I found that Xbox's answer to 'Civilization' very successfully captures that "one more turn" addiction

As a seasoned gamer with a penchant for strategy games, I must say that Ara: History Untold has truly caught my attention. Coming from someone who’s been around the block a few times, this game offers an exciting blend of innovation and familiarity that’s hard to resist.

I may not call myself a seasoned expert in strategy games, but my familiarity with them is primarily confined to Age of Empires II HD and Civilization VI on Xbox. Frankly, I wasn’t anticipating Ara: History Untold, a newcomer in the genre, would captivate me enough during Gamescom 2024 that I’d be compelled to write a review about it after just a preview.

After arriving here, I must admit that Ara: History Untold has managed to win me completely as an engaging and accessible gateway into the strategy genre. It’s impressive because it introduces new concepts and gameplay elements specifically designed to address the annoyances that once caused me to abandon Civilization 6. This game has been under development for quite some time, and it’s evident that it was birthed from passion and original ideas, resulting in a final product that effectively encapsulates that elusive “one more turn” compulsion.

What is Ara: History Untold?

History Untold is a strategy game set in the past, created by Oxide Games and distributed by Xbox Game Studios. In this turn-based 4X game, you’ll assume the role of well-known historical figures and guide your nation through time, reshaping history as you strive for dominance against other nations, aiming to become the most powerful, thriving, and influential country in the world.

Strategy games are famous for intricate, interwoven systems that demand players to plan ahead and outsmart their rivals. In Ara: History Untold, you’ll embark on an exploration of the world, expand your territories, handle your population and resources, all while maintaining adaptability to conquer any obstacle thrown at you. Oxide Games is also pushing boundaries in this genre with fresh gameplay concepts and features.

On September 24, 2024, “Ara: History Untold” will debut exclusively for Windows PC, and can also be obtained through PC Game Pass. For the time being, console versions may follow, but the game presently does not accommodate controller input. The price of “Ara: History Untold” varies between $60-80 based on the edition, but you can get it for a discounted price of $53.19 at CDKeys.

Ara: History Untold — Performance and visuals

Performance highlights

Ara: History Untold is built on the proprietary Nitrous Engine with custom Microsoft DX12 rendering and cloud technology.
The end result is a stunning game with gorgeous and detailed environments and models, even if you zoom in to a ridiculous degree.
The game also scales very well to lower end hardware, and performance is overall quite good (with some expected dips in the final act).

One significant factor behind the continuous development of Ara: History Untold over 7 years or more is that Oxide Games created a custom game engine tailored for Ara. This decision was necessary due to the complexities inherent in strategy game production and because certain features, like simultaneous online multiplayer, couldn’t be achieved with pre-existing engines. The gamble seems to have paid off, as Ara demonstrates impressive performance and visuals.

History Untold at a high resolution (4K) and maximum settings, but surprisingly, it performs quite well even on computers that aren’t primarily used for gaming. This is because when all the settings are maxed out, the game looks stunning. It appears that Oxide Games put a significant amount of effort into creating Ara’s world, as the landscapes, natural features, and wildlife are beautifully detailed. With the ability to zoom in extremely close, you can truly appreciate the world and your impact on it.

Absolutely! Each structure or enhancement, as Ara refers to them, is meticulously crafted with distinct animations and designs that adapt based on the resource it’s extracting or mining. As your empire grows in the later stages, it transforms into a vibrant mosaic of colors and textures, bustling with movement. The one area where Ara seems to falter is in human models; leaders may not appear impressive when viewed up close on the screen. However, I find it engaging when you can zoom in on a military formation and see individual soldiers, each representing different units, neatly arranged in rows on a street.

In Ara: History Untold, the depth of detail gives it a more movie-like quality compared to other strategy games, particularly in the battle scenes. This game, like many in its genre, offers a plethora of stats, numbers, and icons for those who prefer a detailed approach. But what sets Ara apart is the option to watch each battle play out live, showcasing unique units, formations, and armies on a virtual battlefield that accurately reflects the outcome. However, if you’d rather, you can choose to overlook this feature as well.

The original soundtrack complements it perfectly, just as I anticipated from a strategy game. It’s grand and epic, a contemporary orchestral piece that accentuates the historical advancement in each match. It’s an excellent soundtrack, but I must admit there were instances when the song seemed misplaced at certain moments.

In terms of performance requirements, turn-based strategy games are generally not extremely demanding. However, Ara: History Untold operates smoothly for the most part, except during the final act. With larger cities, armies, and an increased amount of information being processed simultaneously, the latter stages of a game may experience some slowdown due to occasional dropped frames. Yet, it’s worth noting that the game never encountered any crashes, and these performance issues were always minimal.

In addition, I didn’t stumble upon numerous bugs either. The game, History Untold, appeared well-developed and refined, with only a handful of issues that seemed to be addressed by the three minor updates Oxide Games released during my review period. The most frustrating problem I experienced was not being able to demolish any of my Improvements at all, which allowed no space for new ones. This bug occurred throughout my initial match and then resurfaced halfway through my second match, but it was rectified by the respective patches.

