A Charming Excuse for a Poor Game
Reus is a well looking game for its time period. It is charming and friendly looking. However, this is where its strengths ends as despite having a strong gameplay foundation, game itself is very bothersome to play.
🦀Aesthetics🦀
It is a pretty game to look at it. It has a soul and it goes a long way to carry a game. It is the thing which attracted my attention. I enjoy pretty things. This is unfortunately also the strongest aspect of this game and why it holds up as well as it does. Four Giants
- Your giants are well done. They are distinct and memorable. The best proof of how attached I grew to them is how immediately I missed the Swamp Giant when played Reus 2 demo. Characters are fun to look at. It is a good thing that they memorable since they do take a lot of visual estate in this game.
Four Biomes - Another game’s strength is its varied biomes and possibilities it brings. You can create island nation, desert, swamp and forest nations. All with their own buildings and specialisations. It allows to evenly cover entire planet with different types of nations and this results in different mini-games for each. I enjoyed variety which I immediately missed while playing demo with its three biomes.
🔥Gameplay🔥
Sadly, this is where good things end. Game is deeply flawed mechanically. It has conflicting design goals. At one end, it markets itself as a zen like nurturing game. It ends up as a time based micromanagement hell. Gameplay is fun for a first run, but it quickly fades away as it doesn’t hold up. Time based rush
However, despite how cute and clever this game can be, I cannot recommend it. Its gameplay at its core is not fun. It wants to be a thoughtful game where you can relax and inspect your inhabitants, but at the same time it constantly rushes you. It adds meaningless RNG which devolves game into spamming few abilities to get combination you need. This game is not worth playing, especially considering Reus 2. After playing demo, I see that developers are trying to address its shortcomings. I recommend playing Reus 2 over its predecessor since it is a classical case when sequel is just better in every meaningful way than its predecessor.
Calicifer’s Reviews
- One of the key problems is game’s insistence on time. Every major project will have a time limit. These projects can stack on top of each other. They do not give you a lot of time. You need to figure out how you are going to achieve your goal. Then terraform the environment. Then proceed replacing previous bonuses with ones which you think will get the best chance of achieving your goals. Then you adjust things you need and have too many of. Eventually your village needs to consume these bonuses which takes quite a bit of time. To put salt to the wound, there is greed mechanic in this game which punishes you for allowing village to grow too quickly. Do you see fundamental problem here? Game demands you to quickly grow your village and at the same time punishes you severely for doing so.
Achievement grind - Another surprisingly bad thing about this game are the achievements. The problem with achievements is that they are tied directly to in game progression. In order to unlock best upgrades and longest game modes, you need achievements. However, progress is so slow that in over my 4 hours play, I did not managed to unlock any longer game modes. Neither I unlocked the best upgrades. I was left with a game where I seemingly could not do much more than I already did. There wasn’t a clear way to progress either. The worse thing is, this is a short game. People get bored of it quickly. However, it doesn’t unlock most of its features before most people stop playing it. This system is directly detrimental to the quality of their game.
Memorisation - Gameplay meat itself is very distasteful. This is actually a memorisation game. There is no intuitive thinking. You need to memorise all the combinations in order to effectively use them. Thus the difficulty comes directly to you knowing specific combos to achieve the best results. It is simply not fun. It is not the type of game where I would want to memorise combos. I want to see stuff happen. When stuff is happening, it is brilliant. I want to focus looking at it rather than frantically rushing to micromanage my giants and wondering what combination does what.
RNG hell - The greatest offence this game commits is its focus on RNG. In order to unlock greater potency upgrades, you need a special ability. You unlock those abilities with advisors which you get from completing quests. However, ability has 66% for lesser boon and 33% for greater boon. You can only try once. If you do not get greater boon, you need to remove upgrade, place it again and try your luck again. This system has no complexity, only frustration. Since it is time based game, mixing extreme RNG elements is extremely frustrating as you will be losing your games solely due to your bad luck. How bad RNG is? Well, in order to get two greater boons in a row the chance is: 10%. Then you might need ANOTHER greater boon on top of it. Remember, if you get lesser boon during any dice roll, you have to start again. This is why percentages are low, because you need successive successful rolls. This results in a chance of mere 3% to get late game upgrade. Percentages are insanely low. You know how you will be playing this game? All four giants standing in one place, constantly removing same few upgrades and hoping for a lucky break.
This picture reveals how you will actually be playing your game. All giants stationed in one place and you will be spamming same few abilities to get upgrades you need for a project.
Synergies - In this game you upgrade your tiles. Then you upgrade your upgrade. Each upgrade has a different symbiosis which gives you extra stuff when combined with the other upgrades or stuff. However, sometimes it is not clear what it does. I often would find wondering why something did not activated when it should have had. Maybe these are bugs. Other times some of these symbioses are just bad. For example, you have a cactus which need to have wealth on a tile to get additional bonuses. However, this is early game upgrade when there are no upgrades which would give adjacent tiles enough wealth to get it. When you might have it, you already progressed past it. Other upgrades are also very questionable like chickens. They are early game synergy, but it is so easy and weak that it serves no purpose. I wish that early game synergies would had been a little more complex and meaningful since only tier 3 upgrades starts to really matter.
Gaia still sleeps
The Earth itself goes through cycles of sleeping and being awake. When Gaia is awaken, its giants stirs and seeds the life on its surface. Our purpose is to take care of Gaia that life could sustain itself while it sleeps. We are its guardians entrusted with dominion over its life. This is the message of this game which echoes through religious messages of the real world.However, despite how cute and clever this game can be, I cannot recommend it. Its gameplay at its core is not fun. It wants to be a thoughtful game where you can relax and inspect your inhabitants, but at the same time it constantly rushes you. It adds meaningless RNG which devolves game into spamming few abilities to get combination you need. This game is not worth playing, especially considering Reus 2. After playing demo, I see that developers are trying to address its shortcomings. I recommend playing Reus 2 over its predecessor since it is a classical case when sequel is just better in every meaningful way than its predecessor.
Calicifer’s Reviews
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