Cliff Empire

TL;DR: Net positive, but with some things to be aware of.
Pros:
-Pretty!
-Fairly straightforward once you understand the resources
-Events are mostly balanced, though you might wipe once or twice at first
Cons:
-Map generator does not always give you somewhere you can build bridges, making certain objectives impossible and certain technologies useless.
-Grammar and syntax are very clunky, and while it's mostly still understandable there are one or two places where I don't know what the writers are trying to say.

Great concept, fun world, solid base builder at first but turns into an incredibly dull grind.
For about the first 15 hours this game was super fun. Building up cities on limited land made decisions for building choice, placement, and research very impactful. The game moved along quickly with constant new challenges and progression.
After that the game shifted into mega-project mode. My cities were stable so it came down to watching TV or browsing websites while waiting for the resources to trickle in for the various mega-projects. There was no more challenge, no way to speed up progress, and new things to do came along rarely.
Overall it's an OK game but if the game's pace had been the same from start to finish I would have called it a great game.
Only get this one if you really like the aesthetic or maybe if you want something to play while binge-ing some shows. And if you start feeling bored with it walk away, it doesn't get better.

I've played this a fair bit and it's a great chill city builder and it has been updated through the years and new stuff keeps getting added which is great that the dev still cares about it.

TLDR : Cliff Empire us a unique city builder with a lot of charm but the second half of the game is a time waster because of its terrible pacing.
Pro :
-Art design is great. Even though it takes place in an apocalyptic world, it's very different from the obligatory wasteland and that's refreshing.
-Very relaxing atmosphere. There is this zen atmosphere that makes you want to spend times in it.
-Great music. Again, very relaxing tunes that suits well the visuals.
-I like watching the little spaceship picking up stuff, it creates a busy bee hives.
-Space Station is a nice visual surprise.
-Wall structure and foundation are great unlockables since it pushes you to completely reorganise your city.
-The whole concept of limited space on the cliff is what makes it different from the other city builders. You have to constantly plan your space ahead and since different cliffs have different resources, it's interesting to makes them interact with each other.
CON:
-The second half of the game after you unlock the modules foundation at level 15 is an absolute snooze fest.
-Bottom Cliff structure takes forever to build for minimal changes to how you play.
-The space station : Even though it is visually striking, each mission is just providing a huge amount of certain resources with no real thinking involved. Everything takes forever to build and since our cities on earth are already optimised there is litteraly nothing to do but waiting.
-Ice citadel: you start from scratch but without the space constraint which negates all the mechanics and the fun of the game.
-The marauder attacks are visually interesting to look for the first couple of time. but they don't really add anything. It only comes down to having build enough defense and that's it. There is no strategy in actual defense or anything. The game plays itself and you have no way of intreacting during those battles even though you really want to as they look to be a boss battle.
-Game is far too easy. I'd wish it would push the concept further of each of the three cliffs having exclusive resources. Forcing the player to specialise each cliffs.
Overall : it's a fun and unique game that i would still recommend as the first 25-30 hours are actually great. But the second half is really really boring after level 15 because at that time your cities are already optimised and compeltely automated and the game requires very very little input from you up until the end of the game.

It's such a bloody good game. The setting is grim, and it starts off hard. Eventually it expands to a more hopeful setting as you do better and better.

Incredibly fun game, endgame just keeps going and going well beyond when I expected the game to end
Gets really slow paced at times, sometimes feel like I'm watching paint dry
Unintuitive finance mechanics. You control multiple cities. But their finances are individual. One of your cities is too poor? Don't borrow money from the richest city. The debt will just keep compounding and you'll be in debt forever. Instead, lend money TO the richest city and then do nothing and wait. Then let the loan trickle in.
A city in debt can't lend, and a city can only borrow from one other city. So if the lender city goes under....guess what both cities are completely borked and you gotta start over.

It's a very solid ANNO lite game, decent art, engaging gameplay, and the story/progress might surprise you. overall a great 8.5/10 game.