I'm rather confused by the negative reviews for Patron, which is especially surprising considering I tend to be pretty tough and critical on games.

Even though this isn't a mind blowing unique experience, it's literally better than the game it clones, Banished.

As mentioned, this is a direct banished clone, even the building blueprints work in EXACTLY the same way. So there are valid points about this maybe being, unoriginal, uninspired, etc. However the key difference is that Patron is ACTUALLY balanced to be playable all the way through.

I hated Banished because once you get to a certain stage the game is a disaster of a slog. It becomes impossible to expand because you're constantly running into material production issues that take far too long to fix before ruining your entire town. It almost felt like the game was so hyper balanced that one single decision being made too early, or even a little too late, can completely lock the game into a never ending course correction simulator, making it a disaster to progress and expand.

In Patron you don't have that issue. You still have the same tasks, the same needs (In some ways even more than Banished does) but it is balanced a little more loose than Banished is. This means the game can still be a challenge, but not so extreme that you can't even play.

Patron has way better tools at your disposal that will help you track resource production easily. This allows you to easily maintain the ever increasing resource needs as your colony grows in size. You can quickly check up on production stats and catch trends of underproduction before they become an impossible mountain to climb. That right there made all the difference for me compared to Banished.

Additionally, the production numbers themselves are much more forgiving than Banished, Instead of each job and what that job produces BARELY being enough, Patron has a little cushion in what people can produce, making it much less likely to find yourself in a never ending cycle of fixing things that have broken. There are also more tools to quickly and easily make adjustments to that production to accommodate increasing demands or even new ones.

This made my experience with Patron far better than the one I had with Banished, and for that alone the game is easily recommendable.

As I said the game isn't really original or mind blowing, but the base concept of Banished is a really good one, and I was pleasantly surprised to finally play that kind of city builder without all the frustration and honestly, complete BS that was Banished.

So if you like banished or city builders in general, Patron is a great indie title!