Plague Inc. Review

Have you ever wanted to play a strategy game that’s not all about commanding a group of people?
Whether it’d be a faction, civilization, town, and anything among these, you’ve seen it all.

Here comes your chance to play a strategy game that makes you control a disease that tries to kill humanity!
Plague Inc. Evolved, the evolution of Plague Inc. will give you a whole new challenge to tackle in this real-time strategy game.

This review, as always, will have a storyline, gameplay, visuals, and personal thoughts section. Without further ado:

Storyline

There is no storyline in this game besides the fact that you want to kill off the world.

Gameplay

As with all strategy games, you start slowly to build into something greater. However, that starting part in this case is usually the easiest. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.

You begin by choosing your pathogen (microbe) type. Every pathogen has different strengths and weaknesses.
After that, you have to pick 5 powers called Genetic Code. Generally, Genetic Code helps you with ways to transmit your disease in various climates or get more DNA, which is this game’s resource.

Of course, not everything will be unlocked in the beginning, you have to play and win to unlock more and more Genetic Code.

Afterward, you pick your difficulty and you’re off. Of course, there’ll be a tutorial to help you with all this the first time.
So you’re off. Just need to pick your starting country and your disease starts spreading. At the start, it will be transmitting in your original country only. You’ll be getting DNA Points to spend on your disease.

DNA is the resource you use to buy upgrades. You can buy upgrades to boost one of three stats: Infectivity, Severity, and Lethality.

Infectivity is the efficiency and speed at which the disease spreads.

Severity is how bad it is. To put it bluntly, the higher the Severity, the more people will become afraid and the more scientists will seek out a cure for your disease.

Lethality is your virus’ ability to kill. It starts at 0 and most starting upgrades don’t raise it so you can stay undetected longer.

Besides these three stats, you can upgrade either a Transmission, a Symptom, or an Ability.

Transmissions are self-explanatory, they help you transmit your disease more effectively. You have to pick them wisely as some are better at transmitting at hot climates, cold ones, rural areas, urban areas, etc.

As your disease spreads more and more, you’re gonna have to see where it struggles and upgrade accordingly.

Symptoms are for Transmission as well but also increase Severity. The reason you’ll want to upgrade them is that it’s the only way to increase Lethality. Only high tiered Symptoms can increase Lethality.

Abilities are the most unique of the three choices. For the most part, they are about the same with upgrades that help in hot or cold climates and upgrades that make your disease stronger against the cure.

But every pathogen type has its unique abilities as well. I’ll let you discover that on your own.

Anyway back to the map. As your disease spreads, it’s bound to spread to other countries. Once that happens, a red bubble appears in that country. You click it and earn some bonus DNA.

Some already infected countries might also pop an orange bubble. Again, you pop it for DNA.
You also gain DNA passively by spreading your disease and killing people.

At some point, the doctors will notice your disease and start working on finding a cure. That’s where the hard part begins.

You’re gonna have to balance transmitting your disease, with making it harder to cure, with killing people to make it harder to research a cure. A dead country can’t find scientists after all.

If you focus too much on any of the above without balancing the others you’re in for a ride.

For example, if you start raising your lethality too much, the newly infected countries will start losing people faster than the rate at which your disease spreads.

Most countries will also close off their borders, airports, and ports completely. If a country has no infected people towards the end of the game, you will lose.

That’s really all the basics. It’s not that complicated once you get the hang of it.

The game also has some official scenarios that either change an aspect of the game (for example the temperatures in the countries are reversed) or allow you to play something brand new (like spreading your very own conspiracy theory).

Of course, through DLCs, there are many more things, like for example playing as the cure to name one of them.
I won’t get into too many details here as this is a review for the main game mostly.

Visuals

There’s not that much to mention the visuals either, the game’s main focus is its gameplay.
I will say however that the visuals are decent altogether. They are nothing too special and nothing too bad.

Personal Thoughts

Plague Inc. is very fun to play for sure and one of the more unique strategy games around. I highly suggest a buy if you find it on sale.

And if you ever find the disease part boring there are loads of interesting unique scenarios to keep you entertained.

If you are the completionist type expect a lot of grinding, and it’s definitely gonna require patience. The problem is that it requires quite a bit of luck in certain parts of the game, something that I hate as it doesn’t allow for any creativity or skill expression.

Final Verdict

Storyline: –

Gameplay: 8

Visuals: 8

General Rating: 8/10

That’s it for my review. Have you played this game? Who is your favorite character? What about your favorite ending? Leave a comment below.

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