#11: Populous

Growing up my brother and I played an awful lot of games. For the most part we both liked all of the games but there were always a few games that one of us really liked and the other didn't. For me those were often sports games and super hardcore Koei simulation games. For my brother it was a little more varied but one of those games was definitely Populous. I never really got into this game at all while I believe my brother would borrow it frequently from a friend.

Populous is a religious warfare RTS game. You play a god with a nation of worshipers. Get more worshipers to unlock more spells. Expand your borders towards the enemy nation of worshipers and then use your spells and your followers to kill off the other nation.

Tooltips: greatest gaming invention?

I started the game up and decided to do the tutorial. Which didn't actually teach anything. I ended up doing an internet search for the manual in the hopes it would explain the tutorial. It didn't, really, but it did tell me what the buttons did and that was good enough for me to stomp the tutorial. It then put me into a new game which I again stomped. Some of my buttons didn't seem to do anything (I wanted to cast flood and armageddon but couldn't cast either) so I just made a bunch of knights and went all jihad on the enemy nation. 

I'm coming for you, Spock!

I restarted with the conquest option which let me cast all the spells. The first couple enemies were trivial. They couldn't cast most of the spells and built predominantly at sea level. So one flood pretty much won the game. 

Beachfront property isn't worth the price.

I'm sure if I kept going I'd run into a real challenge eventually. But I'm finding the game to be boring. It's really slow paced even with the speed cranked up. There are a bunch of different options but I'm pretty sure building a super knight is just the best thing you can do. Floods are fun too but I'd imagine the higher level enemies will stop building at sea level?

For an early SNES game this is actually pretty good. I doubt it was too slow paced for me as a kid since I would have been coming from a C64 gaming background and not today's PC background. The sound effects were well done. I think the issue may have been having no control at all over your dudes. You can guide them toward your ankh and you can give them a general idea of what to do but then you have to sit back and trust them to do it. I've always wanted to micro all of my units in games like this. I never turn on auto-governor in Civ games, for example. So when I see my guys build their castles just a little bit unoptimally I get annoyed.

Rating: B