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PaperclipPerfector
14hr ago
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Zephon (2024)
Intro:
Is another C-tier(budget wise) 4x game using some crap Unity implementation(I guess, loading time 20s on a PC capable of 4K Cyberpunk 2077) that gameplay wise is easily on par with Civ V or earlier 4x games in most graphic stuff but the combat AI is actually not that bad and will punish you for fighting fair. Trailer here.. I get good frames but I feel a worse PC would probably suffer.
It's by devs who previously made the Gladius WH40K 4x game. This is a refinement of that game with their own post apocalyptic setting, that of a 22nd century some decades after first contacts came in the form of a surprise genocidal attack that was supposedly self defence. So it is a 4x with all the features of a typical 4x games, and is combat oriented. Even if you don't fight any player faction, the unplayable NPC factions will definitely fight you eventually and at quite the scale.
Overall, I like the gameplay and combat, the setting and writing of quests and characters is interesting if not that well executed and overall while I like the outline of the writing and the themes, in execution I am mildly annoyed there's that stench of Netflix/tweet chatGPT over some of it and they could have done so much better. But unless you're a literate right winger you may not even notice the annoying crap, I think. The most 'cringe' part for me is the 'forced diversity' part on which I'll elaborate later in the 'factions' section.
The map/game itself:
Unlike in common 4x games, the 'NPC empires' are an important part of the game and an inextricable part of the story. There's three of them, a retarded Skynet (did not cause the apocalypse, claims to want to help, not that good at R&D), survivors of the of the alien invasion fleet( definitely did cause the apocalypse), and your basic post-apocalyptic barbarian cannibal federation who somehow survived a few decades in a world of constant warfare between said mildly retarded Skynet and the aliens who while looking only mildly disgusting themselves employ biotech instead of most common machinery that looks like something puked up by a particularly sick cat and animated with voodoo.
Aliens and Skynet are perma-hostile to each other, Barbarians try to shake you down constantly. These factions don't really improve and apart from barbarians, don't colonize much and start with relatively strong cities.
Economy:
The economic part is not that complex, mostly standard 4x approach if a bit refined: all facilities in a city are physically visible on the world map and, at 3 per hex, a city of 7 hexes can only have at most 21 of them, though you're going to want multiples of each for later game units of course. Each facility has its own production and its own building queue, so there are large tradeoffs to make. You can't make planes in a tank factory or barracks and so on.
A city good at expanding itself can easily put up military factories and mothball the productive ones.. but building up that capacity means you delay your military production by quite some time. There's sadly no fun strategies based around slaving or causing refugee waves to exploit! All construction costs minerals, running everything takes energy, and people need to eat too. Late game units require stable transuranic elements and antimatter, sometimes in ludicrous quantities.
Combat: There's line of sights, terrain effects on cover, but mostly only for small unites (e.g. tanks or most planes don't benefit from forests or ruins providing cover and concealment much).
Weapons have damage, armor penetration, range and number of attacks, whether they're direct or indirect fire. Most units can overwatch so you need recon to avoid running into enemies and getting hit. Or if you move into a concealing tile (forest), they may not see you unless they're directly adjacent.
Units have experience level, morale, armor value, movement speed, evasion, vantage point (e.g. planes see over most obstacles etc but are also seen), number of subunits in each formation and a lot of less common properties. (e.g. basic human soldiers does 2x more attacks at close range, reflecting the difficulty of hitting anything with a rifle further out)
Most units (infantry) are composed of multiple small entities each with its own HP pool that each attack, so an attrited infantry unit delivers far less damage.
Factions:
There's eight of them in the base game, some of them share a particular native type of tech (so far, three with ~8 units each) but each has different leader and faction abilities. You can in theory mix & match, but as the production facility for each unit type is unique, the gigantic opportunity cost definitely prevents mixing units of the same tier (so 2 infantry types etc, not to mention, in the crucial early game the other faction's units are an era behind) and some resources differ.
Native tech types:
Middle Americans (dudes with body armor & guns, tanks, SPAA, guided missiles, big artillery, nukes, even bigger tanks, brutal air power and of course space marines with antimatter sprinkled blades that cut anything as pinnacle of infantry). Will nuke you if given a chance. Each faction type has several 'operations', basically a sort of spell of some sort.
Silicon Valley Americans (cyborg under-armed infantry, hover-servitors with plasma guns, purely mechanical spider snipers, some time-cheating floating beam weapon using AI drone etc). Will cause a small pseudo black hole to appear over your city or army and stay being horrible for a month.
