First Impressions
Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:47 am
Pandora initial impressions:
Initially I had a number of problem with the installer both on Windows(download issues) and on Linux (Nvidia Optimus issue). Basically I struggled the first evening and was only able to play the next day.The first version I succesfully played was v 0.20.0
I had previously played Proxy Studio's Conquest, and watched preview videos about Pandora, so I wasn't completely surprised. Overall the gfx look clean and much more polished than in Conquest. The user interface also looks clean and modern, we don't have the feeling of playing a 20th century game. It reminded me of Endless Space.
The first thing I do when loading a game is to turn off the music volume (I keep the sound FX of course), if I want some music I rather listen to my stereo, or at least make my own playlist on the computer. So I cannot comment on the music.
Having played Civ4, Civ 5 Demo, GalCiv I & II and others 4X , I quickly felt at home despite the absence of manual. Of course I had no idea of the inner mechanisms details, but right from the first game, I was able to plan a little ahead, and start developing my faction. Here I find the UI did a good job of making the right informations quickly available.
The good point is that I was immediately focusing on discovering the universe and planning rather than struggling against the UI. Discovering the planet and the various aliens is very enjoyable on the first plays, especially when you first encounter the large sea creatures.
Second thoughts, now v 0.21.0:
I have played at least once with each faction, mostly on small and one on medium. Actually I was able to finish only one. I was unable to finish two, one on Windows and one on Linux of them because the save file format changed with the upgrades. I two other games, while I was well in the midgame I started to have more and more important lags, to the point where one game crashed because of “unknown server error”.
The game I finished was a military victory with the Imperium (thanks Artillery). The game ended after I captured the cities of 2 opponents. At that point it was obvious I was leading and I appreciate that the game finish without having to eradicate every opponents down to their last units.
What I like:
- The SF theme.
- The game is rather accessible for a civ game.
- There is rather less micromanagements than in other civ games, which is usually the bane of 4X games, this point is really important for me.
- You can complete a small map in an evening which is also very good, I understand that some players might like longer experiences, but for me it is important to be able to finish a game in a reasonable amount of time. I play a lot of strategy boardgames, and except for hardcore wargames the play time is usually tightly calibrated, and you can have challenging games with enough strategy in 2 hours. Many computer strategy games offers longer playtime, but the gameplay often becomes repetitive over the length, and the ratio of meaningful decisions/ time fall too low.
- The global pool of resources, this helps reduce micromanagement, moreover it also allows to specialize cities dynamically during the game, as opposed to Civ IV for example where you should rather specialize your cities right from the start and more or less stick to it as the buildings are more important than the allocation of manpower.
- Many production building give a small fixed value, in addition to a % bonus.
- The ability to expand your cities in your own direction, rather than in fixed “fat cross” pattern. It gives you more options to bias the development of your cities in a specific direction, either to balance an average city initial position (i.e. you can build your city next to a promising spot rather than right on it), or for interesting blocking strategies. I also liked the possibility to expand over waters and maybe connect to land hexs on the other side of the water.
So far it seems that you can extend 2 hexs in any directions from your starting 7 hexs. I think it could be even better if we could extend 3 hexs in any directions. It could lead to balance issues but it would allows for even more cities development strategies.
- The variable tech tree, it adds to replayability and it forces you to adapt your tech strategy for each specific game, rather than always using the same techs development for the same factions.
- Units customization is simple and efficient, and fits well within the overall moderate complexity of the game to allow for various armies building strategies.
Multi platforms support.
- Operations, either one shot or with cooldown, offer interesting options.
What I don't like:
Edit: I was able to solve the technical issue which caused my Gfx card not to be used as its best. Now the game run very smoothly. I'd like to make it clear that it was not related to Pandora 3D engine. See below down the thread for more detail.
- The single most negative thing is for me the 3D engine. Not that it is particularly bad, but because 3D engines in general use a lot of resources and often for a little gain in game play, in particular for strategy games.
Indeed the game isn't multitask friendly and I find that I should rather close the game even to type a simple mail, otherwise the keyboard is slow to respond. Even within the game the UI is sometime a bit slow, it is ok for a turn by turn game, but it would be a problem for an RTS. You'd better be careful to release the mouse button while still over the various small widgets, and not to make too quick moves with the mouse. From times to times, I thing I clicked something or pressed a key, but I have to repeat my input.I only use a laptop Core i5 430m, 4GB, Nvidia GT325M, but I can play a number of RTS, or first person RPG without any trouble.
In particular the 3D view doesn't add much to the gameplay. If the 3D gfx where prerendered and displayed in a fake 3D way, with all hexs having the same size whatever the distance, it would tax the system less, and don't reduce the play experience. For strategy games, 2D engines with clean gfx, like PzCorps for example, works very well.
Things that could be improved:
- The game is still in beta, but there may be balance issues, concerning the various factions special powers, the combat units, and the starting positions.
- More in game events, or things to discover, discovering the aliens the first time is great but the novelty quickly fade away, with repeated plays. Maybe minor factions or alternative alien races.
- More scenarios to change from the free for all on random map. Maybe some non random maps, for example factions start in low ressources areas and there are resources rich areas in the middle of the map. A maps editor woud be great, and maybe a units editor as well.
- The Diplomacy still feels quite basic. I'm not sure you can make an alliance with alayer to attak another one.
Overall I rather enjoyed the game. In particular the fairly compact experience, the ratio between playing time, meaningful decisions to make, and micromanagement feel good to me. Right now I will rather play it than Civ IV, Civ certainly has more depth, but there is much more micromanagement and the late game is not so exciting. So far Pandora offers a solid game experience, although therer is some tuning to do for a final release. Yet, as it is now in Beta, in the long run Pandora may lack some diversity.
