Urgh.

That was my feeling not long into this one. I had heard about Reus a couple of years ago after the release on Steam as a couple of friends were playing it and enjoyed it. For whatever reason I never got around to it.

Eventually it was available in a bundle of titles and gave me the opportunity to try it out. Alternatively you could say I wasted a portion of my afternoon.

You play as a slumbering planet mind and take control over various Giants. Large elemental creatures that walk your surface with the intention of changing the baron wasteland to one of life.

That concept itself interested me, and I could think of a few ways it could play out. The game itself ended up being a total disappointment. If this was not already apparent by the initial grumbling.

Forest, Ocean, Stone, and Swamp. Using these giants you can perform some basic terraforming to the surface to create various biomes. After that, introduce some kind of life: Small animals, Herbs, Fruit. To eventually summon nomadic humankind to set up a village.

Once the village is created, you are tasked with making sure they have the resources they need for their projects. Rather than any kind of survival. I tested a few times but there's honestly nothing beyond the first food item that they need to survive. It is all about the "projects".

And perhaps this is why I didn't like it. Expectations Vs. the actual game.

Villages have a range from their centre point where the people will walk from to collect resources. You're given basic items to place on the surface at the start of the game and these do not change. The three main ones are Food, Tech, and Minerals.

You use Symbiosis to increase or change the output. Some plants work better next to or in range of others for example. This provides a small passive boost to your production limits. Clicking on a resource will tell you want it needs for symbiosis in a panel in the top right of the screen.

Aspects are essentially 'spells' that can be cast by all giants. They are applied to resources you have placed earlier. Each one having at least one Aspect slot.

Once placed, I could not find a way to remove an aspect. Instead I had to replace the resource. This just takes up a little bit of time. Oddly, there is also a cooldown to this, around 30 seconds worth. Since game runs go for 30 minutes, this just became an annoying wait. There's very little threat to having to rush over and drop one. If it is on the other side of the planet, the walk alone will take up most of the waiting time.

Transmutations allow one to 'upgrade' resources into something generally stronger. There are cases where the transmuted item will be weaker, but if you pay attention to the popup text mentioning the requirements this should not be too big an issue.

Projects have requirements that you need to use all of the above three to complete. Sometimes completely destroying what you have for the next project.

Completing a project rewards you with an ambassador. Linked to the type of village they come from, ambassadors basically give you more aspects for giants. You want to pay attention and have a diversity in villages so as to gain a good combination of aspects for future use.

There's a few extra rules that were not obviously given while playing. Giants can only have n+1 ambassadors with them compared to the giant with the smallest number. And they are destroyed if the village is destroyed (a rare event from what I could tell).

Honestly. That's it.

Start a village. Wait for the project to start. Respec your village output to gain an ambassador. Repeat.

There is a concept called 'Greed' that is meant to occur if you give a village too much. However even while trying to force it I could not get such an event to happen outside of the tutorial level.

You also have 'prosperity'. Which measures... Happiness I guess? All I found was that the value would slowly tick upward over the level time period with some influence from the projects created and resources available to them.

The big issue I have with this game is that there is just so much waiting. The game moves at a glacial pace. And with little direct influence over the villages it can be several types of boring just to get through a round of the game.

Even a 2x speed option would really help here.

The SECOND big issue I have with this game is that the range for each village is tiny. There's barely enough room to do anything and it can be really frustrating when a nomad decided to plonk himself in a non optimal spot in a biome. You constantly feel like nothing is achieved and with the huge spaces that they could get to, wonder if these little peons want to survive while you go looking for a Sim City style disaster button.

It is slow. Ssssssssssssllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Agonisingly slow. Painfully slow. And gives the player little reward for getting anything done in it.

The reviews on Steam are in the 'very positive' range. But the game is not for me. This game should be calming or relaxing. Something to chill to and get a couple of unlocks completed.

Instead I'm going to uninstall it and find something far better to play.

Game Acquisition: On Sale (Bundle Stars).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 7 October 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

Processor:Intel® Core 2 Duo or AMD Phenom processor
Memory:2 GB RAM
Graphics:DirectX10(R) compatible card with 512MB of memory
Hard Drive:500 MB HD space