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Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Yield! Fall of Rome
After watching a few previews, I decided to pre-purchase the deluxe version of Civilization VII. I bought it because it already gives access to the first DLCs coming out, and I know that Civ games rely a lot on DLC content to flesh the game out. The deluxe version also gives early access on February 6th, but that isn't why I bought it. I'm somewhat sceptical about paid for early access, as that is when the game is most likely to have problems. Anyway, I still have 2 weeks to wait. So I bought a game just released into early access this week, but one where I had already played the demo and liked it: Yield! Fall of Rome
One thing I really liked about Yield! is the graphics: The game is using a tilt-shift angle, otherwise known as miniature faking. In photography that can be used to make a photo of a real scene that looks as if it was a scene of miniatures, like a model railway. I haven't seen that used in video games before, and the effect turns the pixel graphics into something looking a lot more interesting, and cute.
The gameplay is also good, an interesting take on a slimmed-down 4X formula. In Yield! the hexes that a city control don't produce goods every round, and there are no running costs for things like your army. Instead you develop a hex once, get the resources from that hex once, and spend it once. That makes gameplay a lot simpler and faster. And it forces you to grow and expand, because sooner or later you'll run out of hexes to develop otherwise. The setting of Yield! Fall of Rome, as the name suggests, is in the latter years of the Roman empire. You play a barbarian king or chieftain, invading the Roman empire from the borders.
The one thing that is disappointing about Yield! is it's length. I already played the short tutorial campaign in the demo, which has 3 maps. The current early access game only adds two more campaigns, one with 4 and one with 5 scenarios. The "campaign of the week" feature doesn't actually give access to anything new, it only allows you to play one of the three campaigns in a competitive mode, where your score is compared to that of others. And score here means only how fast you can play through the campaign, which isn't really my preferred playstyle.
Yield! is only $20, and currently at release is 10% off. But even for that price in the current version it is a bit short. The roadmap is promising one more campaign already in January, and then 2 new campaigns in February, and 2 more in March. If they manage that, I'll consider my money well spent.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:06 AM Permanent Link
