Ara: History Untold has been playable on Steam and Game Pass for almost a week. The 4x strategy game was seen as a rival to Civilization. But even the players who want to love Ara: History Untold sound frustrated. On Reddit they seem like a self-help group that gets their frustrations off their chest. You want to love the game, but Ara. History Untold just won’t let them.
What is Ara: History Untold? Ara: History Untold is essentially a classic city building game; you dedicate a lot of time and love to optimally expanding your up to 10 cities. There is a complex crafting system in the buildings with countless resources.
Ara combines city building with 4x gameplay: you explore the area, research technologies, conquer cities and wipe out your opponents. In Ara you get prestige for everything. Anyone who has too little prestige after the end of an era is eliminated from the game, leaving behind only ruins and magnificently wide fields so that their rivals can build new cities there.
Ara looks great and has huge potential as many believe, but it makes it almost impossible for players to love it.
Ara: History Untold – Trailer for the turn-based strategy game
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Player laments micromanagement hell
This is the discussion: On reddit, one player summarizes his impression of Ara: History Untold with “I’m out – at least for now.”
The player says: He understands what the developers wanted to do. But the game becomes “micromanagement hell” in the midgame and it’s just no fun.
“Once I was in a workshop and used a gearbox to be able to produce gearboxes more quickly – what’s the point in that?”
The interface and user guidance are so bad that he once spent minutes looking for a tannery because he no longer knew which city it was in. He will continue to follow the game and would love to get back into Ara, but only when there are big changes in the interface and micromanagement.
The player doesn’t have a bad feeling about Ara: History Untold. He only paid one euro via Xbox Game Pass anyway.
The game is great and wants to be even better, but…
This is how others discuss it: Many Reddit users agree with him: The game is great in itself and wants to be even better, but from Act 2, i.e. in the midgame, Ara: History Untold is just torture and frustration.
There would be endless, many improvements and workshops in the game. One user says:
“Finding enough food for a big city is a nightmare, even if you have a supply of 600 it’s gone in an instant. So you’re constantly hunting for something new: you’re chasing a refrigerator, carpets, toasters, light bulbs, pigs, cows, sandwiches, knives, forks, tables, chairs, and so on and so forth.
The game turns into the settlers, but without an acceptable interface.”
The sentiment seems to be unanimous: the game itself is great, but as soon as Act 2 begins and you have more and more tools and resources to choose from, Ara. History Untold becomes a nightmare for micromanagers and is no longer fun.
But the game has the potential to be great. People want to love it, Ara: History Untold just won’t let them. MeinMMO author Schuhmann is also part of the self-help group Ara Anonymous: I spent 40 hours in 3 days with the new strategy game on Steam – but I can’t recommend it to anyone