Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: http://nepos.games/nebuchadnezzar/
Price: $ 19.99 USD
Blurb: “Nebuchadnezzar is a classic isometric city builder game, inviting players to experience the mysterious history and culture of ancient Mesopotamia. In the campaign, players get to rule over influential historical cities filled with magnificent monuments.”
If you remember Pharaoh or Caesar or Zues, this is more of that, in high resolution. If you have never played these types of games, it is essentially a city builder. If you have, this is a homage to those games with a perfect replication of the fun you had in 1999.
I have always loved that name, such a strong name. Nebuchadnezzar! (Say it again, oooh gives me chills… hehehe). The premise is simple, your royal highness has to lead his people by building them a city, with monuments to yourself of course, all the while managing space and resources. Just don’t go insane like Nebuchadnezzar did! Sounds like something you would like to play, then read on!
Installation
I used the GOG installer for this one. Though this game has a minimum install requirement of Ubuntu 18.04, you cannot run it on Ubuntu 18.04 as the game was compiled against glibc 2.29, which is not available in Ubuntu 18.04 because of dependencies.
So your first task as king of Baby-lonia, excuse the pun, is to get your fledgling kingdom off the ground. You need to plan, however; your grain needs to get to the mill, and there needs to be a road from the mill to the baker, as well as a road from the housing district, so that people can go get bread. You always have to balance supply and demand. To understand this, look at a modern version of this game, Frostpunk. If you have not tried Frostpunk yet, why not? It is a great game. The secret to the game: as your city grows, what worked for a small city, does not work for a medium city, etc. How you overcome these problems is what makes the game challenging and interesting.
The game is presented to you in an isometric view. The graphics are just awesome. The game is true to its roots, and there is no 3D. I am a fan of isometric games, so I was fine with it, but those who have grown up with 3D everything may have an issue with it. The viewport is locked to one view only. The scaling is much better than other games of this type, and your little people are well animated. Building monuments grants prestige, and they look amazing, and the sense of scale really helps with the immersion. (I think I will try for the tower of Babylon!).
The music is there, in the background, and stays there. It has that Arabian nights feel, and suits the desert setting perfectly. I would have preferred a full soundtrack for $20, but it is not a deal breaker.
What was amazing, is the wiki built into the game regarding ancient Babylonia. If ever you needed facts on anything Babylonian or about the area, skip Wikipedia and come straight here. My advice is not to skip the campaign briefings as they really fill out the imagination. You will realise that you start long before Nebuchadnezzar, probably even before Nabopolasser, and it definitely was an eye-opener for me. This is such a value-add for me, but if you don’t like random factoids about history, you may get bored. To immerse yourself further, I suggest watching some videos on YouTube regarding the ruins. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya1Io0F468c
Unlike SimCity, these types of games introduce tiers, where, say, at the first tier you need only food and shelter, the next tier may be religion, and now you need temples and different resources to progress. You can also regress to a previous tier, if you can not keep up with supply and demand. Tier two may need fountains and gardens to maintain the status quo, and to have those you may need different resources still, making the micro management more intense. Twenty years ago, this type of gameplay was the norm; now, however, it feels more of an armchair general situation. Again, if I compare it to a modern version of the genre, like Frostpunk, the gameplay feels lacking. There is no innovation, there is only a higher resolution from Zeus that I played twenty years ago. That was a bit disappointing. That said, there is nothing “wrong” with the game, but there is that “it would have been nice” that is missing, if you know what I mean. It still is a time sink, where you can while away a lazy Sunday afternoon without noticing it. If your intention is nostalgia, the game does not disappoint. You can simply drop in and play, without reading a manual. The mechanics are simple and easy to learn, making the entry to the game accessible to all. Like the games that came before it, there is some replay value, but not much.
I cannot, in good conscience, tell you to splurge $20 on this. I’d wait until it is on sale before buying it.
If you are nostalgic, I recommend looking here:
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
or
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius
The Caesar games are also $5.99 on GOG at the time of writing.