A bad reskin built on solid fonudations
This is a game Built on the same engine as WH40K Battlesector which was a really good 40K turn based strategy.
Saying that it also bring all the good and bad stuff using the same engine, mosty the bad stuff and then bringing all the bad stuff to the front.
40K uses both ranged and melee combat and the engine does both sides ok, with ranged combat being more prominent.
Here the combat is mostly melee focused and that is where it falls apart by most battles being stuck in the front row because moving anywhere would trigger attacks of opportunity. It is also very unconsistent with what it shows you and what it triggers.
Apart from the badly copied battle system it also has technical issuses I encountered in Battlesector, but they are worse here.
For example if you load a save file a couple of times the game would dip into single frame digits and there were a few crashes to desktop.
The game offers a single player campaign with one faction and two more for use in multiplayer and skirmish games.
I played on Hard and the difficulty curve is beyond insane, some missions you just move around your units smashing through anything the game throws at you, on other missions is spams you with almost infinite amount of enemy units and since this is a melee focused game it just bogs down your units in place while the computer throws an almost infinite amount of units at you.
This mostly happens on open maps where you are surrounded on all sides with no chance of manouvering.
This also bring me to the campaign which is just bad. I'm on the penultimate mission and I have no clue what is going on with the story beside the main character being after his father's sword. That's it.
The mission structure is bad and nonsensical as you'll encounter missions with objectives to hold out 3 turns. Guess what happens after three turns?
The objective turns into defeat all enemies, so why the hold out if you have to wipe everything in the end.
Some missions can be sequence broken if you know what the mission trigger is, but also can be a problem with the penultimate mission where you have to exit the map filled with enemies.
You start almost in the middle of the map with enemies on all sides, just one turn from you, so you'll be locked in melee combat from all sides in one or two turns.
If you go to the suggested exit nothing happens because you need to spend X turns in combat for reinforcements to arrive and then proceed to the exit which is impossible because by that time you'll be locked in melee from all sides unable to move. Even if you manage, the objective will change what units have to leave.
Apart from the gameplay and campaign the voice actig is something to be belived.
On one side it is competent from the voice actors, but the direction is baffeling.
An bronze age shamanistic culture is voiced like US southerners, combined with bad writing really leaves the player confused with what is going on.
Music is fine, it reminds me of Fantasy Generat 2, but not as good.
In the end I'd say this is a mediocre reskin of an existing game and an incompetent reskin at that.
It has mechanical issues, technical issues, a bad campaign, incomprehensive story and really bad voice acting.
Droppin this before the last mission because everything above add to frustration, but without any of fun in the process.
If you want a strategy game like this just go with BattleSector or maybe Sanctus Reach, avoid this game.
13 gamers found this review helpful