Triumph's 2019 AoW: Planetfall is just straight up better sci-fi 4x strategy game than Zephon by a mile.

2 pillars of 4x games milestones are "eXpand" and "eXterminate"
Zephon missed both completely. There's no point in expanding anything anywhere and fighting anything.

And it's going to stay that way unless devs sit down, rebalance the broken pop growth and loyalty systems to allow wide gameplay, and introduce at least some incentive for taking out factions out of the game.

Zephon has massive balancing issues which are not going to be fixed by DLC.

It's pleasing visually, but strategic layer is basically broken by Loyalty system, forcing you to stick to your corner of the map in 1-3 cities waiting for endgame.

There's no point in fighting any AI or Neutral factions since you literally get nothing for destroying their cities.

Building up cities is a mind-numbing slog, you are always limited by something, eaither city slots, or Loaylty. It's not a fun process to cope with, you are always constrained even when swimming in resources. It's just bad and poorly thought design.

AI is pathetically bad, and is just there as a speed bump.

Any faction can get any units, which was a general issue of Civ BE and shows here. There's no replayability value or uniqueness to any faction.

I haven't seem more broken strategy game in a while, and I played most of them.

So while im giving this game a positive review after playing my first completed game, i have to be honest and say there might be some negatives to purchasing this game depending on who you are. so ill start by getting those out of the way.

But the tl;dr is basically if you cam from warhammer 40k gladius and liked it youre either going to like this game or not. If you played gladius but didnt enjoy it because it is too combat focused and you find the combat the more boring part of 4x games then this probably isnt for you either. And if you havent played a 4x game like warhammer 40k gladius i would say this might be a much better and more affordable place to start over gladius as you get more bang for your buck in a lot of ways.

So zephon may not be for you if you're coming from the devs previous game warhammer 40k gladius. And i have a few reasons for that. For one you may initially find all the factions to be rather bland, boring or "samey" in comparison to one another and definitely in comparison to gladius's factions. The factions in this game are all basically the same except for the fact they have different affinities and faction attributes. Other than that they all have access to the same units and tech trees from what i can tell. And if youre coming from gladius like i am that may initially be a turn off for you, it almost was with me.

On the flipside of that, this actually ties in well with the games lore. Whether that was intended or due to budget constraints its hard to say. But either way in the games lore every player faction is a faction of earths last remnants of humans so it would make sense they all have access to the same techs and units. Also, the tech tree is quite extensive. And you can go about it pretty much any way you want affinity wise. Whether you stick to strictly human, voice, or cyber tech or a mixture of any is completely up to you, which lets for players having usually pretty varied unit make ups from each other more or less. Especially seeing as even if you stick to one tech type, you probably wont research nearly everything in that tech tree let alone if youre doing 2 affinities or all 3 by the end of a game.

Also, another reason it may not be a game for gladius owners is because, while ive actually learned to enjoy this game quite a lot, and actually kind of enjoy it more than gladius, which is saying a lot seeing as gladius is my favorite turn based 4x game i own, it can feel like its kind of a cash grab game. It feels just like gladius in many ways, looks like it in lots of ways too. Lots of it clearly copy and pasted just reskinned to look a tad different. Mostly to do with the map and UI. So if you already have gladius and invested in its dlc, you might as well just continue investing in gladius.

Once again on the flip side of that, if you like the idea of a turn based strategy game based in a lovecraftian horror type of setting, that adds diplomacy which gladius had none of this may still be a great fit for you as it is for me personally.

BUT! It does have plenty of pluses to it.

For one i really enjoy the fact that the game features 8 factions to choose from in the base game where as gladius only comes with 4 initially.

It has a really neat feature where a good portion of things on the map change throughout the game so the battlefield is constantly changing in various ways terrain wise. which is a great implimentation and done very well. I wish more strategy game would use this kind of system.

It also features 3 non playable non player factions (which i wont spoil here) which is a cool little twist because not only are the 3 all vying for power and therefore hate eachother naturally, but players can choose to ally with any of them or fight them all the same. which can bring interesting weight to other diplomatic choices amongst player factions.

The diplomacy system is a bit rudementry in comparison to the diplomacy systems in other 4x games but it works incredibly well in this game. while i wish theyd add some features to the diplomacy system the simplicity of it all the same is really nice and works like a charm. Its one of those things you can dive into and utilize in a game or mostly ignore all together if you just want to focus on combat.

In the end I actually enjoy this game a lot. Though i had to give it an initial 6 or 8 hours of play and a few game restarts to really see why i like this game so much in comparison to gladius. As i said initially i wasnt impressed until i looked at the game through the lenses of its lore and back story vs the gladius comparison lenses i initially was looking at the game with. Again its not going to be everyones cup of tea. But i still think its a great buy.

Really good! felt like a constant struggle, breath of fresh air for this genre with a unique setting.