This is a very well done game - the visuals, gameplay and story work well. However, each has its problems, which just hold it back: Graphics - the game is very dark and every map seems to be raining, ends up making the game look dull, when it shouldn't - the water effects are great and the environmental design fantastic. Gameplay - needs to learn from Xcom 2 - lots of little features just don't quite work. Story - takes too long to get anywhere - I’m 80 hours in and we still feel at the beginning. That said, absolutely worth playing.
It does a decent, not great job of explaining the mechanics and the soundtrack is decent. The characters are humorous and the mechanics are reasonably easily picked up. It does get a bit repetitive.
A rather unique game, it has no obvious competition in combining base building and RTS. Its flaws are frustrating, but overall it’s a good game. The graphics have been improved, but there are no graphics options – you just chose the resolution Its RTS elements are generally frustrating: There appears to be no auto attack button. The best I could get was to set my units up to patrol an area. This is an absolute pain – it means you must nanny your attacking units. Your units won’t do anything to defend themselves either – they are utterly brainless. Your units will happily sit under missile fire. They have terrible attack prioritise – all melee troops tend to favour destroying walls over destroying anything else. Ranged units will focus on killing peasants over killing enemies attacking them. Worse, they will focus on killing the lord, a task for which they are rubbish at or killing the enemy, resulting in you bringing a mass of archers and then losing them because they stood there not targeting the enemy. Siege weapons forget their range – every so often they will stop attacking and require a manual reminder. Siege weapons won’t defend themselves, siege weapons won’t target enemy buildings – even if they rebuild it. This can be frustrating when you use siege to bring a critical wall/tower down. If the enemy rebuilds it, you have to then re-task units to destroy it. Engineers sometimes just exit the siege engine for no reason. A lot of the numbers are never explained – how much food do your peasants need, etc, which leads to a lot of guess work. All of this makes the combat and base management frustrating and off putting.
The controls let this game down – without a controller it is very clumsy, with a camera determined to fight you. Otherwise it’s a fun game, with the snarky Rayne and wacky enemy design keeping enough humour in the game to make it feel fun. The combat, even looking past the controls is a mixed bag – the bosses are a nightmare, while the general enemies are great fun. Overall, this isn’t a bad game, but it missed its chance to be great.
It has a lovely design – bright and colourful. However, it seems rather broken – the tutorial explains close to nothing, leaving your floundering. Several mechanics, such as shipping don’t appear to work – a tool tip goes so far as to recommend you turn it off. The UI doesn’t work well – multiple menus, in very tiny text. Overall, there’s clearly a workable game there, but it feels rushed and incomplete.
