Urban Empire
Skip · Strategy · 2017
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $29.99.
- Length
- 8.1h
- Value
- $3.70/hr
- Reviews
- 34% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 / AMD HD 6850 2GB, 4 GB of storage. Windows only.
Urban Empire is a ‘City Ruler’, pioneering a new breed of strategy game that combines city builder features with political scheming and adds profound social and historical events into the mix, creating a whole new gameplay experience.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $2.99, set in December 2024. 60 discounts in the 10 years on record. They run about 75 percent off, roughly 8 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 8 weeks.
It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 99 percent. The Guild II Renaissance ($9.99, scores 61) outscores it, and so does Tropico 6 ($39.99, scores 71). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
The press liked it more than its buyers did, 62 against 34 percent.
Steam's global achievement data says about 5 percent of players ever finish it. On an 8.1-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. Inside the two-hour refund window, 21 percent of the 350 reviews written there were positive, against 34 percent overall, and those are 18 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
72% start to 5% finishMost players never reach the end. On an 8.1-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
3 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Interesting game design, but terrible, and I mean downright bad game mechanics, clearly not well flushed out. most decisions feel rudimentary or not explained. bad UI screen is stuck at just an awful camera angle but that's all Kalypso games from this era. sometimes the politicians simply want to screw your character over and railroad some bad edicts or legislation, truly a frustrating game. edit: and that's if you...
It's an unfinished and abandoned game. It crashes half the time. Steam should remove this game. It is a ripoff. Probably won't waste my money on anything else from steam because of this.
I do think there is fun to be had playing the game and that is why I recommend it but I also agree that there are lots of problems with it. Because of all the bad reviews which again I do think raise valid points I only dared get it on a big discount because I was very curious to try it out. And after just a couple playthroughs I do think the game has a very interesting and enjoyable concept, it could have been a...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Urban Empire scores 2/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/352550/urban-empireThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 22, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.