They Are Billions Review

"Slow Zombie Hordes"

Campaign

July 8, 2019 at 4:00pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a RTS title that has landed on the console, and it’s an interesting take on the genre. It’s a more hardcore experience, no matter which setting you pick and it’s a slow build. This is going to be essentially impossible for a more casual player to get into and it’s difficult to play. Aside from some slightly cumbersome controls, the experience itself is hard to properly grasp.

There are a few options to adjust the core game, but there’s not really anything variation wise in modes. It’s just a straight up survival of how many days to choose, with bonuses based on horde difficulty. What I find particularly boring about his one is that you basically need to do things exactly right or it goes wrong. Even if you feel you’re doing well, everything comes crashing down in a moment’s notice and it’ll be impossible to turn things around. I invested a number of hours in playthroughs that felt like they were a slog to get through.

It takes forever to actually get anywhere in what you’re doing and there’s nothing that really let’s you know what you’re supposed to initially do. I got to a point with a strong base, but I felt I barely cracked the surface and then everything just came crashing down tragically. I felt restricted in so many ways with the building, and just sometimes want to have fun with this type of experience which felt unlikely on any of the difficulty options I tried.

Gameplay

I really liked the presentation of visuals, the battles were gruesome and everything had animations rolling. The cities felt alive, but at the same time some of the glitches were very present here. I had piles of villagers stuck at gates, or spinning around in circles. It was funny, but rather odd. The hordes are quite something, especially when you turn up the difficulty.

I just wish I could have had an easier way to tackle them to appreciate this swarm creation more. The environments were alright, some areas for exploration and many zombies slumbering around. They had some neat extra points that could be taken as well, this aspect creates a sense of desire for exploration.

Aside from general tweaking for playing, there’s a match of the week to try as well if you’d like. The controls could have been a bit smoother, took awhile to grasp them entirely and even then they could have been smoother for the controller.

The Conclusion

They Are Billions has some interesting concepts, but doesn’t deliver a satisfying console RTS that I can get into. It really does feel like a niche title of the genre, very few players will be able to get into this. I was having fun at times once it got rolling, but the strict setup makes it a pain to play. You can invest a lot of time for it to come crashing down with few options to actually prevent a collapse.

Once things started to crack in the slightest I would know the playthrough is over. I would have liked more options in regards to how I could play this, they really didn’t take it too far. It’s just a straight up survival RTS builder that doesn’t quite deliver.

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They Are Billions Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Evolve PR

Rating Overall: 4.2