If the maps are too small and the different settlements too clustered, it feels like the military-heavy factions have an early advantage. I generally found the larger maps to be more agreeable, giving every faction a bit more space to build the way they prefer. There are a fair number of options for creating new games, including map size, AI aggressiveness (though frankly, they just always seem super aggressive no matter what I have this set to), whether or not to make the world random and more. People would encounter my faction, make demands that would almost completely bankrupt me, and my failure to comply would lead them to come after me with unrelenting military attacks that I would hold off until a second or third faction would inevitably join in and finish me off. Despite a variety of dialogue options, I almost always felt like the conversations turned out the same. The diplomacy aspects of Pandora: First Contact were among the first things I really struggled with initially.

At least until my first interactions with rival factions. Still, once I found my groove initially, I was enjoying the process of building up my cities and expanding my borders. I was met with my share of disasters early on as I roamed the landscape and wound up butting heads with various forms of alien life, with those skirmishes generally ending very badly on my part. Thankfully Pandora: First Contact falls into the former category, as it was easy to pick up and play. Other times I can find them to be so dense, with such a high learning curve, that I struggle to really get into them, finding the early experience to be a chore that my interest never quite recovers from.

Sometimes they absolutely click and I find myself sinking dozens of hours into them, trying all sorts of different methods of developing my would-be empire. 4X turn-based strategy games are incredibly hit and miss with me. There is a comfortable familiarity to Pandora: First Contact, as I have play several Civilization games over the years and absolutely loved Civilization V when I reviewed it.

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