Alright, so Dominions 5. The legendary, mythological, spreadsheet simulator where you can command demigods, raise nations, and summon horrors from the abyss — but apparently can’t find your own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wizard because the interface was designed by a blind toddler.
This game oozes potential. The premise? Amazing. The strategic depth? Insane. The charm? Undeniable. But then you try to play it, and you realize the real challange isn’t against rival nations — it’s against the UI, the menus, and your own will to live.
Every single thing you try to do feels like a riddle written by a bureaucrat:
“Oh, you want to move your army? Sure! Just open this submenu… and this submenu… and this subsubmenu… wait, which submenu was that again? Oops, you’ve just cast a national ritual that consumed half your gems. Good luck!”
You’re greeted with numbers. So many numbers. Stats on stats on stats. There are hundreds of units, thousands of spells, and absolutely zero explanation for any of it.
You are facing 30 units of troop type #532.
Cool. What are they? Are they strong? Do they breathe fire? Are they weak to my army of birdmen? The game is just: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So good luck predicting anything in battles. A handful of units can casually vaporize armies ten times their size. You think numbers matter? They don’t. You think tactics matter? They don’t. You think you’ll understand why you lost? You won’t.
And then there’s the busywork. My god, the busywork. Every turn feels like managing a demigod daycare:
– Did you remember to manually search for magic sites on every new province?
– Did you give orders to your 38 armies? (every turn, better not forget where each is located though becase no one will remind you they exist)
– Did you script every mage individually for every possible battle scenario? (again, need to check this every turn)
– Did you manually check if one of your priests has wandered off and started a new religion in the woods because you forgot to assign him orders?
The game gives you no reminders, no automation, no quality-of-life features — nothing. You forget one thing? Boom. Your entire turn’s efficiency tanks. The game expects you to micromanage an empire by hand like it’s the 1990s and your CPU is powered by your lack of purpose in life.
And here’s the kicker: this isn’t some janky Early Access prototype. No, this is Dominions 5. Fifth. FIFTH GAME. As in, they’ve done this four times before, and still somehow went,
“Yeah, this UI feels fine. Ship it.”
Dominions isn’t a game. It’s a commitment. You don’t play it — you endure it. Somewhere beneath the spreadsheet hellscape lies one of the most fascinating 4X strategy games ever made. But you’ll need a second monitor, a notepad, and a personal assistant AI to ever find it.
If some competent user designer took this and turned it into something playable this would be one of the x¤ games out there. But hey, let's shipo the nex tisntamlemt, "Domonion 6", $40, looking EXACTLY LIKE THIS GAME. The devs are just ripping us off, man.
