X
- E10+
- Xbox Game Studios
- E10+
- Xbox Game Studios
- E10+
- Xbox Game Studios
- E10+
- Xbox Game Studios
Ara: History Untold
Released On: Sep 24, 2024
74
6.7
All Platforms
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 55 Critic Reviews
74
62% Positive
34 Reviews
34 Reviews
35% Mixed
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 55 Critic Reviews
74
62% Positive
34 Reviews
34 Reviews
35% Mixed
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
By the time I reached the end of my journey and my nation stood above all the rest, I was left with one of the most satisfying gaming victories I’ve ever experienced. While Ara: History Untold asks a lot of players, it rewards those willing to put in the hours with a deeply rich gameplay experience that makes them feel like every choice they made shaped their nation and helped their people achieve greatness. From large-scale design innovations to the smallest details, the game delivers an almost flawless experience.
Ara: History Untold does a fantastic job at giving players the freedom to shape their Nation how they see fit, whilst keeping everyone in a toothy race. The Nations themselves could be more distinct, but the game mechanics more than make up for that.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 43 User Ratings
6.7
56% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
21% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
23% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 43 User Ratings
6.7
56% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
21% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
23% Negative
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
I hate how people who prefer a more action-oriented game, ruin a game with bad ratings. This is a large brain game, a lot is going on and it is beautiful and extremely well crafted. I cannot wait for them to get going, update the military aspect, and add more flavor to the game. If you actually enjoy managing a supply chain and nurturing a population so it exponentially grows into a powerhouse, then this game is for you
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PC
Ara: History Untold is another distinctive take on the historical 4X strategy genre, putting a real emphasis on furthering your nation, managing supply chains and resources, and shifting the focus away from warring mentality it's so easy to sink into. There's room to grow, but this is a strong contender.
There’s a lot to like about Ara: History Untold, even with the rough edges that appear every so often. Barring some performance issues, I’d say anyone even a little curious about the genre should give the game a shot and try it for themselves (especially if you have Xbox Game Pass). As for those of you with hundreds of hours in 4X games? Well, Civilization VII is still months away and Ara is a worthwhile competitor in the space and so I highly recommend playing at least a few games during this wait. Who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself with a new favourite in the genre…
Ara: History Untold dares a lot, but many things still don't work out as planned. It still falls short of its role model, Civilization.
I'm certain that many fans of Civilization will quickly abandon playing ARA: History Untold. No Civ demands such careful consideration of the smallest details and micro-dependencies from the player. You need to ask yourself: do you want to conquer lands or manage the production of cement and ploughs? If the latter sounds interesting, you're right where you need to be.
While Ara: History Untold is a visually captivating historical 4X with an interesting underlying economy, it gets bogged down well before the midway point, mainly because it doesn’t provide enough tools and UI support to manage all of the things it expects you to manage. Your choice of leader, religion, and government almost always simply add uninteresting passive modifiers, which means most playthroughs will feel roughly the same other than the layout of the map itself. I had a pretty decent time with my march through the ages, especially in the first of its three acts. But it did require me to eventually give up on trying to play optimally, passing turns without doing anything until I emerged victorious. A lot of these systems are exciting and clever in their design – they're just not that enjoyable to interact with past a certain point.
Ara is not a normal civ. It's more like a micro-managed city builder where instead of controlling a city, remember the Caesar series, we manage an empire. Here the important thing is not wars or religion, which have a certain importance, but rather that the game is won by prestige achieved by the well-being of citizens by supplying their pyramid of needs. It is true that war and religion influence but they play a secondary role. It is a 4X, but victory is better achieved by the pen than by the sword. I repeat, it is not a civ. His style is a mix of Humankind with Anno management. Positive point, anyone who likes these games of numbers and opening and closing tabs will be in their element. Negative point, depending on how you look at it, the very steep learning curve. I like difficult games so I give it a nine.
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PC
I went into this game with very little experience in these styles of games. Closest being a small amount of Age of empires. The game does a lot of things I thought were good. But starting off with what I didn't like so this finishes on a positive.
I found the games tutorial was a poorly explained barrage of text dumps. Leading me to click things without knowing why. I have played a lot of video games, so I was figuring things out after so long on my own. But I can see this putting people off. Age of Empires campaign takes a narrative story approach for it's tutorial, slowly introducing things to the player. Ara would benefit from something like this.
My next issue was the UI. So many things just annoyed me with it. Like when you apply buffs to your resource generators,all the icons are the same plus icon (+), but each selection of items inside the menu is different. Why not have different icons for each one? Even if it's just different colours corresponding to different sets of items. Another weird thing is when your choose stuff, you sometimes have to close a menu to click the next menu, despite it being a side menu. Can it not just replace the menu itself? That just feels a bit obvious to me.
