The Last Federation

A great concept where you play a giant Tiamat dragon(!) stuck in the middle of a 4X game played out between AIs where you try to influence each race until they become even, make nice, and form a federation together. Where it fails is mostly that it's even more obtuse than Arcen's other game AI War (I tried AI War for 10 hours; I couldn't take more than 1 of LF). In fact, it's almost to the point where it's a Paradox strategy game (Victoria, Crusader Kings). I see the screenshots are very careful not to show you the main strategic screen where you'll spend most of your time. It's 90% staring at walls of tiny colored texts. Not even pictures of the races, not even different colors! Tell the races apart on the map by icons of the exact same color. Every piece of info is scattered around instead of the most obvious place you'd need it. You would think something as basic as your money supply would be on the main screen. Nope! You must go to the inventory screen. Multiple ways to do the exact same thing and no way to gauge how any of them are more worthwhile. Each planet has 4 stats but they all affect similar things so why didn't they just have a single stat for that? Buying a tech for +0.3 manufacturing worth it? It costs me $1000 to purchase a scientist to reduce a single tech research from 8 months to 7 months...okay? Is that good? What's the time frame? Who knows. It's just a bunch of obtuse numbers. The combat is Critical Mass, except there's a billion objects flying around like a bullet hell shooter so there's no point to carefully maneuvering. Each race is very different but there was no in-game way to tell their differences as far as I could tell. I saw that the ground combat specialty race had a high ground combat total strength and that's it. The game doesn't even tell you the victory condition! There is no manual. There is no strategy guide I could find. It's one of those games you have to comb through forums to get the complete picture. I'll have to pass.

I wanted to like this game and I approached it very positively. Unfortunately, this game is nothing like its descriptions found in many reviews and opinions. Deep? Strategic? Engaging? Non of these things are in this game. It's a simple game (dare to say - a mini-game) circling around the idea of maintaining a boring balance between AI opponents where almost an every quest in the game is a turn based bullet-hell arena skirmish. I played for an hour and got sick of my eyes hurting while watching +s and -s under the planet icons. I didn't even care to finish a single game, and that's because of the aformentioned eyes' pain. This game is literally painful to watch. The colour palette and font layout are just terrible and I cannot fathom anyone not having problems with how the game's interface is designed. The game is just boring with no meaningful gameplay. It's really just a slow paced grind for influences and credits. It also hurts me to post a negative score, but this game is falsely advertised to be something that it's not.

A title basically tailor-made for the criminal mastermind in us all, The Last Federation is an exceptionally good 4x game with a huge amount of potential, only hampered by a few unfortunate problems. Casting the player as the last member of an alien race known as the Hydrals, The Last Federation tasks the player with somehow forming a stable and long-lasting....well, Federation by any means, fair or foul. Gameplay is much as you would expect; you send your character from location to location and species to species, meet with the various species you come across, and either help them out in various ways, or do your absolute best to screw them over. What makes TLF shine in this regard is the sheer number of choices you have. Want to help defend this planet against invasion? You can do that! Want to give this species space-faring technology? You can do that! Want to sell prisoners as slaves on the black market, assassinate government officials, or trick species into declaring war against one another? You can do that! For all of that, there are still a number of areas where the game needs a bit of improvement. Combat can be somewhat repetitive, the main star map can experience significant lag at times, and the game takes a while to really get going and open up all options to you. For all of that, however, I highly recommend this game; it has an enormous amount to offer, and is a truly engaging experience.

This game is very reminiscent of the Space Empires series. If you like that game you'll most likely like this game. It's a very deep 4X game. Combat system is fun, though it takes a bit to really figure out what's worth it. Once you settle on a strategy building up your ship quickly becomes pointless. Overall I wish I'd played the game earlier. I figured I would enjoy and and have not been dissapointed.

One of these days, I need to start learning from experience. AI War is great, but when every other game a studio puts out fails to entertain due to universally sharing the same flaws, it's time to admit they might just be a proverbial one-hit-wonder. Last Federation is a bad game for the same reason most Arcen games are: it's repetitive, shallow, barely in the genre it claims to be and feels like a jumble of a dozen half-completed ideas that were abandoned mid-development. You can have fun with it in the same way as with A Valley Without Wind, but expect to find yourself wondering what the point even is after a few hours.