Ara: History Untold — Gameplay experience

Gameplay highlights

Ara: History Untold is a turn-based historical grand strategy game, and can be most closely compared to the Civilization franchise.
However, Ara does away with Civilizations’ classic win conditions in favor of a Prestige leaderboard system spread across three acts.
Players can also utilize crafting to give their cities and nation an advantage, and use formations and military tactics to give their armies an advantage.

Ara: History Untold will feel familiar to Civilization fans, but it’s different enough in multiple ways to stand on its own in the space. Personally, Ara is a far more engaging game for long-term play than Civilization VI was, for a few reasons.

In this genre, you’ll notice characteristic elements: You discover cities that expand over territories you control. Within these territories, you have the ability to construct developments, which can be used to gather resources, manufacture supplies and components, and ultimately strengthen your nation. You also pursue technological advancements, strive to create iconic Achievements that will leave a lasting impression in history, and aim to keep up with or surpass your neighbors without becoming overburdened.

In Ara: History Untold, you’re not confined to a single method for achieving victory. Unlike other games, you won’t find yourself on a path where you must annihilate all other nations, impose your religion on everyone, or conquer culturally. Rather, success can come from a blend of these factors, and each leader possesses distinct characteristics that influence your overall approach.

In the Ara universe, your standing is determined by the Prestige system. Each action you take in Ara influences your Prestige level. For instance, constructing a school increases your Prestige, whereas initiating an unwarranted conflict decreases it. If you manage to win that conflict, your Prestige returns. The magnitude of these changes depends on the nature of the action or accomplishment, and all this data is recorded in the Nation Standings. Here, nations vie for the top positions. The nation with the highest Prestige is considered the most powerful and is poised to claim victory in the game.

Just like other games in this genre, Ara tracks human history by organizing time into distinct eras. Yet, unlike most, each era is further broken down into three acts. Each transition to a new act significantly affects the game’s dynamics. Nations that struggle to keep pace with other players and progress too slowly risk being erased from history at the end of an act, leaving their cities and landmarks as relics for others to plunder. To succeed in this game, it’s crucial to maintain a competitive edge throughout the entire game, and adapt your strategy swiftly to prevent falling behind.

In History Untold, there is an extensive variety of craftable items available – ranging from dozens to potentially hundreds. These items serve diverse purposes: some are essential for achieving specific Triumphs or enhancements, others accelerate the process of crafting other goods, while yet others function as city amenities to boost quality-of-life statistics or offer additional advantages. Furthermore, many can even upgrade existing improvements to make them more efficient. Essentially, most items encompass multiple functions.

In terms of the Prestige and construction mechanisms, you truly enjoy the liberty to shape your own route towards triumph. In my initial game, I established an empire of cities, each emphasizing on constructing numerous Triumphs and amassing vast amounts of knowledge, while one city solely concentrated on propagating my religion. As I continued building more Triumphs, I gradually pulled ahead of other nations, ultimately emerging victorious with a substantial advantage.

In my second round, I chose to conquer with only one metropolis, thus minimizing construction of Triumphs to maximize space for Enhancements and upgrades. Maintaining this solitary city as it expanded to a population of over 10 million inhabitants proved challenging due to the constant demand for resources. Yet, having a single urban center allowed me to utilize all my output in improving the living conditions of my citizens. This led to significant increases in productivity, research potential, and commercial success. However, I barely emerged victorious in this game, as it was a tight contest that ultimately required me to declare war during the final stages.

Concerning combat scenarios, Ara: History Untold offers more intricate tactics, allowing for diverse military units, each possessing unique skills and talents. You’re even able to organize these units into various-sized and shaped formations. The type of formation you select and the arrangement of your units within it can significantly influence the effectiveness of that formation in combat. By stacking numerous formations on top of one another, you can construct massive armies, yet this also determines the individual formations’ fighting capacity. Additionally, the battlefield terrain, the spirit of your citizens during conflict, their war-weariness, and the adversaries’ strengths could all impact the results of the battles.

So far, Ara: History Untold truly shines in the areas we’ve discussed. Its key strengths lie in the freedom it offers players, resulting in a multitude of unique gameplay experiences. However, it has its flaws. The interactions you can have with other nations and tribes are limited to a set of basic options, lacking the depth that could make these relationships more engaging. There’s no room for deception, no way to ask for specific resources or extend help to other nations, no means to establish meaningful alliances beyond assisting with ongoing wars or research endeavors.

In Ara’s tale, events follow a scripted sequence that initially offers intriguing choices, such as exploring rumors or information, accepting help from certain nations, or dealing with crises within your own country, which carry real implications… The first time around. However, in my second playthrough, I encountered numerous repeated narrative sequences, and over time, these events seemed less impactful. Despite this, the story is generally well-crafted and well-told, with one exception being the outcomes of these narrative choices.

