Per Aspera

Recommended but with lots of caveats. Other reviews (positive and negative) highlight the same issues. Per Aspera does a lot of things right. The sense of scale and slow build of bases and terraforming features across the planet are really nice. You can zoom way out to see the entire planet, and you can zoom way in to see a single car shuffling down the road. The campaign story was a pleasant surprise. I didn't really expect this game to have alternate endings and a light plot. While I don't think it was especially amazing, it was good, and the endings felt pretty different. The "building" aspect is interesting, as you're not really directly building or managing anything. You basically just set the blueprints down and your workers take care of the rest. Leaving out the micromanaging is nice, but that leads to the core issue of the game: This game really does not want to explain its mechanics to you. You set blueprints, build mines, factories, power plants, and more advanced terraforming equipment, but if you don't know what you're doing (as I often didn't), this game can really slow to a crawl. Most of your buildings will be worker hubs, which house cars that shuffle materials around. How exactly they do choose to move things, I never found out. In mid-game especially, I found I often had plenty of a mined material sitting in a storage facility, but factories were sitting dormant because that raw material wasn't making it to its destination. Sometimes workers kept moving materials into areas I was trying to dismantle, slowing the process. Mostly I had to just set a command and hope the workers figured it out eventually. It's also rough finding out where to put new factories because when you get a large enough base, all your buildings just show up as small icons with no way to easily highlight all buildings of a certain type. Another issue with a large base is where's the supply of a resource? Where's the demand? There is no easy way to find out, as you'll only get readouts on global supply and demand, which aren't very helpful when distance matters. Want to retire all your solar farms to free build space for other power plants? [strike]Good luck, better go manually search for them.[/strike] (Edit: My mistake, there actually is an okay interface to do this. Clicking on the building count meter will activate this menu, I just totally missed it. The corresponding buttons for the other resources just show you a growth/demand plot, so I thought this would be similarly unhelpful, but it's actually very useful.) Space projects are also a large part of the game. You can aerobrake an ice asteroid to bring extra water, or maybe instead import ice from elsewhere. Both sound great, but what's the relative strength of each? Is one asteroid worth 2 imports? Worth 30 imports? No numbers except cost are attached to any of these. You'll only sort of find out after it's done, but probably not even then since you're combining multiple effects. Often I was building things because I knew it would contribute to a result, but as far as the relative difference between option A and option B, who could say? Late game there are plant-generating buildings, but did you know they only radiate a plant "texture" into undeveloped areas away from your buildings when they are placed adjacent to that empty space, and don't have a constrained radius? Because I sure didn't, and it took some trial and error before it became clear. The game has a max 16x time dilation, but there are times when you really want it to be higher. For all these drawbacks, I still enjoyed it overall and loved watching the planet-wide progression of the terraforming process.

This one is close, but sadly not a recommend. The game struggles to scale into mid/late game with micromanaging taking over to building individual buildings and roads. Most of the voice actors are decent, but AMI, the main character is bad to the point of distraction. I understand what the plot of the campaign is trying to be, but doesn't really get there and if often interrupts what you're doing to hear information or make a decision. At one point, it forces you to take a 10 minute long quiz while the game plods along with ability to skip the quiz. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of potential. I look forward to what other releases the developer comes out with.

非常垃圾的数值系统零指引游戏 画风初看非常惊艳，细细玩下来发现游戏的数值系统非常垃圾，最先开始玩的时候游戏没有任何指引告诉你有建筑上限，需要科技树升级，然后游戏里面8倍速度任然很慢，我有一个小时啥子都不做都在等科技树升级。 还有就是水泵是前期很早就可以点出来，但是火星上没有水，然后这个水泵没有任何指引要如何操作，我到处放水泵任然不知道如何用，真的不知道游戏为什么把水泵放到科技树这么靠前的位置做什么 请注意，这个游戏的科技树是完完全全没有任何信息告诉你怎么用！比如我花了将近两个小时升级了高速公路，但是我没有在任何地方找到如何修建高速公路，最后我是在已经修建建筑的一个小开口向上三角形里找到的。游戏公司为了极简的线条美术，完完全全牺牲了这个游戏潜在的游戏性，给我的体验非常不好。 游戏的剧情非常非常老套，我看到剧情第一次矛盾爆发点都猜到了后续的剧情。 总之，这游戏除了画风视觉设计外，游戏数值系统引导系统都被牺牲掉了，前面4-6个小时是舒适区，然后这游戏的基本闪光点就完了。不建议任何想体验策略游戏的玩家入手。 PS：这游戏的BGM非常单一，基本都是小节奏的电子音来回响，非常的吵闹，火星应该是荒凉雄壮的，BGM应该是舒缓大气的音乐才对，具体可以参考死亡搁浅。听到后期我感觉生理不适耳朵疼，这游戏还不能自选音乐播放。

Це просто чудо, а не гра! Що мені дуже подобалось у грі: Головна героїня "AMI" - озвучення персонажу на висоті, так і сюжет з нею пов'язаний. Візуал - дуже гарно підібрано під концепт терраформування за допомогою ШІ. Сюжет - Конфлікт між ООН та Китаєм, у якому Китай висвітлюють у світлих кольорах на відміну від ООН, мені сподобався, інший погляд на світовий порядок. Негативне: Логістика. Логістика це най муторніша частина гри, особливо коли ти пройшов середину гри, в тебе майже немає сюжетних діалогів, і ти чисто сидиш і займаєшся мікро-менеджментом, Тому що, якщо ти не будеш з новими будівлями або з ресурсами які тобі потрібні (наприклад сталь) робити позначки на пріоритет, то твоя промисловість бистро загнеться. В цілому гра класна 9/10, усім рекомендую насолодитися неймовірними діалогами/монологами з AMI та вибрати свій шлях для терраформування марсу. Я сам озеленив марс повністю, і це виглядає прекрасно)

Started out okay, but then got to a point where it wanted me to launch a satellite but I couldn't because there was no spaceport free and I couldn't build one. Also I don't understand how to research other highlighted sites in the general area. I click on build research centre but nothing ever gets built. I find the voice of the AI rather annoying. I'll give it another go at some point but to me it is a bit meh.

This is a seriously fantastic game! Its easily one of the top RTS/Base Builders Ive played, ever. Per Aspera really puts the 'science' in science fiction, and is extremely challenging. Even on easy mode the expansiveness of this game will have you scratching your head at what to do next. When my base gets really big I have to slow down speed regularly and even pause and reassess my whole base frequently. The different phases of terraforming almost make it feel like multiple games within a single game at times, as the goals really vary (ie; expansion and resources early, with much more atmospheric management later, and a healthy dose of research stations to see whats what.) Overall, despite not having particularly very many hours in this game so far, I give it a solid 9/10 with Blue Mars included. Its incredibly thought provoking and I found it very mentally stimulating. Praise be to teh devs for this fantastic gem!

I really wanted to like this game. I love the concept. A giant optimization game where you manage factory placement and resource distribution, and mars colonization is such a fun topic. 100% my cup of tea, but the game fails in a significant way. There are periods where, no matter how thorough I am, I can't find anything to do. I just have to sit there at 16x speed waiting. I've set up a bunch of factories to be built, have population moving in, and projects and research progressing. So now, I just have to sit and wait. And I get that occasionally has to be the case, but it feels like 50% of my time is just waiting, and there's nothing I can do to accelerate the development. I tried and tried, but I've run out of youtube videos to watch while waiting and had to confront how bored I was :\ You honestly might give it a go. The early game was very interesting, but just, go into it knowing that there's realism in the game. As in, terraforming takes a lot of time, and a lot of it is just waiting, I guess