ZEPHON

A more refined and original Gladius, a Civ BE that embraces its own true premise rather than running from it, a surprisingly effective successor Alpha Centauri's character-driven philosophy. If none of that rang a bell, here's what the game is: a "military focused" 4X or something like a turn-based Dawn of War RTS depending on how you look at it. I shouldn't even have to designate a 4X as "military focused" at heart, but it's worth saying that if your idea of 4X play is turtling in a corner while slowly accruing compounding buffs and victory conditions then ZEPHON may disappoint by expecting you to actually eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. Your economy services itself and your army first and foremost. Your army secures resources and victory conditions. There is no science victory at the end of your tech trees; there's "merely" several super-units that will greatly help you achieve victory if your industry is prepared to field them. Diplomacy is a new feature relative to Gladius and primarily serves to limit the number of enemies you fight at a given time rather than scoring you a unity victory almost by accident. Some people (and very-much-not-people) just won't get along no matter what and that tension [u]will[/u] come to a head whether you're ready or not. After that comes the last thing I expected from this genre: [spoiler]a metagame. At the end of each game, you will find that the main thing that mattered was whether you followed through on your chosen character's arc and/or tried something new this run.[/spoiler] For me the character quests represent a clear improvement over Gladius's version. They don't drag on too long and they don't fill every stage with "lmao here's another wave defense XDDDDD". Fulfilment also doesn't lead to its own guaranteed victory in the moment [spoiler](though see the metagame) but much like tech you will find some helpful boons at the end. A character like the Tribunal might not seem all that impressive on the selection screen but does benefit more from their questline than others if you make the right calls.[/spoiler] I do have some complaints/warnings worth noting: - The game does frontload some surprises. The terrain is so alien (a well-executed theme here) that even coming from a couple hundred Gladius hours it took me some blinking to realize what I was looking at. Unit movement is notably on an all-or-nothing basis rather than letting you creep forward a tile at a time until you reach your maximum allotment. Yeeting out into the unknown can get you into some really sticky situations. Travel in groups and pick your targets carefully (i.e. turn off automatic overwatch until you know what you're dealing with). This is a hostile environment. You will learn to hate Sentries. - All units are voiced. Whether or not you like this level of polish to begin with, the lines do get repetitive quickly. Personally [i]I really could have lived without them[/i] in my turn-based game (especially compared to the hovering captions units would occasionally put up in Gladius to the same effect) but they are at least well-done and can be turned off (response volume). - The Voice affinity is distinctly less appealing than Human and Cyber IMO unless you're the kind of person that gets really into [i]cheese[/i]. Most units heavily overspecialize into anti-ground and anti-infantry with the extreme exception of Cr'la Disciples. This leaves several units redundant and provides limited-to-no answers to things like flying enemies and enemy cities in the early game [i][b]unless you buy DLC[/b][/i]. Disciples on the other hand concentrate everything you otherwise lack into a single unit and then give that unit the most powerful single-target damage buff in the game and the ability to teleport entire armies across the map at a modest resource expenditure. If this combination sounds to an RTS player like an easy base snipe, [i]that's because it is[/i]. The catch is that the mix-and-match tech tree system means that this singular lynchpin unit is not exclusive to Voice players and thus does not excuse the weakness of the rest of the lineup; you don't need [i]the rest[/i] to get [i]the best[/i], you just need a couple tech picks and an economy capable of producing algae. The fact that the Voice has the fewest leaders available in vanilla--literally [i]two[/i]--and half of its leaders overall have some of the most crippling long-term weaknesses in the game (Cyber comes second but you get better buffs to compensate and three leaders give more to pick your poison from) makes it all the more unapproachable.

As a combat-oriented 4X the game is fun for a short time because on paper the mechanics are good. You positions units on a hex based map with different ranges, abilities, overwatch, and the ability to heal. The terrain also plays a factor as for example you can hide units in forests. The different factions are also quite different which is interesting. However, the flaws in execution eventually make the game tedious and boring. The first and most egregious is that the enemy AI isn't that good. Enemy units effectively suicide into your own prepared line of units as they are produced. The AI doesn't plan or counter what you are doing, or what might happen on the next turn. This was clear as I effectively won the game at normal difficulty even after playing only a short time. The second is, especially as you have more units, each turn takes too long. Units can't move very fast through many types of terrain, so much of each turn is spent moving units one by one across the map. This issue would have been much better if units could stack on top of each other, and stacks fought on a separate map. The last is the interface isn't very good. For example, there's no way to get a list of all combat units or cities you have - you have to click on them individually. Sometimes when you right click to attack a unit at range, for whatever reason instead of attacking the unit will try to walk to reach close-range instead.

I enjoyed Gladius to some degree, but this game is just kind of boring. Aesthetics and factions are nice. The general idea that there are three "neutral" factions that start with several bases is really interesting. Unapologetically leaning into combat is good. However, despite being conceptually and aesthetically so promising, the actual gameplay falls short. Unit design is lacking, tech tree is boring, factions are not distinguished enough gameplay wise, narrative structure of quests is weak, and the scale of skirmishes around the whole map is just a bit much after a while. What's most frustrating is that there are just too many units for the one unit per tile rule. Endgame gets way too cluttered. I also have minor nitpicks like diplomacy being too rough on higher difficulties, but who cares really. At its current state this game is sadly a miss for me.

