60 / wfmag.ccReviewRated
GENRE
4X
FORMAT
PC (tested)
DEVELOPER
Atomic Kaiser
PUBLISHER
Slitherine
PRICE
£25.99
RELEASE
Out nowInfo
Review4X? More like 4zzzz
t’s a disease, I think – every time a
4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit,
eXterminate) pops up, I’m all over it.
Astra Exodus fits the bill, and it’s always
good to give any new entry in the genre
a go in case it happens to bring something
new to things, mixes it up, Ȇpulls a Galactic
Civilizations II’, as it’s known (nobody says this).
Astra Exodus does nothing new, and plenty old,
and is a fine insomnia cure.
Ignoring the semi-frequent bug that popped
up and rendered the entire universe in blinding
white, as well as the plentiful typos, spelling
errors, and grammatical mistakes littering the
game, there’s little about
Astra Exodus that’s outright
bad. This certainly isn’t
something a reviewer would,
could, or should pile on
regardless of how much
of a release that might
be. This is a game that is
absolutely competent when everything’s running
as it should – and therein lies the problem.
Itbobviously needs to be a lot more than that.
You set up your galactic homestead and
spread out, colonising new planets and running
the day-to-day operations as you try to get
some kind of population on these new (mostly)
empty rocks. Along the way, you encounter alien
races and engage in diplomacy with them, in
which they appear to behave in an oddly binary
way – either your absolute bestie, or as though
they saw you kick a puppy once. It does feel like
there’s little in-between. You research thingswith nary a tooltip in sight (prevalent elsewhere,
it’s fair to point out), and ship-to-ship combat
can be carried out in a top-down tactical format.
Honestly, you’ll skip it every single time after
doing it a couple of times, because it’s so slow,
and your decisions on the fly impact very little.
Pretty much every feature in Astra Exodus is
one that absolutely should be there, and one
that you’re happy is there. Equally, pretty much
every feature in Astra Exodus is one that induces
]ero excitement, offers nothing new, and does
little of note. It is, in a word, boring.
0aybe you’ve never bothered with the GalCiv
series, perhaps Stellaris isn’t for you, and it
might well be that Endless
Space 2 has passed you
by. There’s the chance you
don’t know what Master Of
Orion 2 is, either. If you’re
in that peculiar situation
and don’t want to rectify
it by picking up any of the
just-mentioned titles, for whatever reason that
might be, then sure – Astra Exodus will fill a hole
in your life. You’ll be able to mindlessly tap on
the end turn button and spend much longer
than you’d expect hoping your population’s
construction output improves, while tweaking
your ship designs for no discernable difference
to their performance in battles. (verything
from ; bingo is ticked off, present and correct.
But you shouldn’t do that – just get one of the
others, or if you already have them, just stick
with them. Astra Exodus is uninspired in the
extreme, and catastrophically mediocre.Astra Exodus
I
VERDICT
Absolutely competent at
its best. Far more often it’s
utterly prosaic.50 %
ReviewRated
Exciting space combat falls
by the wayside, instead
replaced with plodding
nonsense you will skip each
and every time.HIGHLIGHT
While it stands out in absolutely
no other way, Astra Exodus does
at least have some semblance of
character thanks to the simple act
of putting faces to things. Every
department under your control has
a gurning mug attached to it, and
some alien designs are pretty natty.
Admittedly this is pushing things a
bit to call it a ‘highlight’.
REVIEWED BY
Ian Dransfield
“Honestly, you’ll skip
tactical combat every
single time after
doing it a couple
of times” A whole galaxy of possibilities?
Not really, no.