Iron Harvest

This game is not a highly polished rts and it shows. However you can feel the amount of care and work that's been put into it. The dieselpunk alternate history of 1920+ is beautiful aesthetically if not exactly top notch graphically. The story is competently told, but not really an outstanding element. The game plays well enough: the cover is a little finicky at times and I feel like buildings ought to block line of sight a bit better, but positioning your mechs to flank your enemies is a wonderful feeling. As far as bugs go, I haven't encountered any particularly egregious. I have nothing to say about the multiplayer, since I don't really play multiplayer..... It's worth a play, but if you want a more complete and polished experience Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40k Dawn of War are much more solidly put together.

TL:DR; the game plays a bit like an unpolished version of company of heroes in a dieselpunk alternative universe theme. The story isnt thát great but its enjoyable. The maps are fun enough, the alternative units are well made and the gameplay is varied. It also has some flaws but no showstoppers. Im a big fan of RTS games. It plays a bit like an old school rts like company of heroes where you have class based units which can counter other classes (infantry, mechs, etc). I like it how it's different but yet familiar. Instead of tanks you have mechs in all sizes. The bigger the mech, the more you can wreck. The story isn't thát great but the maps does offer a nice variety of plays. With base, without base, defense against waves, single hero missions etc. But the whole post ww1 setting with mechs as cavalry units is very nice. Something else than the standard light armored jeeps and slow heavy tanks. Keep the small and agile mechs to flank enemies while biggies blow everything up. Its quite satisfying. The unit cap prevents you from turtling and build a huge zerg of heavy units and the campaign maps are large enough that you can't maximum defend everything. So it's sort of challenging but not that hard. Here's the unpolished part, where in COH you could clear out an entire building with grenades, it takes a few. Fire sometimes kills all the units or something no one. The whole cover doesnt work out properly, if you have more than one unit selected only one will take over etc. This couldve been done better but its something you can get used to. As an RTS i do recommend it because it's fun, and finally a worthy RTS! Is it perfect? No but there is enough thought in this game to make it fun.

If you love Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Starcraft 2, or Command and Conquer you'll love this game. I've really enjoyed the single player campaign. I know some people have been disappointed by the small amount of multiplayer maps, but the devs have already confirmed there's going to be a continuous stream of new maps, and additional features. This game has scratched a strategy itch which I desperately needed. I would love to see additional factions/campaigns in future dlc. I'd especially like to see the Nordic Kingdoms and the Togawa Shogunate make a appearance.

THE MAPS: There are very few maps... 3 maps for 6 players... So it gets boring pretty fast. THE AI: In the Beta the AI was not good but it was fun practicing vs AI. No after release the AI is cheating as f*** and the AI level is manipulating the game. The easy AIs unit die easily whereas the hard AI's units are pretty hard to kill (using the same weapons). Retreating of the AI is almost always successful even with ~0 HP, retreating you own units against AI almost never works.... And of course the AI has looooots of resources to spend even if it hasn't a single resource point on the map. It's very nasty if you are only able to practice strategy games against human players because of the AI breaking most of the core game mechanics. THE GAME: The game is really fun but it doesn't feel inspired or new... because it's just 99,9% lightweighted Company of Heroes. Mechs aren't the big invention especially because they just feel and behave like ordinary tanks.

The story is decent enough to keep me playing, battles are fun. Graphics are good. I just wish there was a way to make the mechs feel more weight and intimidating.