Numantia Review: Turn Based History

Developer: Recotechnology S.L.

Publisher: Recotechnology S.L.

Release date: October 25th, 2017

Available on: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC

Numantia is a good representation of a historical event that is not well known while incorporating interesting anecdotes, resource management, and neat decision-making, but it fails to deliver a balanced turn-based game and lack of a user-friendly interface. I have always been interested in turn-based games from Total War series to Fire Emblem, so I thought I would get this a go. Numantia is a turn-based strategy game based in the historical city… you guessed it, Numantia. It follows the historical conflict of how the Romans manage to conquer the city and its surrounding settlement, but the Numantians did not go down without a fight. There are two campaigns you can follow on this journey: conquering Numantia with the Romans or defending your homeland with the Numantians. As I thought it would be more interesting, I went with the Numantians first, so I will be describing the game mainly on that end. It is worth noting the Roman campaign is still worthy to play.

Let’s get down to the gameplay. There are five unit types: soldiers, horsemen, range, heroes, and special. The first three is self-explanatory but the heroes and the special unit types are various types which encompass the first three or they can be support units. You start with a standing army and you can lay them out in a set area of the map. The layout of the battle is in a hexagonal shape (same as Civilization 5) and turns are governed by the unit types speed (so some of your units may move then the opponent may move some then the cycle repeat).  Soldiers provides a good line of defense push while you can keep your range units right behind to knock out enemy lines. Horsemen provide a great way to pick out weak areas of your enemies formation while support units you want to keep them right next to other units for morale boost. There are two different gauges: health and morale. Morale is a measure of power or efficiency of the unit relative to the unit type (the more morale the unit has, the higher the attack power). Morale is always decreasing when units are moving away from friendly units, but it is gained by slashing enemies. Heroes are your golden geese who are much more powerful than your common units. Each unit has a set of active and passive abilities which are critical to utilize to get the upper-hand. Placement of units is also crucial. One wrong turn and it may cost you the unit (even the entire battle). I always had to think about “should I be on the defensive? But what about my horsemen that can flank to the east? I can really nail the enemy archers if I went all out”. It was a constant strategy thinking which got me hooked.

The graphics and interface were on the lower end. Although the graphics didn’t need to be too superb (although the story scenes had wonderful 2d character art) to get the game mechanics across, there was little animation to even know what was happening. Sometimes an enemy unit would attack one of my guys, and I had to look hard to see any damage number or animation of the attack and defense. I wish they were more noticeable. Exaggerating the animations would save me a bit of trouble of trying to spot what is going on in battle. The interface was also hard to manage. On the PS4, you are given a cursor that can move within the hexagonal space and it is so slow and clunky. Moving units was a pain on the joysticks because one slight angle off would lead me to another space. Although there were highlights of where the enemies could possibly attack, I did not see any mechanic to see Move AND Attack spaces which could have been helpful, and the highlighting could not remain on the field while you move units. In these regards, the battle mechanics were hard to maneuver. The skill layout for each unit was also confusing and clunky to look into detail. Each skill had tiny icons that designated to the square, triangle, or circle button… but what does that icon mean again? Well I would have to press the right stick to zoom in on the character. Then I have to read the skill description in tiny font. Sometimes the icon represented a passive skill. Then why put it on the button layout in the first place if it is not an active skill? The UI was just unfriendly.

The structure of the campaign is straight forward. There are some conflicts and story lines that include historical characters which may influence your morale, your army by getting into additional battles, or adding in additional units through special events. At the end of each chapter, there is a major army conflict with the Romans (or Numantians depending on you campaign). The next chapter fully heals your units (or what is left of them) and the cycle continues. Each chapter delivers another situation that leaves a series of choices that will change your circumstances for the next battle. These are not serious game changers, but it is cool to see some of your decisions make an impact on how you plan your next battle. The management of your army is based on two resources: supplies and gold. Each unit requires both supplies and gold for recruitment while items that can enhance your units require only gold. Resources are replenished after every chapter, but there are some events that can give you resources as well. Overall, this is a vital mechanic to any turn-based game and it is sometimes hard to really nail down.  I think they almost got it… but at the end of the game I was struggling to get enough units, and on the second to last level, I simply could not win because of the lack of units. If I had more resources to play with, I could have gotten the addition units I need, and the battle would have been manageable. This could have been fixed by allowing additional units, so I can reach the maximum number of units for that battle. Could saves help me out here? Yes, but I would have to backtrack and then find strategies to minimize unit loss on previous battles. I did not have a manual save to really override this challenge thus I would have to restart the entire game. Overall, this resource limitation (although crucial for turn-based genre) limited my army count based on my lack of conservation of units in previous battles.

Even though Numantia has its faults, there are some great aspects. The story, art style (of the story scenes), and the setting around this game is fantastic and it is cool to see this is based off a historical event. The gameplay had a good hook to it which kept me on my toes throughout each battle. However, the user interface was unfriendly and resource limitation (although critical) constrained my ability to finish the game. If you are a novice to turn based strategy games, you may want to hold off. Experts in the genre should consider grabbing this game and then yell at me to “git gud”.