Ara: History Untold review: You have entered a Golden Age

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As a seasoned connoisseur of historical strategy games, I must say that Ara: History Untold has truly captured my heart and challenged my tactical prowess. The game offers an intricate tapestry of time and culture, allowing players to weave their own narrative as they navigate the annals of history.

At Oxide Games, the core team has a considerable number of veterans who previously worked on Civilization 5, which explains why their recent project focuses on reimagining the 4X genre. Introducing Ara: History Untold – an expansive new 4X game offering a multitude of unique nations with distinct playstyles, an intricate crafting system to maintain your production and city growth, and customizable maps teeming with strategic possibilities. Although it doesn’t exactly break new ground in avoiding common 4X issues, Ara: History Untold promises an exciting new twist from the developers of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, offering countless hours of gameplay as players strive to construct a resilient nation that stands the test of time.

Numerous budding nations

History Untold is a 4X game where you lead real-world inspired nations across the course of history. One standout feature of this game is the abundance of nations and leaders to pick from, each with unique characteristics. For example, Germany’s Otto von Bismarck emphasizes military power for constructing combat units and expansion through conquest, while Hildegard von Bingen of Germany focuses on religious growth and knowledge advantages when her faith becomes predominant. There are numerous other nations designed for different play styles, offering exciting discoveries as you delve into them.

In simpler terms, each nation and leader has unique abilities, not all are equally strong in every aspect. For example, the Abbasid Caliphate under Harun al-Rashid excels in research and knowledge with academies and research agreements, while Hildegard’s influence offers research bonuses from monasteries, along with increased city happiness and health in areas where her religion is prominent. There are many such nations and leaders, each offering a unique flavor. It’s great to have so much variety, but it would be even better if their strengths were more clearly defined.

Delving into Ara: History Untold, it’s evident that Oxide Studios has leveraged their past ventures in this genre effectively. The game commences with players on a customizable terrain, ranging from Pangaea-like continents to arid deserts, icy tundras, tropical islands, and configurations mimicking our contemporary world layout of land and water. Initially, your focus is on constructing infrastructure in your main city, increasing its populace, expanding territories, and subsequently establishing new cities for repetition. The fundamental elements of a turn-based strategy 4X game, such as resources for construction, population growth through food and housing, and knowledge acquisition for technological advancements, are all present. If you’ve ever played a Civilization game, you should have a good grasp of the mechanics and navigation.

In Ara: History Untold, I’ve found myself captivated by the stunning landscapes, each teeming with diverse biomes and territories claimed by other nations. One of the aspects that truly sets this game apart is its synchronous turn-based system, where all players make their moves simultaneously. This feature not only speeds up the gameplay significantly but also provides a dynamic experience reminiscent of late-game Civilization, where wait times could stretch on for what felt like an eternity.

Regrettably, Ara: History Untold doesn’t eliminate the laboriousness of typical 4X games during the mid to late stages. The main objective is to boost your prestige by advancing your history, constructing monuments, acquiring technology ahead of others, and expanding your empire through trade or conquest. However, as I progressed into the mid-game, I often found myself with extended periods of inactivity due to focusing my efforts on particular goals that required substantial resources. This results in stretches of waiting turn after turn for significant events to occur. It becomes tiresome in most 4X games at some point, and Ara: History Untold doesn’t significantly address this problem beyond speeding up the pace of game progression.

Your path through history as you like it

In summary, although Ara: History Untold may become repetitive towards the middle and late stages of gameplay, it offers numerous methods for expanding your empire. One standout feature is its distinctive crafting system, which introduces a variety of buildings and district structures that yield resources beyond the usual ones like wood, materials, gold, food, and science. By establishing a workshop, you can manufacture wheels, which can then be employed in a stable to produce plows. These plows can enhance any farm’s food production.

You also end up using similar resources in a variety of things. For instance, if your land has a pig resource, you can build a farm to harvest the pigs for a butcher shop to make cured meats that add to your city’s food supply, or you can harvest them for tallow to make candles that boost your city’s knowledge and science. There are numerous ways to optimize your production depending on your goals and priorities and I love that in Ara. It kept buildings I put up quite a while back engaging as I constantly switched production priorities and crafting queues. You can even set certain buildings on a permanent craft to keep making a certain thing forever or set limited craft queues to get what you need before they switch back to a usual routine.

In this game called Ara: History Untold, I find myself frustrated by the lack of clarity regarding the resources available for each building at any given moment. It can be confusing when I acquire improved versions of building components, like upgrading from lithic tools in the workshop to metal tools, which do essentially the same job but better. What irritates me is that Ara doesn’t inform me if a building already has a better version of a component. Instead, I have to manually check every single building constantly to ensure it’s equipped with the best gear. It’s manageable when I only have one city, but when I expand to three or four cities, each with dozens of buildings, the process becomes tiresome. Even a simple notification like “You have an empty equipment slot in Building X and available equipment to fill it” would be incredibly helpful. Fortunately, Ara does provide queue notifications for various other aspects of the game, such as alerting me when a city’s building or production queue is idle and needs attention.

To summarize, there appear to be some strategies in this game that are less effective than others, particularly those involving militaristic actions. The objective is to maintain high prestige, but if your prestige score isn’t sufficient when a nation reaches a new historical era, nations with lower prestige scores may be eliminated from the game. This isn’t much of an issue for peaceful religious, scientific, or cultural nations because they don’t engage in warfare. However, engaging in conflict with another nation and waging war will decrease your prestige points, making it challenging to maintain a high score if you focus on military tactics. While it makes strategic sense that there would be risk involved, it seems unfair that militaristic nations have to sacrifice their main resource (prestige points) more than peaceful ones. I found that conquest and military-focused nations were more difficult to manage during a campaign compared to the peaceful ones.

Let your tapestry of time and culture unfold

Although there were some challenges, I’d still rate Ara: History Untold as one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had with a 4X historical nations game not called Civilization. It’s evident that Oxide Studios took their task seriously and excelled in many areas. It’s a bit frustrating that they didn’t manage to sidestep common problems like the mid-to-late game grind, but if you’re looking for a game with diverse playstyles and an intriguing, immersive crafting system, Ara: History Untold is a substantial choice for fans of 4X strategy.

This evaluation is derived from a pre-release version given by the publishing house. The game “Ara: History Untold” will be available on PC on the 24th of September, 2024.

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2024-09-23 16:27