Dune: Spice Wars

[h1]Ups and Downs in the Dunes[/h1] Resource management is a key of any 4X or RTS. Civilization 5, hallowed be its name, juggles eight major resources, with most others (strategic, luxuries) overlapping with the major resources in some way. Similarly, a personal favorite Endless Legend is built around FIDSI, approval, and to some degree pearls. They’re also fairly interchangeable: all of these resources can be converted in some way or another into more of each other. As for RTSes, heavy hitters like Starcraft and Age of Empires juggle less than five for the whole game. Why do I lead with this? Dune: Spice Wars has you juggling fourteen (technically fifteen) disparate resources, each necessary, yet distinctly prioritizable based on the phase of the game and faction. The tutorial does an okay job of communicating this, but most of the learning is done by hard knocks. Once gotten the hang of, it’s a very robust, interconnected system for empire building. It’s even possible, once the buildings are memorized especially, to do much of the resource conversion mentioned above, moreso on a 1:1 basis than a multidirectional basis. Until then, it’s more of putting out fires as they arise, since deficits will seriously cripple any imperial ambitions until resolved. [h1]Punishment by Design[/h1] Moving large armies in tight formation (a preferred formation for some factions) across regions summons sandworms. It’s essentially guaranteed when traversing open desert. It’s lore-accurate but very rough to lose, say, a hero or an Ecaz champion to the jaws of nature. Getting close to a win condition gives a popup to other players affected. Being a Landsraad pariah means invasions every 20 days, right at home base. Other deficits disband or disable units, buildings, etc. Death spiraling is easy; restabilizing is hard. There are ways to bounce back for sure after being on the back foot. However, the juggling act of recovering in a 4X in real-time, even with pausing, can be challenging. [h1]Why Is This Still a Recommended Review, Then?[/h1] There’s a lot here to like. It’s [i]Dune[/i], for one. Music and sound design are surprisingly good. Sound effects feel weighty and music is interesting to listen to, with work by Jesper Kyd. Perhaps best known for Assassin’s Creed, his résumé also extends to Darktide and Hitman 2. If that’s intriguing, bad news: there’s no official release of this two-hour soundtrack anywhere. Art design is not as bad as most reviewers who comment on it say. My lowered expectations going in made me appreciate the models and textures all the more. Animations are a little lackluster but not deal-breaking by far. The game is not “dead” by any metric; its population has remained fairly steady for about three and a half years since the hype around 1.0 died off. Speaking of 1.0, there’s been 23 updates since then, which isn’t too bad for a complete game. While “complete” is a forgotten concept now, it’s certainly preferential to not have small but impactful features added post-launch (heroes, frigates, etc.) other than a single faction gated behind DLC, unlike many major strategy games these days. Huge rec for anyone who likes Dune: Imperium. [h1]Addendum: Mods![/h1] Haven’t tried them yet. There appear to be three major ones: the Community Patch, Dyaus Anchor, and QuinnQuest, all on NexusMods in varying states of completeness. There appear to be no EULA restrictions on modding, unlike the limits placed by Creative Assembly and Blizzard [i]et al.[/i]