7,840 hours of experience playing just Civ V alone (never mind the whole "Civ" franchise) versus a measly 4 hours playing ARA History Untold today during my Day One tryout of it during its Black Friday Special Free Weekend.
As you can probably figure out, even with my venerable Civ cred and scholarship, I'm a total noob in this game. Here, as England, I'm watching helplessly as London is mercilessly burned and before long I've lost the war and the Fleur-de-Lis is flying over the Thames.
This game came out over a year ago and though I watched it with rapt attention, I was holding out for Civ VII and plunked my precious coins down on it. Well, that turned out to be a pile o' steaming waste product and though ARA too had its detractors at the time, it's since gotten some important updates including a very significant overhaul just recently so now many are saying, once again, that THIS may yet be the long-awaited "Civ-killer."
Its overall look and feel are at first glance almost Civ IV simplistic but don't let that fool you, this shit is quite complex. In fact, that's where a lot of its critics barked loudest: too focused on micromanagement. Now I've not played it "before" this newest iteration so I can't compare but it does still feel a bit clickity-clickety when hopping to and fro the many UI screens (and there are many, ugh) and not nearly as streamlined as Civ V (or VI or VII for that matter). But it could also be that since its tutorials are absolute crap, I've been kinda hacking away at it blindly so I know I'm missing a lot in my bull in the china shop learning curve and it is a bit frustrating. Now mind you, it's not as bad as say EU IV or, especially, other Paradox "Einstein-level" strategy shit like Victoria or Crusader Kings, both of which I tried really hard to "get" but just gave up in total fury.
Now, after I've had my "x" number of hours in this game this weekend, will I go ahead and decide to buy it to make it number 268? Yes, that would be the 268th game in my Steam library (and that's just Steam, not EA or any of the other portals that sell and hold their game launchers). It's $24.99 if I buy it during this promo, otherwise it goes up to $49.99 after December 2. But here's the thing: While every Civ contender that comes along and catches a gleam in my eye may make me itch to buy it, I have to wonder, will it be another...
Ages of Conflict, $6.99, 73 min.
Crusader Kings II, $9.99, 9 hrs.
Europa Universalis III, $23.72, 93.3 hrs.
Europa Universalis IV, $19.99, 93.8 hrs.
Humankind, $59.99, 13.9 hrs.
Knights of Honor II, $19.12, 80 min.
Millenia, $19.99, 83 min.
Old World, $35.99, 20.5 hrs.
Victoria II, $4.99, 3.1 hrs.
And of these, of course, the one that hurts the most, since it, at the time, was the most anticipated "Civ killer" in the summer of 2021. And what mention of my impressions on this blog at the time? Nothing. Nada. Crickets. That's how impressed I was. I played a total of 13.9 hours of this game that I've had for over four years because it was freaking boring AF and I bought it FULL PRICE on release day at sixty bucks!
So, I'll play you a few more hours ARA, maybe even more than 13.9 hours, but at the stroke of midnight on December 2nd if you don't hear my coins jingling in your purse, hope there's no hard feelings but hopefully you'll understand why.