The game completely lacks a single player campaign. All you get are random skirmishes or pre-built, one-off scenarios. The gameplay is turn based and involves moving your units one by one every turn. This might sound good on paper, but when you have 20+ units under your control and have to move them all every single turn, it gets very tedious very quickly. Especially when controls are clunky. The animations and visuals are fine, but the game just completely lacks any semblance of a flow. You can dump an hour into it with basically nothing of relevance happening. Whenever 2 units clash, you enter a battle where you control your unit and go against the AI, which is controlling its own unit. Most units have counters and what they're good/bad against, but you can also usually cheese the AI in some way. Put a couple hours into it before quitting out of boredom. This game is a case of a good idea executed quite badly. Combined with the lack of any single player campaign or story, it is very hard to recommend.
Imagine releasing an ARPG, which has less mechanics than Diablo 1, but in 2005. What you get is Space Hack. The only choice of what to do with your character is where you dump the attribute points you get per level up. The only real choice is whether you want to go melee, ranged or "spells". Spells in quotations, because they are provided by a separate item type, gated by the attribute that is equivalent to Intelligence. Going melee will make the early stages of the game literal torture as you will have to wait for your health to regen after every few enemies because you have no other option but to tank hits. As for "itemization", there are only 2 rarities. White and Blue equivalent from Diablo. Again, nothing else, making the game wholly uninteresting to play, as you've seen literally everything the moment a first blue item drops. Combine that with absolutely repetitive, stretched out maps which take forever to clear, basically no story to speak of and gameplay that does not change in the slightest from start to finish and you got a stinker. There are no skills or anything engaging at all in the entire game. You will only derive some enjoyment out it if you want to mindlessly click with your brain off for several hours. I finished it for the sake of it, but the game is most likely not worth anyone's time. 3/10.
Overall, the remaster is quite decent, but does the unforgivable. Namely changes that cannot be reverted to vanilla. From rebalancing, tweaking the collectibles and even introducing some occasional graphical glitches that were not there in the original. Differences: https://aogames.fandom.com/wiki/Asterix_%26_Obelix_XXL:_Romastered_(2020) Problems: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Asterix_%26_Obelix_XXL:_Romastered#Issues_unresolved There is a retro mode, where you can swap the graphics back and even choose the 4:3 aspect ratio, but it won't revert the other gameplay/level changes. Also, the music does not loop properly in retro mode. The new graphics are nice, but pretty different from the original. As for the game itself, it is just the old classic. Mostly a simple game of bashing romans, collecting helmets and laurels and doing some rudimentary puzzles. Mechanics-wise, the game is more aimed at kids, but Asterix fans will have a blast.
2 factions with different playstyles, 15 + 1 mission each, most of which require figuring out a certain gimmick to successfully beat. Plays mostly like an RTS game with a twist that you only get a main "building" and a fixed amount of resources to construct your robos. Whenever your unit gets destroyed, the remains return to your base and you can re-use the resources. You can mix and match whatever weapon/chassis/enhancement you wish to try and figure out strategies to beat the scenarios. Most missions will require you to destroy the enemy base. It's health bar is split into 3 parts. Whenever you completely damage a part, a huge explosion occurs that completely wipes any of your units, meaning most scenarios require at least 3 successful attacks on the enemy base. In most missions, the AI has some distinct advantage and you (usually) can't brute force it differently as it spams out/replaces any lost units constantly. Some missions are quite cheesable though, especially if you play the "blue" faction, which is so massively overpowered compared to the "red" faction, it's not even funny. With the red faction, some missions can be a struggle. But I breezed through the blue campaign mostly like a knife through butter. Probably also because the "blue" campaign is more tutorial-like and probably meant to be played first (which I did not). Between levels, you can spend earned cash to buy intel on the enemy or upgrades/boosters for your robos, base or "secret inventions". This is very prone to save/loading, because you can "try your luck" whenever it comes to paying for these. One of the possible results is that you are given the thing in question for free. "Hmmm, do I want to pay 10 million for this upgrade which I will be saving for over several missions, or do I just reload until I get the result I want and get the ludicrously expensive thing for free? Decisions, decisions..." Overall, quite fun though. Really should have played this earlier. An easy 8/10.
Especially after the very good Allied Assault. This game consists mostly of walking through jungle corridors, picking off enemy soldiers one by one by hugging cover like your life depends on it (because it literally does) as you slowly crawl forward, lest you get surprised from the side and die pretty much instantly to hitscan hell. If you do not utilize cover, you will die. Period. The game seems to be set up in a way that when you are ducking behind an object, enemies simply can't physically hit you. The moment your center mass is not in cover, you are hosed down nearly instantly with a hitscan storm from out of nowhere. Meaning most of the fights will have you hugging the rock/stump of your choosing, usually crouched and simply leaning out to the left and right to take potshots at the enemy, before immediately ducking into cover again. Leaning out is safe as your center mass remains in cover and is pretty much the only way to safely shoot the enemy without dying. As company, you have a squad of goons with pretty much braindead AI, whose only saving grace is that they are immortal and get up constantly from being downed. I am fairly convinced you could go through the game just camping behind something in a fight and wait for the goons to kill everything (it'd take a while though). Which is not a good thing. Commanding them is basically pointless and it doesn't really seem to do anything. What's worse, the game's healing is mostly depends on one of these goons, namely the medic. He has a limited number of heals per level for you (depending on difficulty) and can "attempt" to revive you if you are downed. I say attempt, because the AI is so braindead, he will fail to pathfind to where you are laying 99% of the time before you pass on. Normal medkits are extremely rare for some reason. The game is also filled with scripted sequences. Turret sections, flying sections, cinematic sections, you name it. Most of these are a chore. A painfully average 5.5/10.
