Ara: History Untold Review
OUR RATING: 8/10
The 4X strategy genre is not for everyone and can feel overwhelming, especially in the beginning. Due to the great competition, we do not see many games released, but when they do, they bring a number of innovations. This is also the case with Ara: History Untold. You determine how the history of a certain nation will look during a game. You can do this with friends in multiplayer or on your own, where the nations are controlled by AI. What immediately stands out about Ara: History Untold is the entire list of leaders. If you ignore the Deluxe Edition DLC, you can choose from thirty-six leaders. That is a nice collection, because usually you get fewer and it is supplemented with DLCs. In addition to the fact that these leaders are tied to a certain nation, they also offer various bonuses. For example, Nicholas Copernicus of Poland has an innovative character trait, which gives you ten percent more research points per round in your capital. Julius Caesar is aggressive and therefore offers ten percent more power to troops stationed outside your nation. An example of a lesser known character is Shaka who founded the kingdom of Zulu. He is a perfectionist, which is why you have ten percent less production in all cities.
Each leader has five character traits with an additional bonus. As you can see, they have chosen a combination of well-known historical characters and a few that are not often seen in these types of games. If you like conquering cities and waging war, you can choose to select a leader who is more focused on warfare. Although I have to say that I have not yet experienced how big the impact of the character traits is. The game has so many systems that it is difficult to view everything individually. What I have mixed feelings about is that the nations do not differ visually from each other. The buildings change based on the eras you have reached and the technologies you have researched. In addition, each nation can build the many cultural wonders. I am not only talking about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, but also about the Eiffel Tower and Oxford University. As a result, you do not see the influence of a culture on the buildings, but your nation does change visually with the times. This is done in great detail, because you see people walking around in your city and the buildings have a lot of detail.
The freedom to create and expand your own empire is abundant. You can see this in the many possibilities for a victory. There are no rules attached to it, so you do not win the game by researching all technologies or attracting multiple tourists to your city. Instead, you get points based on eight categories that are referred to as Prestige. I am someone who, when playing these types of games, always completely ignores the opponent and is mainly concerned with expanding my cities. You can already guess that I have never won a game in a 4X game, because my focus is not on the final victory or on building an army. That is precisely what ensured that I was able to collect quite a bit of Prestige. I mainly obtained a lot of Prestige in the areas of government and industry. In the cities, you have to deal with a number of wishes of the population. I am talking about food, health, safety, knowledge and prosperity. The buildings that you can place have an influence on this. Think of a well and a pharmacy for the health of your population, while a castle or watchtower improves safety. Industry is linked to all the production buildings and systems that your nation is working on. This is my strong point, so it is not surprising that I hardly scored any points in the areas of religion and defense. In order to be able to fit all these buildings, you have to expand your population, which allows you to claim a new area. These areas are divided into sections. If you choose an area with five sections, you can fit five buildings in it. The areas do not have a fixed size, which means that expanding happens organically. The buildings adapt to this, so that the fields of a farm fill a section beautifully. Around a well, you see houses appear. This also ensures that the game looks very visually attractive and that expanding your city is satisfying.
Of course, you decide for yourself how to expand your city, but the natural resources on the map have an influence on this. If livestock or crops are indicated on the map, it is better to place a farm there. On resources such as gold, oil and coal, you place a mine. These resources are crucial in the game, but I will come back to that later. Houses and most other buildings can be placed freely in an area. If you want to found a new city, you basically only need a group of colonists with a form of government that allows multiple cities. If you have chosen the republic, you can place more cities than with a kingdom. Just like in every other 4X game, building or researching technologies takes a number of rounds. However, you no longer have to wait centuries for the decisions of the opponent, because everyone makes the decisions at the same time. This means that you actually plan all your moves in advance for a new round. When you decide to end the round because you have done everything. Then the planning of your nation and that of the AI or opponents is converted into action. This means that you will be busy with the next round after a few seconds. This ensures much more speed and eliminates waiting completely. A game in Ara: History Untold is actually quite long. The recommended number of rounds is namely seven hundred and fifty. So you have all the time to discover the game and build an empire, unless you indicate that you want faster games. Before you start a new game, you can indicate how many opponents and rounds a game has, what the difficulty level is and which map you want to try out. So there is enough choice to adjust the game to your own wishes.
The technologies you research determine when you move to a new era. With each era, you are required to research at least a number of technologies before you get the option to continue. A game in Ara: History Untold is divided into three eras, which in turn consist of four eras. In the first era, you can expect the Bronze and Iron Ages, in which you can research the wheel and archers, among other things. The second era is mainly focused on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Here you can think of cannons, breweries and making steel. The last era consists of industrialization and the current modern era. At that time, you unlock the latest upgrades of many buildings. A farm is no longer dependent on irrigation alone, but now also gets synthetic fertilizer. Of course, it also brings radio, electricity and the internet. The technologies you research are therefore not only needed for new buildings and army units, but also to unlock new raw materials. This system is complicated at first and while playing I kept coming across new elements.
