Rising Tide

Even hardcore fans mostly agree, if Beyond Earth taught us anything, it’s that you’ve got to go further than merely another solar system to escape the shadow of Alpha Centauri. With that in mind, Rising Tide is a smartly put together expansion. It doesn’t make Beyond Earth the game that some of us wanted, especially in terms of finding its own groove instead of just being Civ in space, but it does at least put its focus on the biggest criticisms instead of simply bolting on a few more toys and random cool features. It’s closer. Not there, but a good deal closer.

For me, one of the changes I most appreciate is the reworking of Affinities. In the original Beyond Earth, these had your society developing down one of three paths—Purity, Supremacy or Harmony. I personally loathed this system, not for the core mechanical idea, but because it philosophically felt less like charting a future for humanity than signing it up to one of three dogmatic space cults, complete with silly space robes. Rising Tide allows for Hybrid Affinities, mixing and matching them. This opens up new options, but more than that, it feels endlessly more appropriate. Why wouldn’t you combine technology and aliens? It’s just slightly morbid common sense.

This is essentially Rising Tide’s approach across the board: big changes, important changes, but not necessarily dramatic changes that completely overhaul what came before. It’s a more appropriate name than it might sound, and not really referring to its new aquatic cities. They’re fun to play with, both in their new mechanic of acquiring territory by moving around the ocean, and a rare example of something feeling like future tech instead of just modern military equipment with a chrome finish. They’re still one of the least important fundamental changes Rising Tide makes.