Ara: History Untold review

What is it? History-spanning 4X grand strategy game or: Phil Spencer's Civilization

Expect to pay £50/$60 (included in Game Pass)

Release date September 24, 2024

Developer Oxide Games

Publisher Xbox Game Studios

Reviewed on Intel i7 13700HX, RTX 4080 (mobile), 32GB RAM

Steam Deck Unknown

Link Official site

George Washington and I go way back—around three millennia, give or take a hundred years. He may have been Buddhist while my Korean people were devoted to the pantheon of Hellenic gods, but we traded goods and propelled each other's research, arriving in Ara: History Untold's Era of Antiquity with the world at our feet.

One of our projects was to build a great road between our capitals, but the Ethiopians—whose territory this road was to pass through—refused us access. So George and I flattened Addis Ababa to make way for our old-world trade highway. All was wonderful, but over the centuries our two territories came to fill the void left behind by Ethiopia. We eventually came to share a border and, in a tale as old as Sid Meier, were doomed to become rivals; it was just a question of who would make the land grab first. What George didn't know is that I've been playing 4X games since the original Civilization, and by the time he declared war, my mangonels were at the ready to begin bombarding Jacksonville.

At the macro level, Microsoft and Oxide Games' stab at the Civy-likey turn-based strategy genre is a fine vehicle for the bonkers stories that arise from a randomised alternative history mish-mashing the key people, technological advancements, and nations of our own. For Civ players, the key elements are all there—government types, religion, war, technological progress, diplomacy, and a bunch of familiar features given new names, from wonders (now triumphs) to great works (masterpieces). But at a time when the history-themed 4X genre is looking rather populous, does Ara do enough to stand the test of time?

It certainly makes a jaunt through history visually