It's Gladius but better in every way. Still military focused, but much more polish. Different NPC factions to ally with, in addition to your competitors. Works great on the Deck, especially the UI, a rarity for a 4X game.

Did you like Warhammer Gladius? Come here because you heard that it was similar but newer with better QoL features? Are you thinking "Dang - I own most of Warhammer Gladius DLC - is it really worth it to upgrade to ZEPHON?" Yes. Yes it is. The core gameplay stays the same, 4x hex based, turn based strategy. Build your city, make some units, build up an army, wipe the field with the opposition. There are some pretty major new features though. First - you don't HAVE to wipe the floor with everyone. You can play this game - for the most part - entirely pacifist if you wanted to and still get a W against NPC's because of the way the political system in this game works. Oh yeah - there's politics. It's more akin to late game Spore where you can pay everyone to love you if you've got the coin - but you can also spend your time building bridges between the NPC factions and using that to make everyone friends with you, and each other - so that the game can end amicably. Or you can piss everyone off and ride up with hover tanks with the windows rolled down so you can flip off the poor saps that thought it was a good idea to get in your way. If you liked Gladius, I recommend the HELL out of this. If not - I can't recommend it, unless your complaints were about lack of complexity. My ONLY complaint is that with Gladius, each faction had separate units - it felt good to have that level of variation. You don't really have that with ZEPHON. Not even a single unique unit to my knowledge. Humans will always have human stuff, Voice will always have Voice stuff, and Cybers will always have Cyber stuff. You can also research into the other specs for a price, but I do wish there was faction specific units.

same problem with gladius computer knows where you are at all times and the fog of war limits your sight to one or MAYBE two hexes out so units are always right outside your field of view

Everything about this game is incredibly interesting, except for the part where you play it. There is only one path to victory, and that's the manly way: with guns and drones and mind-flaying monsters. This would be acceptable if the "unique tactical combat system" wasn't such a tedious slog. Since I doubt that Proxy Studios will reconsider using this "unique" system, I hope that they develop this rich IP further with a sequel or an expansion that at the very least translates their intention into something more enjoyable.

Imagine a Civ 5 game where at the end of turn 500, genocidal aliens invade and AI gains consciousness at the same time and begins to cover the earth with itself. That's where this game starts. There's no victory condition except total conquest or diplo. And after 200 turns the aliens and AI each spawn titan superunits and there's a battle royale to the death. And you have to choose a side. (Or, if you have [spoiler]BALLS OF STEEL[/spoiler], no side.) Basically the 4X equivalent of a heated RTS skirmish, kind of a "Brawler 4X". The original lore reminds me of Starcraft but with more grimdark and a little more cheese (though watching the opening cinematic for the Terran campaign in Starcraft, I'm reminded that Starcraft had plenty). I don't mind a little cheese if it's tasty though. I've tried for years to get into WH40K but never found a game I liked. This game is a reskin of WH40K Gladius (same studio) but that new skin is a doozy. The aliens are a bit of Lovecraft with a heavy influence from the visceral body horror of Clive Barker. They form a sort of sadomasochistic mutilation cult that is very Hellraiser, combined with some SM:AC mindworms. The aliens themselves are driven by The Voice, which is some kind of [spoiler]evil omnipresence that corrupts beings and uses them to spread itself throughout the Universe.[/spoiler[ Their vibe overall is like if H.R. Giger painted de Goya's "Saturn Devours his Son". The Cyber faction starts off with a lot of Neuromancer (again, body horror) and progresses into a mixture of advanced tech and the kind of cold and efficient machine feel you get from the flying orb in Phantasm or the famous office scene in Robocop. Also there is a Mad Max-esque Australian woman who hates you. I do have gripes with the game. The terrain has some major modifiers (which I love), some of which stack. The map, however, is not particularly legible. With a forest and a ruins on the same tile, that's 67% damage reduction, though being able to tell at a glance that the tile has both (or even just a forest sometimes) is not easy. You can mouseover and it will list the terrain modifiers but that is exhausting when looking at a battlefield with 20-30 units onscreen. The LOS system is also frustrating because the terrain has 4 levels and it's not easy to tell what level each is at. Again, you can mouseover but that is a pain and it's not clear how tall some terrain features are so it's mostly using the range preview for each space. The diplomacy swings WILDLY (except on Nightmare where no one is your friend lol) but probably my biggest complaint is that if you plot a multi-move course, it doesn't tell you how many moves it will take, it only shows nodes. At first I didn't like the game at all because of the 'brawler' feel. I like lots of victory conditions to add depth. But once I started seeing that it is a basically an RTS-4X hybrid, I was able to enjoy it for what it is meant to be: a quick race to an all-out balls-to-the-wall brawl (and oh brother you can make some mashups). Or an alliance victory if you farm influence, give gifts nonstop, and luck out with the AI factions. Verdict: Great game if you vibe with its genre and setting, but wait for a sale because if you like it you will be dropping another game's worth or so on DLC.