Keeg

Went back to a Game From My Childhood I Never Beat and played the first few stages of Populous: The Beginning today. Surprised at how easy it was to pick up and how smoothly it controls with just a mouse + a few keys for view rotation.
As far as I'm aware it's completely different to the two Populous games that precede it (which I've never played, so forgive me if I'm wrong), in that it's a straight-up RTS where you control a shaman and her followers who have decided they need to completely fucking annihilate every other tribe of Vague Nondescript Ancient Peoples.
Putting aside any unfortunate implications of that premise and the imagery surrounding it, it's actually very straightforward, with a neat core gimmick in that besides the followers, which can be trained into a wide variety of jobs to combat enemies, the shaman herself has access to a bunch of spells with a crazy variety of effects. The main story will start you off with only the simple "Blast" fireball spell, but you'll quickly gain lightning bolts, tornados, bees, land alteration, and more.
I like how in the main single-player mode, you unlock new buildings and spells by bringing your shaman to Vaults of Knowledge and having her worship them, which both gives you an additional goal besides killing the fuck out of the opposing tribe(s) and allows the game to slowly ramp up complexity. Plus, you'll sometimes find "stone heads" that can be worshipped by the shaman or her followers that will give you single uses of certain spells that you haven't otherwise unlocked yet, which lets the game tease you with some new toys.
I'm not sure what made me finally start this up after owning it on GOG for a while. Maybe all the talk about Pikmin recently got me in a RTS mood.
Also the music is making me super nostalgic, got damb