Ara: History Untold Review – All or Nothing

Ara: History Untold is an odd game. I don’t quite know how it fits into the Oxide Games’ mission of “building great games that no one else dares to create” since I wouldn’t say this is a game others wouldn’t dare to create; it is, after all, not overly dissimilar to Civilization, Humankind, Old World, and more. That isn’t to say it doesn’t go beyond other games in the genre or do things a little differently because it does. Sometimes, it’s for the better, but other things remind me of the fable of Icarus and not writing into Jim’ll Fix It.

I want to start with what I think is the best game design choice of Ara: History Untold, and that’s the move from a hex-based map that almost every other 4X game uses to a region-based map. When you settle or expand, you expand into a region. Each region may have anything from two to five areas within it where you can build something, and those areas may have a natural resource, where a specific structure will let you utilise the resource. It looks great and feels organic enough, but a part of my brain doesn’t shut up when it doesn’t look like an actual city.

There is one thing, though: the resources make this game of micromanagement central. There are too many resources; that’s the be-all and end-all. From the resources on the map, which you harvest, to the ones further down the supply chain, it becomes a bit too much, particularly when you’re digging around for a structure that manufactures the resource you want for a particular building or unit, but that becomes finicky in itself, particularly when you’ve got multiple cities, and they’re starting to sprawl out.

You could always go into each city and filter through the menus to find the specific type of production building you want, but this still means you’ll need to swap and change. My major issue lies in what I see as a breaking of the realism they’re going for; when I last checked, a workshop can make more than one item. You can queue items for some added ease, but that still relies on knowing precisely what you need and the exact structure when you unlock something new.

On a positive note, this system forces you to specialise, which I always support. One city may be your “bread basket,” while another can be an industrial powerhouse, with yet another being a cultural capital. You will need to have a little mix within your city boundaries. Cities don’t like not having food, but a focus will be essential in some areas if you want to get the best out of your empire.

I do have another complaint while I’m at it. The AI cheats, which I thought games had gotten out of. It seems to slow down, but they create new settlers early on at a rate I can’t fathom. A settler costs 125 food; in two games, the AI had three cities (costing 250 food for the two settlers) before I even had the food to create one. They also tend to settle cities in the oddest places; later games – especially if you have many factions – look wrong, where cities are so far apart it would never work.

On the AI’s cities, I’ve also captured some that were built so poorly that they couldn’t function when accountable to the rules set for players, yet the enemy managed to function, get an army out, and keep at it. I could be completely wrong, but I wouldn’t mind betting on the AI evading such silly restrictions as “having enough food to feed your population.”

I’m not entirely sold on the AI in Ara: History Untold, is what I’m saying. More than city placement, I’ve had the AI randomly declare war on me, and this is a faction I’ve had next to no dealings with; one time, they were so far away that they never got the chance to send any troops before the time limit ran out. My mind may work differently, and I’m missing the master plan, but I don’t quite think that’s the case. It could also be that the game doesn’t like having 36 factions at once.

It’s been mostly negative so far, but there are positives in the negatives and more to come. As I mentioned, the region system is fantastic, and despite my reservations over the sheer depth of the supply system and the number of items, I can’t help but admire the aim. Going into more detail, each item you manufacture can also be used by a production building to benefit production. In the early stages, you can produce ploughs, which farms of all levels can use to improve food production if you select them as a supply item.

Each building has various supply inputs to improve its output rate, and the later you go, the more inputs you have access to. Of course, I must reiterate that keeping track of everything is a management nightmare, even though the UI genuinely tries to help. I think a simplifying, where a workshop produced multiple, or all, items, would have been beneficial, but a fully realised supply system, including added benefits from putting a plough on a farm, truly adds to the game.