Initially I had a number of problem with the installer both on Windows(download issues) and on Linux (Nvidia Optimus issue). Basically I struggled the first evening and was only able to play the next day.The first version I succesfully played was v 0.20.0
I had previously played Proxy Studio's Conquest, and watched preview videos about Pandora, so I wasn't completely surprised. Overall the gfx look clean and much more polished than in Conquest. The user interface also looks clean and modern, we don't have the feeling of playing a 20th century game. It reminded me of Endless Space.
The first thing I do when loading a game is to turn off the music volume (I keep the sound FX of course), if I want some music I rather listen to my stereo, or at least make my own playlist on the computer. So I cannot comment on the music.
Having played Civ4, Civ 5 Demo, GalCiv I & II and others 4X , I quickly felt at home despite the absence of manual. Of course I had no idea of the inner mechanisms details, but right from the first game, I was able to plan a little ahead, and start developing my faction. Here I find the UI did a good job of making the right informations quickly available.
The good point is that I was immediately focusing on discovering the universe and planning rather than struggling against the UI. Discovering the planet and the various aliens is very enjoyable on the first plays, especially when you first encounter the large sea creatures.
Second thoughts, now v 0.21.0:
I have played at least once with each faction, mostly on small and one on medium. Actually I was able to finish only one. I was unable to finish two, one on Windows and one on Linux of them because the save file format changed with the upgrades. I two other games, while I was well in the midgame I started to have more and more important lags, to the point where one game crashed because of “unknown server error”.
The game I finished was a military victory with the Imperium (thanks Artillery). The game ended after I captured the cities of 2 opponents. At that point it was obvious I was leading and I appreciate that the game finish without having to eradicate every opponents down to their last units.
What I like:
- The SF theme.
- The game is rather accessible for a civ game.
- There is rather less micromanagements than in other civ games, which is usually the bane of 4X games, this point is really important for me.
- You can complete a small map in an evening which is also very good, I understand that some players might like longer experiences, but for me it is important to be able to finish a game in a reasonable amount of time. I play a lot of strategy boardgames, and except for hardcore wargames the play time is usually tightly calibrated, and you can have challenging games with enough strategy in 2 hours. Many computer strategy games offers longer playtime, but the gameplay often becomes repetitive over the length, and the ratio of meaningful decisions/ time fall too low.
- The global pool of resources, this helps reduce micromanagement, moreover it also allows to specialize cities dynamically during the game, as opposed to Civ IV for example where you should rather specialize your cities right from the start and more or less stick to it as the buildings are more important than the allocation of manpower.
- Many production building give a small fixed value, in addition to a % bonus.
- The ability to expand your cities in your own direction, rather than in fixed “fat cross” pattern. It gives you more options to bias the development of your cities in a specific direction, either to balance an average city initial position (i.e. you can build your city next to a promising spot rather than right on it), or for interesting blocking strategies. I also liked the possibility to expand over waters and maybe connect to land hexs on the other side of the water.
So far it seems that you can extend 2 hexs in any directions from your starting 7 hexs. I think it could be even better if we could extend 3 hexs in any directions. It could lead to balance issues but it would allows for even more cities development strategies.
- The variable tech tree, it adds to replayability and it forces you to adapt your tech strategy for each specific game, rather than always using the same techs development for the same factions.
- Units customization is simple and efficient, and fits well within the overall moderate complexity of the game to allow for various armies building strategies.
Multi platforms support.
- Operations, either one shot or with cooldown, offer interesting options.
What I don't like:
Edit: I was able to solve the technical issue which caused my Gfx card not to be used as its best. Now the game run very smoothly. I'd like to make it clear that it was not related to Pandora 3D engine. See below down the thread for more detail.
- The single most negative thing is for me the 3D engine. Not that it is particularly bad, but because 3D engines in general use a lot of resources and often for a little gain in game play, in particular for strategy games.
Indeed the game isn't multitask friendly and I find that I should rather close the game even to type a simple mail, otherwise the keyboard is slow to respond. Even within the game the UI is sometime a bit slow, it is ok for a turn by turn game, but it would be a problem for an RTS. You'd better be careful to release the mouse button while still over the various small widgets, and not to make too quick moves with the mouse. From times to times, I thing I clicked something or pressed a key, but I have to repeat my input.I only use a laptop Core i5 430m, 4GB, Nvidia GT325M, but I can play a number of RTS, or first person RPG without any trouble.
In particular the 3D view doesn't add much to the gameplay. If the 3D gfx where prerendered and displayed in a fake 3D way, with all hexs having the same size whatever the distance, it would tax the system less, and don't reduce the play experience. For strategy games, 2D engines with clean gfx, like PzCorps for example, works very well.
Things that could be improved:
- The game is still in beta, but there may be balance issues, concerning the various factions special powers, the combat units, and the starting positions.
- More in game events, or things to discover, discovering the aliens the first time is great but the novelty quickly fade away, with repeated plays. Maybe minor factions or alternative alien races.
- More scenarios to change from the free for all on random map. Maybe some non random maps, for example factions start in low ressources areas and there are resources rich areas in the middle of the map. A maps editor woud be great, and maybe a units editor as well.
- The Diplomacy still feels quite basic. I'm not sure you can make an alliance with alayer to attak another one.
Overall I rather enjoyed the game. In particular the fairly compact experience, the ratio between playing time, meaningful decisions to make, and micromanagement feel good to me. Right now I will rather play it than Civ IV, Civ certainly has more depth, but there is much more micromanagement and the late game is not so exciting. So far Pandora offers a solid game experience, although therer is some tuning to do for a final release. Yet, as it is now in Beta, in the long run Pandora may lack some diversity.
