicity, Pagonia buries the player under an overcomplicated web of tools and an excessive number of professions. Instead of feeling organic and readable, the economy becomes cumbersome and needlessly convoluted. For me, this overengineering kills the fun, which is why I can’t recommend the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The base game is nowhere near finished, yet the greedy developers are already pushing out DLC for a quick buck. I’ve been rooting for this game since Early Access, but this shameless cash grab completely killed my interest
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pioneers of Pagonia, a modern take on the Settlers formula, where you colonize an island chain released on Steam..
neutral · AI labelView post →Bought this game in early access, and I had good hopes for this game. But the game turned out to be shallow, bland, boring.... I could make an extensive list of all disappointing features but I saw some other players that have eloquently described the shortfalls of this game. I gladly refer to them to help you make up your mind about this game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hmm.... Honestly, I could easily recommend the game for what it was and how it was presented to us in the beginning, but then somewhere along the way the entire feel of the art and all the assets got changed out of nowhere for no reason whatsoever -- for the worse. Then the focus of the game changed in little ways 'here and there' and slowly but surely it became what it is today. High contrast, cheap, cartoony sameness. It feels harsh to say that but it's the only pure way I know how to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I feel like the game has a very poor balancing. Enemies that have the ability to reproduce themselves infinite in story mode while the game doesnt allow you to upgrade your units because of lord know why is just poor design. Quest NPCS constantly feeding enemies to further increase growth and spectres running over the half map to scare away everyone? No sorry I dont enjoy this kind of thing. Other than that, co-op is pretty well made.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As a fan of The Settlers series, I picked up Pioneers of Pagonia during Early Access. The game’s graphics and art style are undeniably charming, offering a cozy and inviting atmosphere, but unfortunately, that’s about where the positives end. I find myself playing the game for a couple of hours every 6-12 months, but after all this time, I’m still feeling let down. With the full 1.0 release coming in December, I can't help but feel disappointed with where the game stands so far: The UI feels…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm genuinely unsure how anyone could leave a bad review for this game... And reading through those -- the same reviews that kept me from buying this for about 2 weeks before I finally went "screw it, I'll take a chance"...they're just unnecessary whiners or competition trying to muddy the waters. Complaints of DLC? - The only DLC that hits me weird is the guide-buy... In all honesty you don't need a guide for the game, but even if you did something like that shouldn't be DLC. Other than…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly incredibly disappointing. I waited to play this more as EA left some wanting and it was obviously not a completed game... but for them to immediately turn around with a paid DLC instead of completing the game is disgusting. This practice should not be rewarded in anyway. I wish I could refund this instead. Shame.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →shallow once you've seen it once you almost seen it all there is an illusion of choices but progression is linear and leads to little strategic choices if any
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's both good and bad. Only for Settlers and slow sim fans. Story: - uninspired, shallow, boring, cringe dialogue, childish, weak characters, meh Graphics: - greatly detailed, beautiful buildings, good animations, nothing to complain really - cutscenes are static and on a budget Music: - something is playing in the background - nice sounds Gameplay: - slow, methodological, step by step - repetitive and formulaic base building but that's the type of game and I like it (can speed up) - if you…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pioneers of Pagonia brings back everything I missed in modern settlers games: You can simply build, relax, and watch your pioneers buzz around. Each pioneer has their own small routines, from harvesting crops to going home for lunch breaks, and they all feel alive. It's clear that the developers put a lot of effort and thought into these small details and animations. The things I missed the most in Early Access were a campaign and a level editor. I'm glad they added both for the 1.0 release.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There is a lot more anticipating of future needs required to minimize downtime in this game than in others as you need to wait for units to travel to build/supply/pickup/etc. So at the beginning, when you are figuring this out, there can be a lot of 5x time waiting. But I think you can get better about this. We will see. Campaign seems fairly standard but only 1 mission in. Personally I prefer story/campaign vs. endless procedural stuff, so this is the main reason I've held off purchasing…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's sad to see them jumping on the DLC trash train instead of getting the game up to a decent state. Greed over Quality I'm out.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sure it's a competent game. But it's just so dull, forgettable and uninspired. Just like this review.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sorry the resources run out after one or two waves of enemies... you want to product cooler units too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad no resources to do anything... keep sending in crap units... you have have 5 iron huts to make your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ armor and sword.. .ops o h ♥♥♥♥ you ran out of iron and can n ot m ake any steel... ha ha wow you better make srue your resources are not used up frivvvvvisously... yep right... I make a whole 5 second rate unit and they all died... got over 1000 pleople but I can make 5…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I purchased this game when it launched but have never really gotten into it - I find it just too boring. The maps are too small, the buildings are too big and there's no real sense of involvement. I loved the Settlers and thought that this would scratch that settlers itch - but it don't even come close. Rarely play it now, give it a look every time there's an update, but it is still boring.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game does a lot of things really well, but spending 8+ hours a mission longer than I need to trying to get a population to grow is not fun at all. Campaign balancing is abysmal, its not hard, just poorly designed. I want to like the game, its got a lotta potential, but until the food system gets a rework its just stressful
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Too dependant on time based game play that forces the player to rush to meet targets. Becomes a slog rather than a game you can enjoy.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →DLC grab when the game isn't fixed it awful. Terrible developer.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pagonia is slow, a bit awkward, and sometimes weirdly ugly, but I had a really good time with it. Overall, I’d say this is a very good game and a worthy successor to The Settlers. It has issues, some of them quite obvious, but considering this is the studio’s first game, it’s a decent and promising start. I’ll definitely be interested in future expansions. The game starts off a bit overwhelming because there are so many buildings, resources, production chains and unit types. At first it…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pioneers of Pagonia is a gem. As a lifetime settlers fan this variation from Mr. Wertich & Team provided. There are many city builders, but only this particular game, like no other, hits the settlers spot for me personally. The last time I had similar feelings playing The Settlers 7 for hundreds of hours a long time ago. I'm happy I decided to give it a chance despite being skeptical. The game is beautiful, performs well even with the whole map covered with thousads of Pagonians and dozens of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yes, this game is "Settlers" like. I always enjoyed the Settlers series and I like their take on this game style. It is a production balance focused game. This is where you will receive you best results. The thieves and other attackers can make balancing a challenge, but that what's it about, right?! (I still hate the D@mn thieves!)