Another issue is performance. There is no DLSS or FSR so you can't use these to help. It's a turn based game so it's not gonna impact your skill. It's just annoying in the later game when its running terribly. Please add FSR or something to take some strain off the GPU? It's open source so it doesn't cost any money to add this.
Some resource supplies felt a bit unusual or confusing. Like when you trade, why do they not ask you for anything in return? It's not trading, it's just a free stream of gifts. Also I think manufacturing should require some resources. Rather then a lot of the time it just speeding it up. Even if it's just gold to simulate buying the resources you don't have.
My last issue is auto repeat idle troops. So you don't have to keep waiting and fortifying. Let me automatically wait for multiple turns in a row please?
I enjoyed the battling. I found that was pretty cool. It's awesome how each battle and war is even named. Also certain things like creating your own religion. The game also has so many neat ideas that if they were further fleshed out could really be amazing. I was in a war with another country. Then at one point they proposed we put our differences aside and work together, because another country was clearly getting to ambitious. However this doesn't check if you are at wa, so you remain in one despite accepting the offer?? This would be great if it ended the war and boosted your respect with them.
You will come across so many decisions that I think should be more impactful. Cos 90% of the time you're better off just accepting due to the lack of negative effects. Maybe change this so there are bigger stakes.
The animations in this game are really cool. It makes the world feel so much more alive.
The game is highly addictive. With so many things to constantly interact with, you constantly want to work towards stuff.
Even if you haven't played many strategy games, I recommend giving Ara a go. If you stick through the tutorial and continue to work things out then you will be rewarded with game you can sink hours into. You won't even realize where the time went.
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PC
Хорошая 4х стратегия. При этом ничего сверхуникального в ней нет. Но если вы любите циву и она вам надоела - пробуйте Ару.
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PC
I do appreciate the detailed supply chain and I liked the effort that has gone into making it play more like a wargame from the 80s. The game's core, a city simulator of production chains where outputs become the inputs for a greater range of products over time is interesting. It's not innovative and even though it's the central core of the game's design - it wasn't applied to all the improvements that you build.
The purported living world is a satisfying string of visual animations but the 'world' is not dynamic or responsive to the actions taken by the player. Almost all of the gameplay except military conquest is passive micro-management.
Trading between players isn't a barter system it's a 'free' production over time of items one player has in their inventory for another - this is the antithesis of the game's core design. Resources are unlimited and the endless bounty of the colonizer extraction approach isn't challenged at any point.
Minor factions and AI players do trigger events that are based in actual historical events but lack 'personality' in that once you've experienced the small pool of events the game launched with you realize the summation of these in-game entities effects are popup events ... these popup events allow you the player to set the tone for the relationship.
In a multiplayer games you don't have these and you can if you have voice over applications roleplay or negotiate things and that could provide satisfaction but unfortunately the in-game diplomatic actions are simplistic and unoriginal.
As for aesthetic the music does eventually take on a solid presence in the game but visually aside from the 'living world' experience the games visuals seem almost archaic and to my view are mostly static considering the hype around the living world and other triumphs shown off. The map and the UI are quite busy with several components potentially disguising others - other units and their icons for example can be hidden behind your building or units icons.
The details of my disappointment could include a longer list and in some places maybe a bullet point of potential gaffs and errors. Near launch they changed one small Quality of Life name from "Aesthetics" to Security - but this creates some odd bonuses in the game where they kind of make sense once you realize that the developers are still working on the game. In a very real sense they may still be working on the entire game. The publishers worked with the developers to plan out a year of continued funding. So they do plan to work on the game for at least a year after launch but this creates a premise for a different question. The question of when, or even if, the game will be finished and ready for launch.
Honestly this game feels like a huge success for their marketing team. Because I was typing that up to joke about the game still being 'in the works' but it's not a joke, not really. It's not a finished project. It seems like it's got more unfinished elements than finished ones.
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PC
another game tries to copy civ and falls flat on it's face.
-there's a turn limit
- there is a build city limit
- there is an army limit
- you can't upgrade units
- you can't move units out of an army or upgrade or change them
- if you forget to research siege units you can't destroy walls
such a pity it was fun to play at first
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PC
Summary Ara: History Untold, built by a team that includes many of the leads behind one of the most popular historical grand strategy games of all time, invites players to build and lead a nation throughout global history as they explore new lands, develop arts and culture, conduct diplomacy, and go head-to-head with rivals to prove they are the...
Rated E +10
for Everyone +10
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Sep 24, 2024
Developer:
- Oxide Games
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Genres: