Spice Wars is already able to tell stories unique to Dune in small bursts, even if it's lacking the direct storytelling of a campaign.Ī year from now I hope Spice Wars is weaving in narration, too, and using characters to give each faction more life. Single units in Total War are meaningless, but I was heartbroken when two of my veterans were swallowed up by a sandworm while running for the rocky safety of a settlement. Likewise there was a real tension sending them across a sandy wasteland and watching their supply meters ticking down the longer they were outside my territory. I enjoyed zooming in on my Fremen warriors and watching them chew through Harkonnen soldiers and level up. But I do like how compact it is compared to the likes of Civilization or Total War, while still managing to offer the same balance of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. Should the Fremen really be conquering territories, manufacturing whatever the heck plascrete is, and paying spice taxes to the Spacing Guild?Įarly access will give Spice Wars the opportunity to root itself more deeply in Dune's universe, but it's going to need a greater focus on characters, mounds of flavor text, and more differentiation between its factions to begin feeling more like an interpretation of Dune and less like a playground painted to look like it. Outside of a few unique units and tech tree differences, the Fremen mostly play like the Atreides, who aren't all that different from the Harkonnen, and so on. You can place buildings on a small grid within each territory, but their location is mostly meaningless. That was satisfying, but you can't think too hard about how Spice Wars has grafted Dune onto the framework (and budget) of a basic 4X. I consider it a public good-nobody likes that guy. I was at least able to train up an army of Fedaykin warriors powerful enough to stomp Baron Harkonnen's troops and destroy his heavily fortified capital after an extended siege. If I'd devoted more spies to the Atreides house, I may have been able to assassinate Duke Leto before he'd clinched a political victory. I focused on growing my military and economic tech trees and missed out on how powerful espionage could be, too. That's knowledge I plan to exploit on another run.Īs the Fremen I was able to keep my armies healthy in harsh desert conditions and summon worms to travel vast distances, but I was particularly unpopular in the political Landsraad council, so I spent too long ignoring the monthly votes that granted factions major advantages. After I lost my first campaign to Leto Atreides cheekily declaring himself governor-a political move I could've countered if I'd been paying more attention to politics instead of my military-I started understanding how much more I could've done with each system at play here. Spice Wars manages to feel fast-paced and laid-back at the same time. Spice Wars is refreshingly breezy for this style of strategy game, though: I expanded my territory, destroyed the Harkonnen base, worked my way through two tech trees and started throwing my weight into politics all in less than four hours. For more on Dune's PC history, check out our retrospective on the best and worst Dune games on PC (opens in new tab).
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