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It was supposed to be a Settlers successor, but they left the base game a mess, chose to go for DLC instead. I think I'll just look for mods first, that fix the game, and erase the "cultural enrichment" in the arts.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ugh building roads yourselves? On the bright side, this game made me install and play settlers 3 again
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →+ cute graphics + pathfinding works quite well + more complex than the original Settlers - still a very simple strategy as a concept The game gave me a nostalgia for the old days with Settlers, slightly more complicated but similarly cute dozens of little people who are always carrying and producing something somewhere. It doesn't bring much new to the city building genre, but what it does, it does well. After these x years, it was good to play it a little. 7,5/10
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →great game, but wayland/proton needs a bit love to stabilize it a bit more, there are a few crashes, save often under linux
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pioneers of Pagonia: Early Access Release Trailer (English).
neutral · AI labelView post →Sidenote: [Pioneers of Pagonia](https://www.pioneersofpagonia.com/) is by the **actual** developer of the actual old The Settlers. I loved it. And yeah, it's a simple management game without much depth or fuss, but that chill easygoing settling of the landscape is what enchanted me about the original right around 30 years ago, and it worked just as well with the demo. In fact I found that comparing Against The Storm, I kinda prefer the **less** gameplay that PoP has, exactly **because** it has…
positive · AI labelView post →Not sure witch update that broke the game mechanics but it was fun before that
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Ifelt so sad when this released in 1.0 because it is still very much in an early access state, and now the release paid DLC instead of making reasonable additions to main game free of charge! 3/10 Cannot recommend... :(
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Classic cash-grab 101: rushing 1.0 and turning core items left out of the 'finished' version into a DLC that costs nearly as much as the 'full' game cost on EA, what a scummy bunch.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →No pause button. Do not like being interrupted and forced to build special buildings to get special units to defend against enemies in the way the game dictates. Want to go my own pace and direction with those types of games.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →“Pioneers of Pagonia” attempts to embrace the nostalgic magic of the classic Settlers series, presenting a world that is superficially warm and inviting. Indeed, the buildings look cozy and the familiar rhythm of logistics is present, but much of the series’ original soul feels modernized away. Citizens are slimmer, lacking the chubby personality that defined earlier games, and construction sequences feel noticeably pared down, often obscured by generic scaffolding rather than showcasing the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The true « The Settlers V » ! This game grants a nice modernized « The Settlers » experience. The gameplay is good and feature (almost) everything you had in the old The Settlers. There are some things I find quite annoying tho : - The lack of proper enemy faction/nation with there own territory - The Military aspect is shallower than The Settlers IV - No arcana/spellcasting - No booze brewing - The inability to play « tall » and focus on a small territory (mostly because of the need to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →game is nice and really tries to be true settlers series successor but it fails to tell player some important things needed to understand what's going on with population for example in my 1st playthrough at 3rd mission I found myself with almost all my carriers gone and only 31 left with 299 total population and 685 free spaces in all homes of course my economy collapsed but why? I think because I didn't really care to control comfort meals of my people and at some point a lot of them just go…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I had high hopes for this game, but I think this game just falls short. My biggest issues with this game are the constant dialog pop-ups, and the constant lowering of speed settings. As for the game play, I find it somewhat enjoyable. My goal is to finish the campaign, but at this point that is going to be tuff.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I’ve successfully completed my internship working on Pioneers of Pagonia! It was such a privilege to work with such an amazing team. Can’t wait to share my contribution to the game. It’s coming soon! ꒰(･‿･)꒱
neutral · AI labelView post →Pretty solid Settlers-like game. I can't speak to what the game was like before release, but I think what's here is fair enough. It sounds like many of the other reviewers had skill issue, so it's worth noting you can drop the difficulty on the campaign missions if you're having trouble while learning your way around. It's not the best game ever, but I'm happy with what I got for my money for the base game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My last Settlers game was 7, so thats my point of reference. So far Pagonia has been very enjoyable , I am around 4 or 5 missions into the campaign, and it really scratches that old Settlers itch. Highly recommended!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The positive: I like ""Settlers" and this game is a great alternative. I had fun for a bit with the base game. The negative: You had good advertisment with Maurice and others. The price tag of 35 is about the max you could do with that. The military unit control is the worst i have seen in any RTS game. please fix that instead of making the combined bundle of game plus DLCs 65 bucks with relatively low content amount to that price. And maybe revise your Business Model a bit, instead of going…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I forced myself to complete the entire campaign and a random map. Imagine if you got exactly the game you asked for and it just wasn't fun All the elements are good. The game is boring and extremely slow progress. Performance is good, many units all doing things. Graphics and Sound are good. The UI is good, the design of the sub-systems is good. The Trade system is weird. The campaign dialogue was the worst, all the characters seemed fake, the story seemed silly. "Oh hey an enemy, ok…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Borders are meaningless, AI is missing and enemies are boring, yet overpowered given you have to micromanage each type of soldier depending on the type of enemy you are facing. The game grinds to a halt as soon as you have long roads to travel or once lacked some crucial ressources. As a successor of a very succesful settlers 2, I would have imagined it not being too hard to create a fun game in the same style given it was possible like 20 something years ago already. Bring back settlers 2…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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