GameSpot
Triskell Interactive, the studio behind Pharaoh: A New Era, has returned with a new city builder based around the Greek deities. coming to PC later this year. Publisher Dotemu let me get my hands on an early build of Theos: Cities of Myth at a recent event and, to be frank, I suck at it. For some reason, I just could not stop everything setting on fire. To start the game you'll have a choice of seven deities to play as. Each deity has an initial blessing which benefits your playthrough in some way--for example, Athena will distribute two culture points when a philosophy school is built, raising the culture value of your city overall. The deities also have sanctuary blessings, which are specific buildings, decorations, or benefits to production that have varying effects. Combat blessings, on the other hand, affect your city's military actions. Each deity has various benefits to your city. Some might recognize these varying benefits from games like Civilization, but even if you're new to the genre, Theos does a good job of explaining each perk in good detail. That's all well and good in theory--I've played my fair share of strategy games--but what about in practice? I played a guided tutorial, which showed me the basics of getting a city started. But whenever I'd look away for 30 seconds--perhaps to read a tip, or look through the game's options--something, somewhere, would set on fire. These fires never started when I was paying attention to the gameplay, making me believe they did so maliciously. A personal vendetta against me, specifically. https://youtu.be/hy1mqbooAiM And the thing is, other than placing fire services nearby and making sure they had a steady supply of water, I had no idea how to put them out other than frantically deleting the burning structures before the flames had a chance to spread. I'm sure at one point a developer, watching over my shoulder, laughed at my feeble efforts to contain the imminent disaster. A quick glance around the room showed me that none of my peers were having the same issue, leading me to one common denominator--I suck at Theos: Cities of Myth. There doesn't appear to be anything on fire here. Yet. Having said that, I couldn't stop wiping the slate clean and starting again. Each time, I'd get further through the game before the next disaster struck, and I wanted to keep going. Theos's eye-catching, vivid visuals are a fresh change from the dull, realistic imagery I'm used to in similar strategy games, with cute animations as my citizens interacted with the structures I placed. Whether they were raising their food, housing, culture, or entertainment values, my little residents would do it with a smile on their face--even if the UI told me that, essentially, I'm terrible and they hate me.
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