Post by: lolmonade on November 10, 2025, 06:24:18 AM
What is this, a text size for ants?
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73233/reus-2-switch-review
Reus 2 is a game about developing a solar system. The main menu has an empty space around a sun, and hitting a new game is the birth of a new planet. Rather than filling the entire globe, the play space is the outer layer with hexagonal tiles throughout. Ultimately the goal is to develop the rock into a thriving planet for the inhabitants of the world. Before birthing a new world, you choose one of three gods with different environmental attributes (forest, ocean, desert, jungle, etc.). These beings can terraform the land, install various flora & fauna, enhance tiles to allow improved resources, or even create natural disasters like tsunamis.
But you’re not there to just make the land pretty. Small civilizations are developed by selecting a character class that has different skills, usually around what kind of resources they generate and how their community grows. For example, the pacifist types look to food resources to grow and want to live in forested areas, while merchant communities thrive on money and crave the desert. You’ll install plants, animals, and minerals on the hexagons to boost the output of those resources and grow the communities. Funny enough, as the world develops these civilizations can turn into warring factions that steal resources from each other. I had a buccaneer type leader who would regularly try to invade the merchants across a stretch of ocean. Eventually I got tired of their marauding and summoned the water god to drown their warships before hitting landfall. It gave me a chuckle, reminding me of the days I’d unleashed tornadoes and Godzilla in Sim City. When things happen in the game, a text box in the right hand corner will describe their mood, and she was all sorts of mad.
The resource nodes can also be upgraded. Each god can enhance tiles to a second-tier resource, sometimes with perks that’ll boost their output. An upgraded tile could have special conditions that generate more resources when an animal is placed. There are also means to unlock more types of creatures or plant life that have increased benefits, but these are limited to a few per planet. These are incrementalist improvements but how well you develop the world dictates the score at the end of the round, and those scores also help unlock new tile types for future runs. I don’t love this kind of unlock system as it feels like a way to elongate a short experience, but with each planet taking somewhere between 30-45 minutes to complete they will flow quickly.
I do have a few bones to pick with Reus 2. The text size is tiny, and there are no menu options to increase it. It’s a minor irk anywhere, but in a game that plays in a macro view, readability is incredibly important, and it hampers the experience. Handheld was the best option for my eyes, but it still felt a few notches too small. The user interface could really do for an overhaul, because having to cycle through the user interface with a controller is unwieldy. How you navigate the game menus is the kind of thing that goes undetected unless there’s something striking about it. At its best they can be flashy & fun, most games are workmanlike and stay out of the way, then there’s Reus. When the thing barring me from enjoying the game is what you have to interact with every moment, it becomes a real drag.
Reus 2 has the skeletal structure to be a game I’d love. It’s low stress, uncomplicated sim gameplay that scratches an itch for grand strategy like Civilization but breezy and bite sized. The systems are multilayered and play off each other well while also being approachable. The world and character design is cute and friendly, and that tone mates with a mostly constructive ethos (the battles are really a slim part of the game). I enjoy the act of building out the solar system and making better planets as I learned the best approach. It’s a shame that the way to navigate and read the game is so crippling for an otherwise fun game. Fingers crossed they consider some enhancements in the future.
