Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown Review (PC) – Chasing The Greats And Falling Short But That’s Ok

Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown is the latest real-time strategy, city builder that looks to take inspiration from some of gaming’s most legendary franchises. The question is, does it have the ability to thrive in this well-established genre full of juggernauts, or does it collapse under the weight of expectation? Let’s discuss that and more in this review of Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown

Game Name: Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown
Platform(s): PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): PlaySide Studios
Developer(s): Zugalu Entertainment
Release Date: June 19, 2025

Chasing The Crown

Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown takes huge inspiration from games like Age of Empires, Civilization, Total War, and many more. With a focus on city building, but with a healthy dose of combat and diplomacy thrown in.

The issue when entering a genre that has so many well-established and beloved franchises is that you are chasing greatness, on the back foot from the beginning. Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown has tried to separate itself by including elements from all the major players, and settlement-building functions similarly to Age of Empires’ titles. Diplomacy boils down to the occasional dialogue choice and seems to only happen in the game’s narrative mode. The system for diplomacy takes some ideas from the Civilization and Crusader Kings franchises by giving you choices and consequences outside of the main gameplay loop. Unfortunately, these choices and their consequences never felt important or interesting enough to be truly impactful.

The combat offers a good variety of military units similar to the level of variety you might expect to see in a Total War game. Thankfully, Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown takes a more simplistic approach to controlling these units. In practice, it’s more akin to Age of Empires’ arcade-like style of train unit, send unit to fight with one click, than it is Total War’s true battle simulator, and that is probably a good thing.

Another positive on the side of Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown is the influence it takes from the Stronghold series of games. Where you citizens have needs and a happiness level, and if you don’t keep them happy, they will eventually stop working. The issue is that, unlike Stronghold, Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown doesn’t give you a good explanation of how to fix various unhappiness and just decides to pepper you with icons instead. It made this particular system more annoying than engaging, and as a result, I didn’t return to the game.

Understanding Is Not The Same As Executing

Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown has a great understanding of what has made many of the games within the RTS City Building genre so beloved. It’s this understanding that makes Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown such a promising game.

The issue isn’t in the ideas behind the game or the understanding of the genre. It’s more about the execution of those ideas. Everything that Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown does, it does ok, maybe even good, but everything it does is also done better by the very games it takes inspiration from.

Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown feels like a game where less would have been more; instead of trying to be this RTS game for all genre fans, pick one aspect and do it better than anyone else.

Almost But Not Quite

The one aspect where Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown gets close to topping all its competition is in its presentation. Visually, the game is a delight, with vibrant colour art and easy-to-read menus, and clear indications for placing structures are always nice as well. It looked more impressive than I’ve seen an RTS game look for quite some time. Even if I did hate the number of icons that would constantly pop up, almost like a mobile game.

On the audio side of things, I can’t say that one sound stood out, unfortunately, but nothing seemed out of place either.

Accessibility

I didn’t see any bespoke accessibility settings, which was somewhat surprising. Maybe they are just difficult to find? But then that is an issue in itself. One thing I hope to see in the future is for the game to get full controller support, because although I can and do play these games on Mouse and Keyboard, not everyone can play that way.

Controller support should be a bare minimum for all games in 2025 and beyond. So, here’s hoping that the team behind Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown can add such support to allow more people to play the game soon.

Summary

In the end, Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown is not a bad game; it’s just a game that is chasing the greats and constantly falling short. However, falling short in this genre tends to mean you are still a decent game. That is exactly the case with Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown. It does everything well, just not as well as the greats, but if you want something new to play that tries to combine elements of those legendary then Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown is worth trying out. At its current price, I’d even consider it a steal, but ultimately it falls short of being something really special.

*At the time of writing, Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown is available at the discounted price of $9.79 until July 10, 2025.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown was provided to us for review purposes by PlaySide Studios. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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