Pandora: First Contact (PFC) has some great gameplay features but some notable issues. The good: - Runs flawlessly on Linux. - A solid attempt at recreating the lightning in a bottle that was Alpha Centauri. Not as good, but good enough in spirit. - Resources like food are shared across an empire, rather than limited to a single city. - Random tech tree, with most of it hidden past a certain level. - Unit designer with lots of options. - Unit stacks. - QOL features like easy unit movement and upgrades. - Aliens are an actual threat, unlike Civilization: Beyond Earth. - The terraforming minigame actually requires choices and strategy. - Random attacks from powerful, non-native, invading aliens. - AIs are very competent and aggressive. - Simple, clean interface that doesn't get in the way of gameplay. - Observer mode. The bad: - This is not a civ game; this is a war and survival game. - Everything has to be built; no tech grants a benefit from researching it. - Font is tiny on high resolution. - Players are required to micromanage population jobs in order to complete. - Very limited map options. - Diplomacy only serves to delay the inevitable dogpile. Pacts are broken at random, and alliances mean nothing. As soon as a faction can ready an army, they'll swarm the player with greater forces. The other AIs are coded to dogpile whoever is weaker in that fight, which was always me. Thus, military development is a top priority to deter the AIs for a short time. The stronger you are, by any metric, the more likely the AI are to target you. There's a fan patch that corrects the diplomacy issues, but it only works on Windows. - At the time of this review, the game is nearly dead. A little activity on the Steam discussions, but little to no anywhere else I've seen, including the company Discord. It's worth buying if you like hard sci-fi empire builders.
