Ara History Untold Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Ara History Untold from developer Oxide Games is one of, if not the boldest release of 2024.

The Xbox Game Studios effort doesn't just attempt to enter the same space as a genre-leading juggernaut such as the Civilization series; it attempts to dramatically push the entire turn-based grand strategy (4X) category to new heights.

At face value, Ara looks like an iteration on Civ with similar paint, as players build nations in an alternate history through ages in an effort to be the "winner" at the very end. They accomplish this with different leaders of nations while earning resources to craft their own civilizations to their liking and when all else fails, war is always an option.

But Ara is much, much more than a Civ lookalike, something apparent once one even briefly moves past the first glance.

Graphics and Gameplay

Watching Ara in motion quickly takes it from a Civ-looking game to something that expands on it in interesting ways.

There are, of course, a number of different biomes and many cultures simply packed with detail in a must-have way for a 4X game this close to 2025. The lighting is fantastic, the little voiceovers and sound effects fit the vibe and most everything is colorful and upbeat in a way that is impossible to dislike.

But Ara pushes the Civ formula on the presentation front in modern ways. There is a deepening of immersion through the typically realistic reaction characters in the world have to all sorts of things, such as overarching civilization developments such as wars.

This simply cannot go understated. Something at this scale hasn't really been attempted before, be it due to technological reasons or otherwise. There are human characters walking throughout these cities and locales, reflecting the actions of the leader (player) and overarching world in notable ways.

In games like Civ, it sometimes feels like players merely manage cities as characters on a board game. Here in Ara, there are so many individual citizens out and about, and small details that drive up the immersion tenfold. Zooming in from far out much farther than expected and watching the detail multiply is never not a treat.

Ara boasts singleplayer, but more notable is that it does feature up to 36 players as a possibility in a single game.

This is made possible due to the bold decision to go with a simultaneous-turn format. Meaning players all make their moves at the same time within a single turn's time limit, then it processes. In multiplayer sessions, this seemingly moves things away from the genre staple of actions per minute (APM) mattering as much as strategy. And it dramatically cuts down on time waiting for others.

This change also applies to singleplayer which is, frankly, fantastic. Some might decry that this makes the game feel less like 4X strategy game and more like an RTS, but the blend feels good—and being able to backtrack a misclicked decision can be nice, too.

At launch, the game boasts 30-plus leaders who partake in these civilization-building pursuits across region-based maps. The overarching backbone of that pursuit is a crafting system and supply chain that impacts the course of history.

Players can choose to construct many different things with the resources harvested, mined, discovered or otherwise. These decisions play a part not just in pursuit of one's own endgame goals, but directly impact the world as a whole, including other players.

Singleplayer or otherwise, actually advancing through the acts is not a guarantee. Whereas in games like Civilization, the timelines eventually throw a crisis onto the map and permit a player's civilization to change course, Ara will straight-up eliminate the civilizations with the lowest amount of Prestige, which measures a player's progress in areas like commerce, government, culture, industry and more.

Unlike other games in the genre, this leaves players with many multitudes of ways to build Prestige and strategize. There isn't one set win condition that a player must pursue, but many ways to set one's narrative apart.

This isn't just a waging war game, either. There is ample opportunity to do so (at a cost, too), but players can just as easily bunker down defenses and build up arts, culture, etc., and leap up the Prestige leaderboard.

In its own engrossing way, Ara is very much a deep puzzle that is enjoyable to figure out through experimentation. It is rich and deep on the gameplay front with Civ-like replayability while feeling like its own flavor.

Story and More

Ara proceeds through a game's progression with a narrative event system. Act 1 starts in Ancient History and leads to Act 2, the Early Middle Ages and Beyond, which then leads to Act 3, the Machine Age, Atomic Age and so much more.

Each of the many leaders comes with droves of different personality traits and details specific to their civilization. A Disciplined leader, for example, gets a huge bonus to build production toward government and military buildings.

A leader with that trait might also be Aggressive, which adds a bonus to military forces in other players' territories. But a more insular-minded leader might have the Formidable trait in that aggressive slot, extending a big bonus to forces within their own capital.

The list goes on and on and on—in a great way.

This walks hand-in-hand with the idea that all options are open to a player when it comes to pursuing high Prestige numbers. Sure, some leaders excel in certain areas more than others, but only leaning into that one area could be foolish and backfire (and isn't very realistic for a civilization, either).

Progression during a play session comes in various forms and frankly, diving into all of them would eat up too much time. There are, for example, technology trees to progress to move a civilization through the ages. There is the option to spread religion, gain influence, or even just take up the war banners and take things by force. Proper navigation of resources and pursuits can lead to a nation that many others hinge their entire economies on for survival, even.

The overarching crafting economy does a good job of rewarding players for progressing through a game. It rarely doesn't feel good to move a country forward as a strategy unfolds, keeping the gameplay loop fun as feedback happens. And even when the Prestige numbers aren't where a player might like, it's fun to glean ideas for the future by observing other players.

The decision for synchronous and asynchronous gameplay was a smooth one, clearly, and creates some interesting high-end competitive gameplay possibilities if the game becomes widespread.

While the game is complicated, Ara navigates this smartly by letting players lock certain tooltips onto the screen and some quality tutorial guides do a good job of helping along newcomers.

Ara, for now, is available on PC via Xbox Game Pass with no announced plans for microtransactions, so it should be interesting to see how things evolve from here.

Actual game performance, though, might vary by machine. It's pretty clear that the feats the game accomplishes at scale are intensive, so it's impressive to see it run well once the screen starts to become filled.

Conclusion

Ara is the first Civ-like game to give the genre some serious competition again.

While it's unfair to say Ara actually surprised the top dog in the genre because it leans a little more complex while the direction of Civilization VII is a question mark, it's fair to put them on near-equal footing.

The sense of scale in Ara is downright breathtaking through the deep visuals, number of players and sheer size of sessions. It pairs perfectly with the fact the gameplay is addictively fun and—thankfully—the game trusts players with very complex systems.