Naturally, it also extends to the creation of military units. Want to train some cavalry? Not unless you have horses. But I shifted to the military because I wanted to talk about them, not about the building of them. What I like about the military aspect of Ara: History Until is the ability to recruit a sizable number into your reserves, which sit there ready for deployment. When you deploy them, it takes time for them to reach full strength, or you can rush to field a weakened army. You can also put them into formations, each with its benefits. At the start of a game, you can field a single unit or a formation of three. In the end, you can field a whole battalion of six units.

Combat is akin to other 4X games in that the numbers decide what happens in the background. Two armies are in the same region, and the two armies fight it out, but you have no impact on the outcome beyond deciding which units to put in the formation. Though you can weaken units by using the abilities of others, archers, for example, can use indirect fire onto a neighbouring region and lightly damage enemies. Planes can bomb them. It adds depth and keeps combat interesting in a game that doesn’t need combat.

What do I mean by that? Well, Ara: History Untold doesn’t have set victories in the Civilization sense, in that you have military victories, cultural victories, and so on. Whatever you do, there is a prestige cost or benefit – declaring war? It will cost prestige, and if you don’t achieve your victory, that’s a net negative. However, you may have a robust economy that keeps you high in the rankings, which is very important.

Or maybe you have been focusing on your culture. You have successfully unlocked several advisors throughout the game; some have been used to boost production or your economy, but others are hard at work creating masterworks, like the Illiad, each adding to the prestige of your nation. You can also add to your collection of masterpieces by salvaging them from the remnants of lost nations, essentially becoming the game’s version of the British Museum. Yes, this ancient Egyptian cartouche was created in London.

After a certain number of nations reach a milestone (the end of a few ages in the technology tree), you move on to the second or third act. Once this happens, the bottom quarter of nations are wiped from the face of the earth. It’s a bit jarring; one turn, they’re there, and the next, there are ruins and remnants of roads everywhere; a quick decline rather than disappearance would have been better, but it’s a system I like, particularly as you can see your ranking and act appropriately to secure or recover for the next act. It acts as an excellent way to bookmark a game, too.

From founding and spreading your religion to building wonders, scientific advancement, or being a warlord and successfully attacking others, how you play Ara: History Untold isn’t overly limited when trying to secure the overall victory. Other games have tried to make it so that you aren’t forced down one path to varying degrees of success, but boiling down almost every action, and even the simple happiness of your nation, to prestige, works.

There’s so much I haven’t touched upon in detail, such as the metrics of keeping a city happy; each building provides something, amenities give time-bound boosts, and you have to craft them. The religion system and how you develop and spread that. Even the visuals and audio, which I generally like to do a bit about. They’re great, if you wondered. This review could likely go beyond the 1600+ words it’s at already. There is a massive amount to do and balance. What most 4X games get in DLC, this has, and could likely build on.

Ara: History Untold is the perfect example of a mixed bag. Some genuinely great ideas, but some negatives are trying to counterbalance them. Focusing on supply chains and adding real to is an excellent idea, but the implementation has left the game with significant micromanagement, which could put people off. The region and city development systems are on a whole new level and could be how 4X games go in the future, but the AI manages to mess it up.

I must admit, when not writing this review, my brain kept saying, “I like this, but”, and I’d decided that I was leaning towards around a score of six and a half, but putting everything on paper and playing more, I was wrong. Ara: History Untold is a genuinely good 4X strategy game, but it has its issues. If you like the genre, you will like this. If you want a 4X with even more added depth, this will tickle your pleasure zones. I fully intend to play it more.

Copy provided by the publisher.

Ara: History Untold

Ara: History Untold is a highly ambitious 4X game that looks to branch out and add even more depth to an already detailed genre. In many ways, it succeeds, bringing in a map and city-building system that far surpasses others in the genre and successfully interlinking practically every area. However, with some successes come issues, with the added depth in the supply chain making it a bit of a micromanagement nightmare; it tries to alleviate some of these issues with a user-friendly UI, but it could be a sticking point for some. The AI also seems to go on the fritz and break the game’s rules.