This New Strategy Game Will Win Over Fans Of Ancient Greece, Even If You Suck At It
Triskell Interactive, the studio behind Pharaoh: A New Era, has returned with a new city builder centered around the Greek deities. Theos: Cities of Myth is coming to PC later this year, and as a self-proclaimed strategy game novice, I found myself utterly baffled by its fire-prone gameplay. Publisher Dotemu let me get my hands on an early build of the game at a recent event, and let's just say I didn't exactly excel at it. For some reason, I just couldn't stop everything from setting on fire.
Choosing Your Divine Path
To begin your journey in Theos: Cities of Myth, you'll have a choice of seven deities to play as. Each deity brings a unique set of blessings that influence your gameplay in different ways. For example, Athena will distribute two culture points when a philosophy school is built, raising the culture value of your city overall. The deities also have sanctuary blessings, which are specific buildings, decorations, or benefits to production that have varying effects. Combat blessings, on the other hand, affect your city's military actions.
Each deity has various benefits that can shape your city's development. Some might recognize these varying benefits from games like Civilization, but even if you're new to the genre, Theos does a good job of explaining each perk in good detail. That's all well and good in theory—I've played my fair share of strategy games—but what about in practice?
A Game That Seems to Hate Me
I played a guided tutorial, which showed me the basics of getting a city started. But whenever I'd look away for 30 seconds—perhaps to read a tip or look through the game's options—something, somewhere, would set on fire. These fires never started when I was paying attention to the gameplay, making me believe they did so maliciously. A personal vendetta against me, specifically.
And the thing is, other than placing fire services nearby and making sure they had a steady supply of water, I had no idea how to put them out other than frantically deleting the burning structures before the flames had a chance to spread. I'm sure at one point a developer, watching over my shoulder, laughed at my feeble efforts to contain the imminent disaster. A quick glance around the room showed me that none of my peers were having the same issue, leading me to one common denominator—I suck at Theos: Cities of Myth.
There doesn't appear to be anything on fire here. Yet.
Having said that, I couldn't stop wiping the slate clean and starting again. Each time, I'd get further through the game before the next disaster struck, and I wanted to keep going.
A Fresh Visual Approach
Theos's eye-catching, vivid visuals are a fresh change from the dull, realistic imagery I'm used to in similar strategy games. The game features cute animations as my citizens interact with the structures I placed. Whether they were raising their food, housing, culture, or entertainment values, my little residents would do it with a smile on their face—even if the UI told me that, essentially, I'm terrible and they hate me.
