Developer: Oxide Games Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam , Microsoft Price: £60/$60/€60 Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3400G, Radeon RX 590, 24GB RAM, Windows 10 I am puzzled by Ara Colon History Untold's priorities. At its heart are a couple of interesting ideas undermined by its own determination to put the wrong thing on centre stage. Make a rich and elaborate resource management game with an unorthodox research system, but then spend so much time on a simultaneous turn system and detailed animations that you're left with a cumbersome interface and lifeless AI, and you too might wind up making Ara.
There's an almost great game here, but it's all neglected and bruised from being shoved into the packaging of a lacklustre 4X. The premise is, for simplicity's sake: Civilisation again. You pick a historical people and take them from Unk and Thogg scratching shapes on a rock with another rock to Unkbot Is God Now, probably conquering Ugg and Thonk's tribe along the way.
Ara reveals its best ideas right away, although it'll be a hell of a time before you really figure them out. In a sort of Endless Legend way, after researching enough topics in one of its 12 eras, you can move on to the more advanced technology of the next. But doing that discards any unresearched topics, so any buildings, units, even resources tied to them are lost to you forever.
More interestingly, many goods and buildings can be unlocked by multiple topics, so if you miss .