The Swamp Giant Is Under Attack

Thanks to that mystical unicorn of retail, the Steam Summer Sale, I picked up Reus a couple of days ago.

It is simultaneously one of the most addictive games and one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming in recent years. 

Quick sidebar, though; we're, what, five days into the Summer Sale? I've yet to see anything that really makes me say "Oh, let me spend money I don't have on that because it's slightly cheaper! Please!" 

Maybe they're saving up big deals and bargains for later. 

Anyway. 

Reus is very addictive because, at the core, it's a resource management game. You use your four gods to place different types of tiles and then place resources to attract humans who, as humans will do, build villages. As these villages grow, they start projects which, if completed, produce ambassadors you can then use to upgrade your giants' abilities, and they can then go back and upgrade the resources, in theory. 

So it's a slow uptick uptick uptick of resources from not great up to splendiferous, and the projects get more and more difficult along the way but, in theory, the rewards get a little better, too. 

You may notice the repetition of in theory. This is because while the resource management side is fun, the resource upgrades are only unlocked if you complete a certain number of achievements - which are actually 'unlocks' in the game, no less - which give you access to the next tier. 

This is fine in principle, I guess, but it means you have to go back and play through again and again and meet certain arbitrary, difficult or just annoying victory conditions in order to make the game a more rounded experience. Currently I have to create a village with six 'war markers', which means that the village has to be filled with cantankerous assholes who will declare war on, well, anybody, and win, and carry home the war marker. This isn't necessarily a problem - because the humans in Reus are cantankerous assholes anyway- but that village, as far as I understand it, then has to survive until the end of game time. 

Given that to get a village up to the level that would require you'd probably have to play the 120-minute mode, this means that once they're all up and cantankerous you then have to either protect the warmongering idiots or stop them from going to war by placing either things that provoke Awe or animals that create Danger. However, after six victories, I can't really see a village suddenly backing down in the face of bears. 

So I've played it for... Way too long, given that I only bought it a few days ago, and I've enjoyed the experience, but the Mandatory Replay aspect is really annoying. The only other thing I can think of is juking the system by creating a world, saving it at a certain point then going back and altering aspects to provoke the outcomes the Unlocks need, but that seems a bit... silly. 

The sad thing - well, slightly sad - is that I do want to see the higher-level outcomes, and build the absolutely massive requirement-having buildings that I'm guessing you can only build with the highest level Unlocks. But the prospect of playing through, probably, at least another six hours of world-building to satisfy the absurdly specific requirements just seems like muss, fuss and bother right now.