In essence, none of the elements in Ara’s story affected my game outcomes significantly, and by my third match, I no longer felt invested enough to care about the choices presented to me. Despite the richness of other aspects of the game, the political and narrative details that lacked this depth became noticeable.

As Act III progresses, it tends to get cluttered and chaotic due to the immense scale of your nation. You’ll find yourself juggling an enormous amount of buildings, facilities, and cities. Foresight and strategic planning can help mitigate some of this confusion, but you’re constantly introduced to a torrent of new technologies, upgrades, and advancements right up until the final moments. Some upgrades are for existing improvements (though in certain instances, you may not be able to upgrade existing ones), while others are entirely new and necessary for accessing advanced technologies, resources, and military forces.

“The main inconvenience lies in the fact that food shortage is constantly a major issue for you.” In this context, the original sentence expresses the persistent problem of food scarcity, while the paraphrased version emphasizes that this problem is a consistent annoyance.

Food was absolutely a constant, never-ending major concern in early eras of human history, but modern technology makes it considerably easier for a successful nation to feed its people. In Ara: History Untold, though, it never feels like food becomes easier to create, you’re simply scrambling to make more to match your population. A balancing tweak to adjust farms in the final act would give players a lot more breathing room to explore late-game strategies and technologies.

Ara: History Untold — Accessibility and approachability

Accessibility highlights

Ara: History Untold’s interface and menus are easy to navigate and read, with helpful tooltips for basically everything.
There are also multiple options for scaling the UI and audio, customizing the audio and controls, and more.
You don’t get many options that actually affect the gameplay, but there are plenty of difficulty levels, as well as ways to customize the maps and each individual match.

It’s been suggested that the game Ara: History Untold intends to cater to both newcomers in the strategy genre and veterans without losing either group. I personally think Oxide Games has managed this effectively. The menus in Ara are well-organized and clear, with options for UI and text scaling. Moreover, most elements come with detailed explanations when hovered over, and these tooltips are intricately connected and easily found within the game’s built-in “Encarta,” essentially a comprehensive guide to Ara 101. From the outset of playing, the game also provides a thorough tutorial for those who need it.

When you begin a game, you have the power to set the challenge level and personalize every map and match by modifying map designs, resource distribution, and various other aspects. You can even decide which nations and leaders you’ll face in competition. I found Ara: History Untold quite simple to grasp following a brief adaptation phase, and it presents an inviting experience for strategic games with depth. In terms of accessibility, while Ara doesn’t boast a multitude of features, it does provide detailed audio controls, customizable keyboard shortcuts, screen narration that is compatible with Windows Narrator, and more.

Absolutely, Ara: History Untold operates on a turn-based system, meaning there’s no pressure for individual players during single matches. This setup offers advantages in terms of accessibility compared to real-time games. However, it’s important to note that in multiplayer matches, everyone will still be working within the same time constraint per turn.

Ara: History Untold — Final thoughts

You should play this if …

✅You’re a fan of strategy games and want something new

Ara: History Untold perfectly walks the line between innovating with new features and fixing what isn’t broken, entering the strategy genre with some fresh ideas. Oxide Games has made a turn-based, 4X grand strategy game that lets players get more creative and be more flexible with their strategies.

✅You’re interested in testing the waters with an approachable strategy game

Ara: History Untold offers a remarkable level of detail in its gameplay, yet it doesn’t overwhelm newcomers. Comprehensive tutorials and user-friendly tips within an intuitive interface make Ara one of the friendlier strategy games available.

You should not play this if …

❌You prefer strategy games with a lot of political or narrative depth

Ara: History Untold nails the city and nation management aspect of the genre, but it doesn’t push any boundaries when it comes to its politics or narrative events. Government types make little difference beyond city caps and a few unique traits, you have limited options when interacting with other nations, and narrative events quickly become repetitive.

Prior to writing my review for Ara: History Untold at Gamescom 2024, I had some reservations since this genre wasn’t my usual territory. Given my lack of familiarity, I was worried that I might not discover enough appealing aspects to share an engaging perspective on the game. However, my concerns were alleviated when I found myself captivated by Ara: History Untold, experiencing that addictive “one more turn” sensation reminiscent of Civilization VI in the strategy genre.

Apart from Civ 6, Ara stands out as a superior game. It offers a more captivating experience, keeps players engaged, and encourages individual styles. Its depth is impressive enough for strategy enthusiasts, but even newcomers to the genre will find it inviting. As a solo player, I found it engaging, but what’s exciting is that Ara: History Untold also supports online multiplayer with up to 30 players. Unlike other games, you don’t have to wait for others to finish their turns, and you can carry on the same game over several weeks if you prefer.

I’d prefer if the final act of the game had more excitement and less monotony, and I’d love the option to influence other nations beyond just random storyline events or warfare. In every other aspect, Ara: History Untold is a fantastic grand strategy title and ought to be a huge hit on Xbox… I truly hope it does get released for the Xbox console.

2024-09-23 16:10

I found that Xbox’s answer to ‘Civilization’ very successfully captures that “one more turn” addiction