And the very definitely illegal aliens who introduced themselves by gigadeaths and now claim it was all a misunderstanding or necessary or something along those lines and the various humans who've developed an affinity for said alien's ..deity? Not at all clear what the they do, don't feel like playing them.
The 'Silicon Valley' tech tree is natively had by three factions: 'Emulated Mind'- a partly failed upload who is good at logistics and sort of good with some of the cringiest writing(survived death and cancer and won't let the apocalypse stop her), and 'heartless artificer' who is a strictly 'ends justifies the means' type of person and implausibly represented by a pretty indefinable mocha woman with a slight spanish accent.
Whereas, we know it'd be some extremely intense white or asian autist-psychopath IRL. The special traits for the two are: emulated mind can only build two cities but gets more from random facilities around the map, and the 'heartless artificer' is good at cloning and can also improve production through a 'performance review' called 'fountain of blood' where the lowest performers get the bullet to motivate the rest to work up to 34% harder.
Then there's 'Rogue Operative', undoubtedly an Asian trans cybercriminal who social engineered a little too much and ended up running the remains of a company she was attempting to steal from when the end of the world came. I say trans because it's the 22nd century so I'm assuming gender-affirming surgery has been perfected by then but affinities towards hacking have likely not changed much.
The middle American tech tree is had by three base factions: 'Fallen Soldier' -a robust looking hispanic guy who just won't die, kind of a like a WH40k perpetual. His faction's special power is just rigorously training their units and also healing charms-pieces of his flesh somehow prevent those who bear them from dying. Also somehow fix damaged hardware but I'm going to overlook that for now. Naturally, people love not dying of common wounds and diseases. He doesn't know why he rose from the dead, but if you wear a piece of his flesh as a talisman you're going to heal much faster.
Then there's 'practical romantic' (not actually romantic anymore) - the most normal human faction out there. Special power- get resources from defeated enemies, can buff morale with influence. Looks Iranian I guess.
Then there's the most seemingly implausible human faction, led by a fat German aristocrat (monocled, too) who spent a few decades in a bunker before getting out and becoming useful. A good administrator(can rush production) and diplomat/trader. German aristocracy, whatever is left of it is led by people who are almost invariably tanned jocks, and if not that, reasonably fit and very good skiers. Although, maybe in the late 21st century being a fat foodie will once more be a status mark? Perhaps it's good writing.
I'm a Fallen Soldier main. That's my guy. Fewer but better units, less micromanagement from that alone but then you also needn't have them spend as much time sitting tight to heal? Yes please. All the other factions can pack up and go home.
Overall I feel like the writing of Zephon (ignoring the race angle for now because I really don't think that's the game's chiefest problem) is just about skin-deep. Maybe evocative of the eerie eldritch sci-fi theme it tries to go for, but in the end it's just empty and highly generic gesticulation that leaves it to the player to fill in the blanks, which are most of it. It's superficial, simultaneously pretentious and not even trying all that hard, and with all that said it's still slightly above average for game writing. Yes, the bar is that low.
Gameplay-wise the game is alright. An improvement upon Gladius for sure, but how good was Gladius? Solidly OK, I'd say. Nothing revolutionary at all, but it works well enough. Zephon is that, somewhat more polished and set in a slightly less used-up setting.
I chuckled a little when I saw that guy, thinking of the Mottizen of the same name.
He's Algerian ingame, IIRC.
Yeah, skin deep writing. Pretty much. The concepts are fine, but the quests and the unit lore is just .. ugh. Just not to my taste. Almost tempted to rewrite that stuff to be less cringe. Starsector has relatively decent writing that doesn't feel insulting, but that's probably because the game devs are clearly SF readers.
Couple more annoying things: I feel like planes should have fuel / require bases like in SMACX and I just plain dislike titans. Logistically they're just kind of dumb and conceptually don't make that much sense either. And what is even the point where e.g. Praetorians kill various titans without much issue and are air-mobile?
Wonder how hard modding it is.
If roads were cheaper/could be built automatically and supplies were not automatically delivered but depended on accessibility and supply depots/convoys, the game would get a fair amount of depth.
If you could make formations out of units and move them at once, that'd be very good too.
Also, it's nice that each unit has a specific weapon because swapping out those weapons for others same way heroes swap out items would make it much more interesting. I don't get why weapon selection isn't already in the game. Endless Legend had unit builds and it added some depth to the combat..
Tbh the combat is a fair bit deeper than in ordinary 4x games, or at least could be with some more options.
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