Ara: History Untold Review - Looking Back, Moving Forward
I’ve talked before about how expectations for any game can be problematic. One look at Ara: History Untold and I thought what many thought; “Oh neat, a new game like Civilization”. Honestly, the game does look a lot like Civilization, so this is an easy trap to fall into. Leaders look reminiscent, and the map itself would look at home in a Sid Meier game. I doubt this is by accident; the team at Oxide Games does have some former alumni of Firaxis too. Loading into a game will show you a different story pretty quickly. This game isn’t trying to be Civilization at all, this is a much more complex world.
Ara: History Untold feels a lot more like a mix between Civilization, Anno, and Victoria. Those are some huge shoes to fill and I’m not completely convinced it nails it, to be honest. Breaking into a genre, especially against monolith titles is always going to be difficult. I think where Ara shines is in its options.
On any one turn you can view production chains, army formations, move paragons (the game’s version of Great People) between sections of government, and the list goes on. As the gameplay focuses on simulation and economy, production is one of the most important things to look out for. You’ll make changes to buildings based on what you’re producing; maybe your production increased a smidge last turn, and now you can afford to make more beer. This has flow-on effects. Each city has its own happiness, knowledge, prosperity and other metrics. When these needs are fulfilled, things work better, but it also gives you the option to just focus on specific parts of your economy. Say if you were about to enter a war, you could switch up your building amenities to push security, which means that your military is now stronger. These are important decisions, and I love this type of micromanagement. I could see how it’d rub people the wrong way.
The AI is decently competent, it seems like it reacts a lot to other players rather than outright cheating, but a lot more play would need to be seen. I’ve had them get ahead of me and me needing to play catch up, and I’ve absolutely trounced them too. I wasn’t playing on the hardest difficulty though.
The UI is actually a coin flip. It’s in-depth and shows off a tonne of information, but also some of the minutiae is in sub-menus, and some of the important options are missing from the main page of a city. It’s all a bit messy. Thankfully, if this game gets continued development (looking at you, Humankind) then I think a good chunk of the community feedback being worked on could make this a bit of a darling with fans. This also potentially builds hype for future games, if they will exist. I hope they do.
There’s a lot to love though. I adore the city view, where you can see people bustling about their day, and buildings being added. The map looks great too. I’m a bit of a map guy, so seeing good maps (and resources based around them) really hit me just right. Seeing city districts getting upgraded looks cool. Battles look interesting, even if the animations are a bit light on. Visually, it’s very nice. There are performance issues that the developer seems pretty good at rolling out hotfixes for the game, which is fantastic to see. I didn’t have any issues, but I’m not so naive to ignore that a lot of people have.
The early game is really fun too. Due to the customisation, there are so many options in the early game like exploration, trading, amenities, expert usage and industry. All of these affect production and decrease costs, and these will all make huge differences to the speed at which early game plays. I love that there are so many decisions because it gives each game a different feel, and all of this is before you consider that each nationality plays uniquely with their bonuses. These bonuses aren’t as different or as varied as other 4X titles, which I didn’t quite like. It feels like some bonuses are straight-up disadvantages in the late game.
Finally, prestige is the measure of your strength as a nation. Military conquests/losses, improvements made, commerce, government, and industry all affect your prestige. By default, the lowest few prestige nations will be removed from the game at the end of an era. This can be turned off, but I actually quite liked it. As this is a simulation, it reminded me of a lot of civilisations that have risen and fallen in our own history, sometimes just through the failings of leadership or natural disasters. Not every nation is taken over or assimilated, sometimes they just fall apart.
If you’re expecting Ara: History Untold to be a new Civilization competitor, I think you’re looking at it all wrong. There’s aspects, sure, but this leans a lot more into economy, production, and politics. This feels like a game that’s made with passion, so I have every faith this will get better with time. Right now it’s still a bit clumsy in places, but if you take the time to learn it I believe you’ll find that this is a very fun title that stands on its own.
Ara: History Untold was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
