Ara: History Untold Review – Fresh Take on Grand Strategy

Ara: History Untold Review

I know it’s a virtue and all that, but I’m not a patient person. Standing in line, getting stuck in traffic, or waiting for downloads to finish, they all suck. I admire those folks for whom these are opportunities to practice zen-like calm, but I just get annoyed. The same is true of my favorite games, where I like action, movement, and progress. However, I’m willing to slow down and enjoy the chill pace of grand strategy games, where taking time and making thoughtful decisions are baked into the genre’s DNA. Ara: History Untold is one of those games.

Superficially, Ara: History Untold is a 4X grand strategy game very much in the mold of Sid Meier’s Civilization. It embraces most of the genre staples, like turn-based decisions that move the player’s nation from primitive beginnings to modern marvels of technology. Ara has an extensive tech tree, special events to respond to, leaders with specific strengths, military engagements, and various ways to win. Players coming to Ara from Civ or other 4X games will immediately feel comfortable with the basics. But where Ara shines is in its mission to make some smart, welcome changes to long-accepted fundamentals. Let’s talk about those first. 

Change is Good

Perhaps the most visually obvious difference is that Ara’s strategic level map is not hex-based. Instead, the player’s nation and those of neighboring nations are divided into organically shaped smaller zones. This decision gives the map a much more realistic feel and it makes exploration and control a process of bite-sized acquisition. As the cliche goes, there are no border-lines seen from space. Certainly, nations do have borders but, as the developers note, the strategic map doesn’t feel like an animated board game. 

Starting right away, players send scouts not to little hexes, but to adjacent regions, dispelling the fog of war and revealing important resources, caches of treasure, useful or dangerous wildlife, and other tribes. Building workshops allows for additional scouts. The small regions organically figure into relationships and conflicts between nations. Nearly every region has a valuable resource or strategic importance, if for no other reason than that it allows for expansion. 

Prestigious

A second, and maybe most innovative, mechanic is the concept of gaining Prestige as the primary way to win a match. There are seven categories from which to earn Prestige: Commerce, Culture, Government, Industry, Military, Religion, and Science. For example, creating Masterpieces increases Culture, and establishing trade routes boosts Commerce. Ara: History Untold plays out over three big Acts that divide progress from ancient history through the post-industrial Information Age. Decisions and developments made in the earlier acts come home to roost in the game’s final, and most challenging third. 

While Civ and many other 4X games often force the player to focus on min-maxing towards one specific victory condition like military conquest, Ara encourages a more holistic, less regimented approach. Often, overly aggressive decisions — depending on who the leader is — actually take away from Prestige. Spreading Prestige points over the seven categories means that no one success or failure is a game-ending or game-winning move.

Glorious Leader

Ara: History Untold does not have a single-player narrative campaign. Instead, players select a leader from a roster of 36, very eclectic figures from all historical ages, each with bonuses and liabilities. Match vs AI parameters include difficulty, number of opponent nations, their leaders, and the opposition’s skill level. At the earliest stages, there isn’t much visual or gameplay difference between, for example, Eva Perón and Hildegard of Bingen. As the game progresses, the cultural and architectural elements become more prominent. One confusing element is that there seems to be no historical connection between a Chinese leader, for example, and the opportunity to build a Prestige-raising Greek monument.

Like most grand strategy games, Ara: History Untold has a large number of variables, decisions, and mechanics players must attend to. The game’s tutorial can overlay any match as often as necessary, which is welcome. The game’s UI has to do a lot of heavy lifting and it’s mostly up to the task. Several matches in, though, I was still hunting for specific information or actions. I wish that clicking on a term in the codex would highlight the associated input on the UI. All that aside, Ara does a good job of guiding the player through each turn with alerts about idle workers or the need to further research a technology.

Up Close History

Ara: History Untold is mostly played on a zoomed-out strategic map like many 4X games. Its icons, map zones, and other information is clear to read and understand. Zoom in, however, and the strategic overlay disappears. Close up, your cities and nation look almost like a city-builder, with detailed buildings, a busy populace, and armies clashing in real time. It’s a fantastic way to bring the grandly strategic down to a more personal level and the approach works great. The small visual touches include flocks of birds and animals roaming the map, again making the world seem vibrantly alive. I loved the subtle, tilt-shift effect of the zoomed-in view.

Developer Oxide brings veterans from Firaxis and Civ 5 to Ara, and this includes composer Michael Curran, who has created an epic and evocative score for the game. Curran’s music is symphonic and choral in the grand moments, percussive and world-music influenced at others and never repetitive thanks to the layered technique used in recording and composition. From titles to gameplay, I enjoyed the score.

Grand Finale

Ara: History Untold doesn’t totally reinvent the grand strategy genre, but the changes it makes help create a fresh, engaging, and fun experience. All 4X games are dense with mechanics, decisions, and weighty outcomes. Ara: History Untold does a good job of navigating the player through its many options and paths to victory. Ara: History Untold beats the upcoming Civilization VII to the finish line, but the two approaches are different enough to sit side by side.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***