14 DAY TRIAL // The Last Federation manages to surprise even in the Advanced Start screen, when the player is invited to choose a race for his coming campaign and the selection is quickly revealed to be more important than it first appears.
The development team at Arcen Games casts the gamer as the final member of a race that has been wiped out and needs to use the tech of another in order to get back into space and realize his dream of creating a peaceful federation of planets that can co-exist in the solar system.
The choice made in the start screen determines some of the capabilities of the player-controlled craft, but it also means that the selected race will be unwilling to work towards the above mentioned goal and is instantly seen as a rival.
It’s both ingenious and simple and sets the tone that the rest of The Last Federation will follow.
The first battle of the game also includes a choice: players can simply use their superior firepower to take out the enemy ships, further deteriorating relations, or they can simply dock with a space station, while getting shot at making sure that the disgust of the race they have chosen lessens a little.
The Last Federation then takes first-time players through a tutorial phase that introduces the core ideas of the game and then gives them complete freedom to explore the solar system and choose their own path towards success or failure.
For this game, I have chosen to betray the Evucks, who are amoral and science focused, and after spreading the spacefaring technology to another two planets, they really detest me and relations reach a low of -244.
I am role playing as a sort of benevolent rogue and that means that I plan to spread space tech to all the races as quickly as possible, which will probably mean that the Evucks will be even more worried about me by the time I am through.
It takes a few turns to sneak around all the planets and deliver the information to all the races and everyone now has the ability to explore space and develop their planets.
The Evucks are at over -600 relations and, somewhat ironically, even some of the other races dislike me because I gave everyone a chance to join in the great space race rather than be exploited by more powerful neighbors.
It’s time to try to get everyone to love me.