The Battle of Polytopia
I admit, I struggled with this review. I review games based on how well they achieve what they set out to achieve. For The Battle of Polytopia, however, it’s a bit hard to tell. The Battle of Polytopia sets out to be a mini-4X game full of world-conquering strategy, but whether it succeeds is debatable.
Mechanics-wise, The Battle of Polytopia is fairly straightfoward. You play as a tribe, exploring, developing, and conquering the world, all while stopping your neighbors from doing the same. The game has a quick, thirty turn time limit, meaning all actions have much more urgency than they might in any other 4x. There isn’t time to really build and develop - you have to be moving from the very first turn.
Exploring!
Conquering!
The fast pace means the game is easy to play in one sitting - something which, as a Civ veteran, I very much appreciate - but it also means there is a limit to how much variation each playthrough can have. The game has twelve different tribes, but the only real distinction between them is their starting tech. They play similarly, follow the same goals, and encounter the same obstacles.
The Xin-Xi
tribe starts with Climbing!
In each of my playthroughs, I was able to follow the same, relatively successful strategy - pump up a city until it spit out a super unit, then stomp any obstacle in my path. It meant that there wasn’t much variety in my playthroughs - each one followed the same path of expansion. In a strategy game where the fun is not just in playing, but in planning, the lack of variation means replayability is limited. When the same strategy works no matter which tribe I draw, the various tribes start to look more like window dressing than choices.
Smash smash
smash
It may be that there is a lot more depth to each tribe than I’m able to see in my five playthroughs, or that there’s more depth when playing against actual humans than the AI. However, each of my playthroughs felt and played very similarly - I came, I explored, I conquered.
There is definitely space for this in a strategy gamer’s library. If you want a cute game that’s a fast play, The Battle for Polytopia works great. However, if you’re looking for more depth and a different game each time, this one, unfortunately, doesn’t have it.
Developer: Midjiwan Ab
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
Year: 2016
Country: Sweden
Language: English
Play Time: 45 Minutes/Game