Sid Meier’s Civilization VII impressed with its gameplay debut at Gamescom Opening Night Live, but it’s not out until next February. Thankfully, Oxide Studios and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have an excellent alternative on the way next month, one that’s been seven years in the making. That would be Ara: History Untold, which I went hands-on with for over an hour at a Gamescom-adjacent Xbox event in Los Angeles.
It’s certainly overwhelming at first — as most 4X games are — but the more I played Ara: History Untold, the more I fell in love with its intricacies. With some clever design decisions, Oxide takes a fairly familiar strategy subgenre and applies tweaks to make watching a civilization grow feel even more personal and satisfying. While I’ll probably need to spend a couple of hours reading through the game’s glossary and tutorials before I can master it, I’m looking forward to doing so.
The goal of Ara: History Untold is to grow and expand a nation throughout history over 750 turns. The term 4X stands for “explore, expand, exploit, exterminate,” and you can expect that very gameplay loop here. Most of my demo, which started right at turn one, focused on the explore, expand, and exploit parts of 4X. Players begin by choosing a leader, all of whom are historical figures. I chose Tokugawa Ieyasu due to the military buffs he provided, although I ended up not really needing those benefits during my playtime.
Once the actual match started, I sent my scout out to uncover fog of war and reveal where resources were. Then, I had to start building up my nation to obtain those resources and start the endless cycle of growth that is the backbone of 4X games. This is where Ara: History Untold starts to get more intricate compared to some of its peers.
Whereas most 4X games have rigid tile systems with little in the way of customization, Ara: History Untold wants every growth-related decision to be well-thought-out. I had to carefully place every farm, workshop, or quarry within my borders. For example, it’s best to place a farm in an area with a resource like barley; that will make for a barley farm that yields more resources. Then, I could build a plow at my workshop and apply it to that farm to make it even more productive.
If you’re the kind of 4X player who loves to get lost in the minutiae of building out your civilization, then Ara: History Untold is for you. Over time, the complexity grew as I started to manage my relationship with nearby tribes and nations, expanded my territory each time my central city leveled up, and unlocked paragons and experts that could give me additional buffs. By the time a city has taken over several regions and been filled out with different builds, it really feels like your own.
While all these systems are well-designed, I doubt that Ara: History Untold will be very approachable. Even as someone who enjoys 4X games, I had to play several turns with a developer walking me through every decision before I felt comfortable playing independently. I, and anyone else picking Ara: History Untold up, should probably spend an hour or two looking through the game’s tutorials and explanation menus before committing to 750 turns of playtime.
There’s a lot of Ara: History Untold I didn’t see — and I’m not only talking about late-game technologies. Outside of fighting some wild animals (a developer tells me Ara uses higher-resolution character models from Zoo Tycoon), I never had to do much combat despite picking my leader to support that type of gameplay. Ara: History Untold will also support multiplayer where player turns will run simultaneously, so I’m curious to see how that will pan out.
Although it took some time to get settled in, once I did, Ara: History Untold checked all the right boxes for a new 4X video game. This is for the most hardcore fans of the genre, similar to other 2024 strategy game hits like Manor Lords and Cataclismo. As 4X fans will be left underserved between now and Civilization VII’s February 2025 launch, Ara: History Untold has a real chance of filling that gap once it launches for PC on September 24.