There are elements of a survival city builder hidden in Ara: History Untold. I’ve already mentioned the three basic materials you need besides money, but it goes much further than that. A workshop can make plows that you can then give to a farm, so that they produce more food per round. A pharmacy can make a herb mix that is stored in your inventory. Each city has room for a number of provisions, with the city consuming the designated products. The herb mix increases national health by fifteen points for a total of ten rounds. Bread has the same effect, but also provides an additional ten points in food. These provisions therefore offer solutions, because you can compensate for a food shortage due to too few farms by baking bread in the bakeries. Another example is the law book that provides extra knowledge and safety in the city. Making materials and goods is therefore crucial to progressing. Not only to keep everyone happy or to improve the input of the buildings, but also to be able to pay for the upgrades and new buildings. You can’t build a modern factory without ten steel and twenty concrete blocks. Other buildings require glass, and so on.
As you progress through the eras, new resources appear on the map. In the beginning, a cattle farm could only produce food, but later this was expanded to include the production of tallow. I discovered this very late, which meant that I could only convert many resources into products later. You have to keep a close eye on everything if you want to be successful. To make things even more complicated, experts come to town. These people are not visible, but you can put them to work in a section. They ensure that a farm grows a little more food or a watchtower provides more security. These are not the only visitors, because you also unlock the Paragons. These are famous historical figures such as Sun Tzu who give bonuses to your nation. At least if you use them as an advisor. This can be in the field of culture and military, but also for foreign policy. You can also put them to work to create the special Masterpieces. These are books, paintings and other works of art that provide Prestige and that you can actually exhibit in a museum.
I’ve mostly talked about my favorite parts of Ara: History Untold and expanding your empire. However, you’re not the only nation on the map, so you’ll have to deal with AI opponents or other players. You can’t completely avoid war, as the AI leaders can be fickle at times. As you might expect, you can form an alliance or trade deal with other leaders. You can also decide to open the borders and send a gift. They often have trouble with the latter, as my gifts were rarely accepted. Either they didn’t trust it, didn’t want the specific item, or they thought I was too generous. This is the only way to build your relationship for an alliance. At least, if you don’t count the events that happen. While you’re running your nation, you’ll encounter random events. These describe an event and give you two to three options to choose from. The same goes for events that are tied to a specific nation. For example, they need materials to win the war against another nation or they want to create some kind of NATO. These events return regularly and in the three games I played, they came at almost the same time. Some more events and variation would have been better, because at some point you don’t read them anymore. The nice thing about the events is that you get a piece of history at the same time.
After several of my presents, including a crate of beer, were ignored, I gave up on befriending the nations. You shouldn’t be surprised if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a war. I mainly had to deal with skirmishes, where another nation plundered my cities and destroyed buildings. This lasted about twenty rounds and you had to defend your city in it and then you had to repair everything. Very annoying because it can limit your growth, but you don’t always lose your city. That is the case when a holy war is called or when territorial expansion is the goal. Despite their fickleness, this is not nearly as bad as in other games in the genre. If you, like me, just want to found a prosperous nation, without having to cooperate with other nations all the time, it is better to select one opponent. Because if your amount of Prestige is many times lower than the other nations, you will be thrown out of the game when switching to a new era. During my first game, I was already removed from the game after two hundred and fifty rounds. That is extra sour when you have to write a review, but I understand the choice for this. If you are already so far behind in the first periods that you are in last place, it will be difficult to win anyway. If you find the journey more important than the outcome, you will still enjoy a lost game, but otherwise it is of course a waste of time.
Unless you’re going to go to war with everyone like a lunatic and wipe the nations off the face of the earth. You’re bound to a number of army units that are divided into army, air force and navy. Normally you indicate that you want to train knights in a city, for example, and after a number of rounds they appear in the city in question. In Ara: History Untold it works a little differently, because they first have to be taken from the reserves. You get the choice to station them as a squad in a city of your choice or to pair them with other troops in a battalion or legion. As you progress through the eras you get more strategic options and of course better army units. A battlefield is not only indicated with an icon, you can actually see it. You see two armies fighting against each other. Not necessarily impressive, but it shows how much detail the game has. I wonder how long Ara: History Untold will remain fun, but if you like to try out all the leaders, get multiple victories and all the achievements, you will be busy for hours. And then we haven’t even talked about the multiplayer.
If you found the 4X genre complicated, Ara: History Untold takes it up a notch. With the introduction of an extensive crafting system, you will have to think ahead even more to expand your nation. Especially since there are no specific victories. You win by earning Prestige in multiple categories, including the well-being of your population. In addition, you now plan your turn, so that all players’ turns take place at the same time. Waiting for your turn is a thing of the past in Ara: History Untold. These are the three major innovative changes, but the game also offers a nice collection of leaders, nations, famous historical figures and cultural wonders. When it comes to the expansions and the visual aspects, you can see that attention has been paid to all kinds of details. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the random events, because they take place around the same round in every game. In addition, there is no visual difference between the cultures and some leaders can be quite fickle. Ara: History Untold, however, is a solid 4X strategy game that demands a lot of attention, but rewards you for it.