March to war month: The Last Federation

Some games are easy to introduce and discuss, and others are difficult. But Arcen, makers of Last Federation, is generally a well-spring of being difficult to discuss in and of themselves, and then their games take it to the next level. Admittedly the last Arcen game I reviewed was Starward Rogue, which was a very different game.

The Last Federation is a very, very strange game to talk about. It bends a lot of what you'd expect from the genre around trying to set up this one, rather perfect little scenario that the game takes place in. But I guess I should explain the genre before I go anywhere else. TLF is a space simulation game, likely to be compared to the lineage of Master of Orion. However, if MoO and its variety of descendant games are described as "4x" games (or x4, I can never remember) then TFL is more like an 2.5x game. Most of the elements are there, but not all of them.

For one thing, the basic story is you're the last Hydral, the first race to gain space travel in a planetary system with almost ten different races. And your race was wiped out, as they were cruel dictators of the system until that wiping out. It isn't well explained why a space-faring race would be wiped out as such, but hey, it worked for Dragonball Z!

As the Last Hydral, you don't really have an empire per se and you don't really have anything approaching imperial resources. Oddly enough, though, the elements you'd expect to be dropped from a 4x given those restraints aren't the ones TFL is missing.
Your goal in TFL is to unify the various (surviving) races in your system and form a lasting federation with the intent, I guess, to bring peace to your system in the wake of your race's horrible mistreatment of the others. As I said, you're not a power, rather you're a rogue agent in a very powerful starship that can wander between planets to fix problems with the intent of bringing them around to forgiving you for being a Hydral, trusting you, then trusting other races.

Also there's a space combat.

The political aspect is something of a mixed bag. The various races are extremely unique, going a full step above any of the older 4x games I've played and likely above most of them in general. Each race has a different political system. Some have parliaments and some have senates, others have a dictator or require you interact with them differently. Some you can bribe, others you need to make special deals with, or can make special deals with other races. They also have changing interests and all of this is represented with a lot of text.

The game is piles and piles of moving numbers, graphs and so forth. A lot of it you don't really need to interact with, but it is there if you're so inclined to learn. Your goal, as I said, is the formation of a powerful federation. You personally can't conquer worlds, at least not that I could figure out, but you can usually manipulate situations to protect or damage inhabited worlds.

I can go pretty deep on explaining mechanics but basically: There's a lot of numbers you can take various actions to increase, and the game is mostly about balancing your time between those various numbers to achieve various sub-goals, with the goal being to unify whatever survives the conflict period to form a planetary federation. The game takes places in a single solar system, which feels incredibly weird, but I guess it gets around trying to puzzle out FTL mechanics and the like.

While you're playing, all these numbers are being simulated in "real time" as well. The various races are battling it out, developing, researching, electing new governments and so on. You can influence some of that, but can't influence everything and certainly not much at once.

Ship to ship combat is a strange duck, turn based and built around adjusting your power supply to feed your three main systems - weapons, shields and propulsion. You can load three different weapons and multiple specials, and use different kinds of targeting. This is one of those times where you wish an Arcen game had the budget to go really nuts with a game, since this is kinda flat in 2d but seems like it would be interesting in 3d. It's not a bad system, but it's nothing too exciting either.

TFL has the usual visuals of Arcen, the sort of half-ok sprite work that looks fine, will never bother you but won't wow you either. There are a couple digital paintings used for alien screens and the like; they're nice looking but the lack of animation is kindly meh. Music and audio is fine; the stand out is the voice actress who does your AI, she's fantastic and really puts effort in.

I only played through the game once, so it's likely I missed a lot, but TFL isn't really my cup of tea. It's been a long time since I've gotten into a 4x game. I've bought a couple but none of them really clicked in the first hour, and they eat up so much time I'm reluctant when my back log grows bigger every month. TFL isn't bad, but it's ambitious and strange, which is a better or worse sort of situation. You won't play many games like TFL ever, and it's funny initially exploring the system, but going through another game just doesn't feel worth it.

In terms of being an interesting game to play through once, I think TFL is unique and creative enough that I'd broadly recommend it to anyone interested in the basics. It's a neat set of ideas. In terms of being a 2.5x game to capture your heart and give you tens of hours, I don't think TFL quite gets there.

It's not a great game. But it is a great idea, and that's interesting to see executed. Just not something I think most people will enjoy for too long.