Review anarchistica 3/5 · Dec 24, 2021
More a puzzler than a strategy game
Intro
In Reus you take control over four giants (reus is Dutch for giant). You use these to terraform a barren planet, create flora & fauna, modify/upgrade it and sometimes murder people if they get too uppity.
Playtime: 10 hours
The Good
- This is the only game taking place on a small planet that i don't automatically hate.
- Pretty unique …
Intro
In Reus you take control over four giants (reus is Dutch for giant). You use these to terraform a barren planet, create flora & fauna, modify/upgrade it and sometimes murder people if they get too uppity.
Playtime: 10 hours
The Good
- This is the only game taking place on a small planet that i don't automatically hate.
- Pretty unique gameplay.
- Various cheats/modifiers available.
- Games can be 30-120 minutes long.
- Pleasant art style.
- You can pause and give commands.
- Human ambassadors want to ride on top of giants. Yay!
The Bad
- The built-in modifiers disable progression to some extent.
- Inventory doesn't scale properly above 1K.
- Modifying resources gives a random level of upgrade, which can prevent further upgrades. This is annoying and kinda pointless because you can always place the same resource again and try over.
The Ugly
The main problem with Reus is that you can't easily see development paths or what upgrades unlock them. Clear colour-coding would have helped to determine the latter. As for the former, the game should've had some built-in tech tree browser or encyclopedia. Now it just opens the wiki in Steam's (small and clunky) browser window.
Conclusion
If you like cute/positive games that require puzzling and some wiki-ing, this is the game for you. If you don't (like me) you can still get some fun out of it but will ultimately get a bit lost.
