History Untold, a 4X strategy game that many dreamed of

We play and analyze Ara: History Untold, the new 4X strategy game developed by Oxide Games that could surprise you for the better

Strategy games have always been a classic for PC gamersfor years with sagas like Age of Empires, Warcraft or some more current ones like Crusader Kings A huge genre has been shaped, giving rise to many subgenres and attracting more and more players. In this case we focus on a new 4Xby Oxide Games, Ara: History Untold. A title developed by the creators of Ashes of the Singularity and the founders of the studio, participants in Civilization V.

I have played hundreds of hours of RTS or other Grand Strategy games, but if I have a special taste for some games within this genre, it is those dedicated to exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination (4X) like Civilization and Humankindwhich is why I am particularly excited to have come across another interesting proposal like Ara within this type of games, and by the way, to have received a copy of Xbox for this analysis.

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Ara: History Untold, information, platforms and launch

An innovative proposal for all players

If there is one thing that the studio made clear a long time ago, it is that They wanted to break a stigma with strategy gamesand the complexity of systems or mechanics throughout the games should not mean much difficulty for the players, They want you to feel comfortable playing, from start to finish.without stress. The best thing about this is that on the part of the team, which comes from developing Civilization V (one of the best in the series in my opinion), we have a game that feels familiar and very much like its competitors, so Understanding how cities, development, technologies or units work is a walk in the park for those who have already played other strategy games.

Going into detail about what Ara: History Untold is and its games we have to start Talking about the first step which is choosing our civilization and leaderthere is no one without the other, and they are always united, although there are a couple of cases where the same civilization has more than one leader. In this regard, and seeing the release of other 4X, I have nothing but good words, the largest quantity and variety I have ever seen. Have 41 leaders representing 39 launch civilizations.

We can find a huge variety of civilizations in Ara

Each leader also has certain appearance options.really small changes in the color of the clothing and little else, some do have other quite curious suits or dresses and always wanting to represent more the style of their own civilization and era.

All civilizations have their strengths and weaknesses.easily visible by their characteristics, in addition to those of the leader, also unique and differentiated from the rest. There will be cases in which it will be easier for us to seek to be an economic, scientific, cultural or military power. If you are very new to this, it does not matter, There are many difficulty ranges to choose from to get started. and understanding the game.

After our choice of civilization we are left with Adjust a few more options, such as map size and shaperival civilizations (random or handpicked if you want), maximum shifts and even humidity or resources in the world. Mind you, it's still a bit far from the customization of Civilization games but it's very close to it. For me You would only have to manually modify the shift limitsince they establish 100, 300 or 700 on average as untouchable options. In many cases The game either falls short or is absurdly long.and knowing that the winner of the game is decided by prestige (score) at the last turn This turn limit thing is left with not enough options.

With boxes, but a more organic empire

Our game starts with a settler and a city to found.after having our capital we can begin to develop different projects such as farms, workshops, barns and more. Thanks to the explorer we will discover the worldalong with other units such as lancers and archers, which will also help us to finish off bears, wolves, tigers and other animals out there. From this point we must begin to dissect each part, because everything, although it seems familiar, is not at all the same as anything we have seen.

For a start, The map is divided into huge squares, but they are not regular shapes.no hexagons or squares, it is not so much a board, everything is much more uniform or irregular, larger squares and others clearly smaller, and there is a difference, because We can find boxes that allow from 2 to 5 constructionsremoving the wonders that do occupy a full square.

Each box has several areas of improvement

Those buildings or improvements are farms, workshops, houses, libraries, quarries and much more. That is, you can have a farm and a house in your capital square, as well as a workshop. There may be a resource in the square next to it, such as sheep, in which case we will build a farm to exploit the resource and earn wool in the process, but in the other building spaces we can build a barn and a quarry, we are never limited to one building per square.

With this you eventually realize that how organic it is to expand your kingdom and how homogeneous everything becomes. Although on the other hand Here I have had one of my biggest problemswell When you get to very late points in a game you lose a lot.it is easy to locate the farms, but Among so many workshops or production sites it becomes chaos to find that building again where you were producing certain materials. By opening the city menu you can see the building icons by tile, but still There are many that look alike and unfortunately it becomes somewhat uncomfortable.

This is what a game looks like in the final stages of the third act

Will your civilization be able to withstand the test of time?

In my first hours in charge of a civilization I was somewhat hesitant about whether or not I really liked it. system of acts and their passage. You will investigate different technologies, each with a cost of turns to advance from one era to another, After overcoming the 4 eras of the first act we will move on to the seconda crucial moment in a game, since the first one to research that technology to end the fourth era of the first act triggers the second act for everyone, and in a couple of turns We will see how the last (or last) in the ranking of civilizations by prestige will be completely eliminated from the game.

In Ara: History Untold a game is divided into 3 actsthese being representative of the Ancient Age to the late Middle Ages, from that point until the Renaissance and from there until the future era. In the passage to act 2 and act 3 a civilization will fallso in a game of 4, if one falls per act, there will only be 2 left for that last act. This is another point that after several games I have taken a liking to, because it makes you have to be Always competent, no matter the moment in historyyou can never relax, because you know that you are also fighting under the possibility of being eliminated and disappearing.

When a civilization falls, only remains remain. of what was, ruins, that Now they will give a second life to your explorerbecause by interacting with these squares we can obtain some useful resources. Something very well thought out, because in these 4X games the explorer is somewhat useless during the final phases of a game.

We will also have events with some decisions to be made.

AND Speaking of resources, we must mention one of the sections that most differentiates this game and they make it really brilliant. The production of materials or products using other raw materials It makes resource exploitation and the way each city functions feel really unique. It's all situational, depending on the tiles and products you have, but there are always ways to stay ahead of the curve in production.

If you have a farm with a sheep resource, you will produce wool per turn, even more if you upgrade the farm or add supplies to it. With this wool you can speed up the process in a workshop to make rope, a supply that is permanently used for other workshops or buildings and thus improve their production. Since we now have the rope in the workshop, we can go a little faster and start making plows for the farms and thus further increase the harvest per turn of each farm.

It's all one huge production line and it feels amazing to know that every square and every building can be improved.beyond a powered-up version of it, such as a farm to irrigated farm, by supplies within the building or other consumables in the city. With this it is also possible to boost happiness, safety, prosperity and more within a city.

Production and supplies are one of the most worked sections in the game.

I feel that Making this game must have been like a huge puzzlemaking all the systems functional and in such an organic way takes a lot of work and I'm sure that with three times as many hours many more players will find things to exploit that are very interesting. The potential of this game with only the support for mods and the current variety of it at least puts it among the best strategy games, and above all the biggest competitor against Civilization in decades.

A sublime 4X for 2024

If something surprised me also in the hours played has been the Graphic beastliness of the title and its qualitysomething not so mentioned with strategy games, but when it is pleasing to the eye I think it has to be said, more than enough for this year and with the stamina to stay at the forefront for a couple more. In particular, I was struck by the fact that when you zoom in you can see citizens walking around the city or armies in dense forests. That's why I also feel that the potential for future additions could be so great, because the foundations and pillars from this point are already outstanding.

Ara: History Untold is without a doubt a game you have to play if strategy calls you.and of course If the 4X calls you, it is absolutely essentialwell it is one of the best in this subgenre, at the outset and above all, looking to the future, you have a game for hundreds of hours.

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