This is my review from the perspective of a Humankind and Civ VI player, and of interest for this game in specific a fantasy books enjoyer too.
I was very hesitant to purchase something so different and strange from the usual civilization 4x games, but I decided to give it a shot considering this comes from Amplitude.
Another point of interest for me in making the decision to purchase it now was that as we can usually expect from these type of releases it is for certain that there are going to be DLC down the road and why buy it now when we can expect an all-included-DLC bundle cheaper in a few months/years? Well worry not, as the game currently launched, it is so unique and different in how you play it that I genuinely don't think having or not the DLCs will take you off from the amazing initial experience, mainly because you can choose to approach it differently from how you would approach a civ game.
This isn't just a game where you choose from a massive array of civilizations and start expanding, building and customizing the synergies for your civ, but rather it blends in with a narratively and world building focus, hence the few "civs" you can choose from, here you will play as differend kinds of species that have their own stories, designs and goals. You can expect completely different buildings/districts/units that fit into the unique theme of your civ not just a single special unit or district. A quest system that will progressively lay on the story of your civ as you play, thus you are getting a game that feels slightly more like an interactive book which adds a lot to the atmosphere of playing a fantasy strategy game.
Having said that, I cannot judge this solely on the value of the game as a civilization-type replayable one, but rather as a singleplayer RPG-Strategy-4X rare blend, which for me that enjoys playing and also reading is more than worth enough for its price, as I will take pleasure in exploring, discovering and learning about each species on their corresponding first playthrough, but with it comes some criticisms that I think will do good for it.
The game would really benefit from having a voice overhaul for the quests of each species. Take for example Disco Elysium a heavily text focused game, its first release was purely readable with no voices, it was up to you to imagine the tones and personalities, but on the final cut release it was an absolute masterpiece with how beautifully the voices narrated the entire story and gave a lot of depth to the characters and mechanics. If you enjoy reading and do so frequently then not having the quests voiced won't be an issue, but having the game voiced would add a lot to the experience on how you get to discover the world and maybe help those that struggle with text. If you skip reading the quests then you will miss on a lot this game brings compared to the other civ type games.
With the narrative/story already covered, let's move on the "game" side of this, so far I cannot make a good review on that aspect as I have but a few hours on the game and you really need some playthroughs to gauge how good it can be compared to others of this genre. For now I can tell you that the mechanics give you unique "Hero" units that have customizations on how you progress with them with its dedicated system of customizing their equipment, skills and "companions" (I haven't reached the point yet to judge how good it is gameplay wise, it kind of feels RPG-lite though), completely different ways to organize and build your cities that make you take into consideration the unique characteristics of the species you are playing which goes back again to the world building focus of this. At a quick glance I would say that if you come from Humankind the learning curve will be low, the mechanics on how you engage on battles, plan your districts, build up synergies and interact with the AI are very similar yet different at the same time, which feels very refreshing for me. As I have read on other reviews perhaps the similitudes will overtime make you think negatively on the game as the AI is a bit dumb on Humankind and it could be the same here, but again for me that is no issue because I'm taking this more as an story to discover while playing.
Now to conclude on this review as to why I think this was a good purchase despite my concerns, using the "movie-ticket" parameter. Currently the game on launch discount costs for me around 3 and half movies tickets which would ask for a minimum of 6h to 8h enjoyable playtime, seeing how I barely even moved past the very first stage of the game with the first species (out of the eight available) on these 2h I think the game will cover more than enough entertainment hours even if I hadn't bought it on discount, and maybe contest with those rare gem games that absolutely take off the scale of price-entertainment hours value. But then again, this is because I take my time reading about the world. That's why I'm not concerned about the DLCs and such, because the experience of playing through the stories of each species won't be affected whether or not I have DLCs, on other CIV type games the DLCs really matter since they are focused on the gameplay first and foremost and playing without them can sometimes feel dull and lame, making you rethink about buying them at launch, on this game I can confidently say that it doesn't matter, I don't regret having bought this before the eventual ALL-IN-DLC packages deals of the future.
