Jon Shafer's At the Gates

For those who do understand their 4X genre, however, At The Gates will come across as a breath of fresh air. It's a ground-up rethink on how the genre can work, and what the 4X might look like as applied to the many cultures and civilizations out there that didn't have the imperialist intent that most 4X titles assume. For that, it's one of the most interesting strategy games I've played in years.

What Jon Shafer’s At The Gates gets totally right is that feeling of ‘just one more turn’. It really pushes you to continue playing, expanding and exploring the world.

The slow pacing, difficulty, and confined historical focus might prove a barrier for some, but I loved carving out my own empire of riches in the roughs on grit and determination alone.

At The Gates feels a bit like a flawed gem. It’s far from perfect, but full of intricacies, and it offers a wonderful new take on the 4X genre. Having spent almost 50 hours with the game, every minute has been rewarding. In fact, it’s easily the most refreshing strategy game I have played in years.

Jon Shafer's At the Gates is a beautiful classic 4x video games that innovate in some aspects but it´s remain incomplete because it´s still fail in some aspects like the ost, diplomacy, interface and the perception of life inside the game among others things.

Jon Shafer’s At the Gates is not a mass-market game. It decries the populist and dumbed down direction in which the Civilization franchise has moved, replacing it with a strategy title for the patient player that tolerates a measured pace, likes the challenge of long-range planning, can overlook some bugs, and finds satisfaction in a cerebral, hard-fought victory. For the average strategy fan, At the Gates may frustrate but the rewards of pushing through to comprehension are significant.

At The Gates is a brutally hardcore strategy game that will keep fans engaged for dozens, if not hundreds of hours. The amount of time it takes to learn even the basics, coupled with its simplistic art style and obtuse menu-based UI, will scare off newcomers. But veterans of the genre and fans of games of this pedigree will find an engaging strategy title that stands shoulder to shoulder with the games that inspired it.

A challenging strategy title, and it introduces many great systems to make it stand out from the crowd. The seasonal, clan, and discipline systems all combine to make each game feel drastically different from the last. While some could argue that this leads to certain games being unfairly difficult, At The Gates still delivers as a sound roguelike strategy game.

What's there right now is undeniably good; however, what's missing makes you yearn for how good it could yet be. It's a fresh, invigorating, more personal take on the grand strategy game. But at the same time, it's lacking in a few areas, and they really do hold it back from greatness. Jon Shafer has found that fertile new ground on which to settle. He just needs to give it a few seasons to grow.

Should Jon Shafer’s At the Gates be judged for what it is now, or what it has the potential to become? The experience is hamstrung by glitches, oversights, and unfinished systems, but playing a 4X game from the perspective of the barbarians remains a fantastic concept and some of that Civilization “one more turn” allure is still intact. Forgiving types may want to give At the Gates a try now, but most others should probably leave the game out in the cold until a few updates are released.

Many innovative and motivating game mechanics, but due to passive AI factions and lack of diplomacy it stops being a challenge too quickly.

Jon Shafer's At the Gates is a unique 4X, with tons of fresh ideas, but many of them remain incomplete.

Even with my frustrations with the interface, the game itself made me want to keep going. I credit the style of gameplay and my total need for world domination for that. Anything related to the Roman Empire is compelling, but even though I sank 14 hours into this game, I didn’t even get strong enough to unlock any of the other clans. I got closer, though, with each restart, but in my last playthrough, I found myself stuck because right after creating a fishing and galley joint army to begin an exploration mission, my game crashed. I tried returning to the previous save, but it won’t allow me to play in that Kingdom again. So I suppose, my conclusion is that the game has a lot of potential and I intend to keep playing it. I get the feeling that a lot of this will be worked out in time.

Quotation forthcoming.

A solid foundation for a unique 4X experience – it just needs fleshing out a bit more before it can really shine.

Ultimately, Jon Shafer’s At the Gates is a deep, interesting and gorgeous barbarian-‘em-up for about three-quarters of its runtime, with the quality of the experience varying hugely from there. With time invested to learn the game’s systems, there’s fun to be had in taking the various unlockable tribes to victory. It’s definitely rough around the edges, and there are a few features I’d happily trim, but if you enjoyed Jon’s previous work then the spark that kept me awake all night when Civ V launched is definitely still alive. I hope future updates can fill in a few of the gaps.

Passive AI and a flawed economy ruin what could have been a refreshing 4X experiment.

At the Gates would need another year of fixes in Early Access to be relevant. As of now it’s a true diamond which never got the chance to shine. [03/2019, p.71]

Jon Shafer's At the Gates is sadly lackluster in comparison of its maker's past titles like Civilization V. It presents some innovation for the genre, but has serious failures in some of the basics of 4X games and poses as a weird package with big need for some quality of life updates.

A surprisingly bland strategy game missing the spark of Civilization. Its economy system is initially quite interesting, but after a while it gets tedious. And that’s all the game has to offer.

At the Gates tries some ambitious new ideas that, in time, may leave a mark on the 4X genre. But today, it's far too broken to recommend.

An attempt to make an alternative to Civilization that failed because of not finishing its ideas and old technology. An unstable and buggy game with a lousy artificial intelligence won’t be interesting, even if it is signed by a great designer. [Issue#293]

While there are a few interesting concepts at play in Jon Shafer’s At the Gates, they frequently go underdeveloped, leading to a lackluster experience.