Fantastic Creatures is a game in which you play one of four divine beasts drawn from Chinese mythology, godlike beings who can manifest themselves in the physical world via pillars of crystal. Your presence attracts followers, and you quickly find yourself leading a nation of devotees. The divine power angle helps to cleverly explain why you can have such perfect information and total control over your country, a situation that can be painfully unrealistic in other strategy games. When I heard this premise, it delighted me. Finally, I got a chance to be a benevolent god to my digital citizens in the game’s universe itself (a feeling I have often experienced in every other strategy game I’ve played).
In many ways, the premise of the game illustrates the overall spirit of its design: Fantastic Creatures attempts to capture the soul of a 4X game while changing up the usual formula to have a clearly defined, unique presence. This experimental spirit and bold vision can be captivating. Indeed, my first time playing through Fantastic Creatures felt like I was seeing strategy games with entirely new eyes. Unfortunately, the delightful backstory and positive first impressions are not backed up by well-developed, deep gameplay. I had an inevitable man-behind-the-curtain moment as I realized that many of the game’s most interesting mechanics feel under-developed and shallow. While it definitely has redeeming attributes, this feeling of just not quite getting enough out of the game is pretty persistent throughout.
Innovative, Asymmetric AI
One of the most immediately noticeable departures from 4X tradition is in how the game handles AI. Instead of fully developed opposing factions with the same capabilities and powers as the player, we get an asymmetric AI whose only real function is to harass the player as they complete a series of quest objectives. My initial reaction to this was also deceiving. At first, I worried that this reduction in AI complexity would make the game feel watered down and empty — and, at times, it does feel that way (though it’s difficult to separate these moments from the weaker elements of the game that we will discuss below). However, at its best, the AI system reveals the array of creative forms that a single-player strategy game can take when it is unburdened by the need to make AI and player factions mechanically interchangeable.
Typically, there is a tension in design between creating an AI capable of challenging a skilled player and creating a game that has increasingly complex avenues for player action. As games become more complex and provide a greater suite of options to the player, the task of creating an AI capable of utilizing all those features becomes more and more difficult.
The solution? Simple: leave the fancy stuff to the player and focus on getting the AI to be very good at what it needs to do. The AI behavior in Fantastic Creatures is certainly not a perfect enemy, but one imagines that AI could be much worse in a small indie game like this. I experienced a real paradigm shift once I stopped looking at myself as competing in a race with other factions and instead saw all the elements of the game, AI included, as more akin to environmental obstacles preventing me from succeeding. Having to think in new ways is one of the areas where Fantastic Creatures delights.
Environmental Crisis
Pollution is a global value that increases over time due to AI factions and your own buildings. You have a simple choice between using highly efficient but dirty buildings and resource extraction, or less efficient but clean ones. Over time, pollution infects tiles with a spreading green miasma that destroys the economic viability of the land. You may recruit scientists to clean up the pollution, but those cost valuable turns and resources that could be going to other, more powerful units.
Pollution is mechanically interesting to me because it is a cumulative value, where one mistake is so small it’s essentially without cost, but many small mistakes can add up over time to produce a crushing, unwinnable situation. It feels like pollution is designed to persistently increase over time as the game progresses, creating an impetus to move towards victory (which comes after the completion of your faction’s quest) lest you choke on the poisoned land. This creates a sense of urgency that nicely complements the game’s short timeframe and requires you to think incredibly long term. The exact implementation of the numbers may not be perfect; in fact, some additional balancing is needed across most areas of the game. Nevertheless, pollution as a central mechanic feels refreshing and fun — rather than a side issue to be dealt with by high-tech solutions or a couple of quick fixes, it is an almost irrepressible danger that lies underneath practically everything the player tries to do.
Quick AND Shallow
Unfortunately, not all the divergences and fresh ideas on display are as good as the ones we’ve just looked at. Let’s look at the overall time span of the game. A typical 4X single-player campaign is designed to last a long time, especially when compared to the typical length of sessions in other genres. In stark contrast to this, Fantastic Creatures is pretty short. A cursory glance at the astoundingly short tech tree, shown below, really drives this point home.
Brevity in a game like this certainly does not have to be a bad thing. After all, as strategy gamers age, many of us are looking for a way to enjoy our hobby while balancing it with work and family responsibilities. The promise of a short and sweet 4X is an alluring one to the right kind of gamer. However, Fantastic Creatures makes its first fatal mistake in how it uses its shortened time span. Though it slims down science, production, and progression, the actual meat of the game — the movement of units around a map — is extremely slow. Getting from one location to another with units who can only move around two or three tiles at a time creates jarring tedium when contrasted with the agile pace of the rest of the game. The amount of actual strategic action that happens in a completed game of Fantastic Creatures by the time it ends feels like a disappointingly small percentage of the time spent playing the game.
Simple, Random Combat
Combat, too, has imagination without corresponding depth. Units have a ‘die’ that randomly determines how they behave in a simple, turn-based combat mini-game. They can deal damage, block (and thereby prevent damage), or miss and do nothing. The player’s decisions come in when choosing who to target. Combat lasts only six turns before it ends automatically in a draw. The player can also affect this process before it begins by equipping more powerful dice to specific units, giving them a better chance of having a good roll.
This combat system seems to go along with an overall design choice to focus on the abstract management components of the game like creating new cities, researching, and producing. The idea that this is clearly a game that is meant to be appreciated at the macro level is reinforced by the excellent pollution mechanic. Unfortunately, this stripping down of the combat system is disastrous for player involvement and agency. The large swings produced by RNG cannot be mitigated via clever tactical play, as it often is in other games. Instead, I felt as though I was spending an inordinate amount of time merely watching the game play itself.
Perhaps the most unforgivable thing about this combat system is just how long the battles are despite there being almost no strategy or involvement whatsoever. The dice roll animations are very slow, AI turns take a long time, and the whole combat interface just feels sluggish. Practically every battle is a chore. Though the idea of being able to equip better dice as items is interesting, it doesn’t leave enough choice or fun to be worth the time.
Conclusion
Fantastic Creatures has a lot to offer in terms of its ideas, but the execution of those ideas produces a result that leaves quite a bit to be desired. If you are pressed for time and looking for a way to entertain yourself quickly, or if you enjoy the (quite impressive) aesthetic vision of the game, it could certainly be worth the modest price tag. However, players looking for a deep, well-developed strategy experience may want to look elsewhere.
TL;DR: While fresh on ideas, Fantastic Creatures fails in execution. Certainly not the worst first effort we’ve seen by newcomer Blue Callisto, but not a game that I’d feel comfortable recommending, regardless. Lackluster combat and shallow gameplay left me wanting.
Review Policy
You Might Like This Game If:
- You enjoy ancient Chinese aesthetics
- You’re looking for a quick game to scratch the 4X itch
You Might NOT Like This Game If:
- You consider a strong combat system a must
- You like a long, epic experience in 4X games
- You want to play against simulated opponent AI
Ethan played for a period of time necessary to complete this review and with a copy provided by Blue Callisto. We’ll nudge him for details on his rig and for a more precise quantity of gameplay time.
Another new addition to eXplorminate, Ethan will likely contribute when he can and provide us with reviews and coverage of our favorite genre. We’re glad to have him here, for sure!