Old War

In Brief

We were given Old War 2 HERE on August 5, 2019, where it received a positive 60% out of 5 votes and only one comment from me. Today's game is virtually the same as its sequel in both game play and graphics, so I will be repeating much of what I said in my review of Old War 2. It’s a basic real time strategy game, that any RTS fan will probably think is total rubbish from the outset, however having been into r.t.s. games ever since the first Civilization and Alpha Centauri by Sid Meier and Syndicate from Bullfrog Productions (1993), I would argue that this is actually a really good starting point for those who have never played RTS games before despite its relatively hard to beat levels. It’s simple, and has limited units, with even fewer commands to remember.

Introduction:

OldWar - a game in the genre of RTS (real-time strategy). Levels are built like puzzles that need to be solved. Each level has its own goal, which can be achieved in different ways. To win, you need not only to hire and improve units, but also to look for a gap in the enemy's defense. Luring individual units, you can seize the advantage.

Natural phenomena like tornadoes, thunderstorm lightning, meteorites, geysers ... can affect the course of the battle. If you properly use these phenomena, you can turn the tide of battle in their favor.

Reference accessed HERE. 1st October 2019

Game play Video:

You can see a few videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE and via the Steam store page

The Game:

Old War is a basic real time strategy game commonly referred to as an RTS game. They can be highly complex games with loads of different commands and more importantly many different types of units and other resources such as buildings and weponry, whereas today's game is very limited in both resource types and units i.e. there are only four types of unit that include Knight, Magician, Doctor and Shooter. Each unit costs a varying amount from 100 gold (Doctor) to 200 gold (Shooter). Each resource center earns you 5 gold every second or so, so, the more resource centers you conquer and capture, the more gold you earn and the faster you can build up your army to beat the opposition. As you take their resources, they will slow down their production of new units.

There isn't much variety with respect to the soldiers, but from entering the second level, it looks like there is a varied set of environments to explore; however, this is mainly due to the backgrounds being coloured differently. The assets used in each level are the same or similar apart from a few changes to some static objects from level to level and each level does appear to get a different set of monsters and natural phenomenons such as lightning, meteorites etc' to tackle

To win a level you have to kill all the enemy soldiers and capture all their resources. However, (and thankfully) things do become more challenging when you move on to the second level. You'll need to create a decent army with all the different types of soldier as quickly as possible if you are to beat the enemy, but you'll also need to judiciously upgrade your units and then capture some of the enemies resources to speed up your own production. Apart from the first level, which I won on my first attempt and quickly, my next several foray's into enemy territory were total disasters and I was wiped out very quickly each time, due in part to the enemy having a much larger standing army at the start and many more resources.You'll definitely need to use various strategies by selecting the right class of soldiers at the start of level 2 and also select the appropriate upgrades

The shooter and magician units do not become available to use until you have upgraded the Knight and Doctor. Unfortunately the game doesn't include any documentation that tells you what each unit is used for, nor other useful information that inexperienced players could have used to help with playing the game. However, you can generally guess at their roles, for example the doctor either repairs injured soldiers or repairs the damaged resources. I've not had time to figure whether it is one or the other or both yet, partly due to the inability to select specific classes individually when they are all grouped together. Good (usually AAA rated) RTS games have that ability; unfortunately this game does not, so it can be a bug-bear when trying to select specific classes when they are urgently needed if they are grouped with other classes.

You need to research via the improvements building that looks like a blacksmiths shop made of stone. The building that creates the soldiers looks a little like a statue of a Greek warrior. Each type of unit can be upgrade five times via the blacksmith shop to increase their capabilities. As well as the knights and doctors, you can create , shooters, magicians, as well as open unit shooters and open unit magicians (I haven't figured out what open unit means).

As with my attempts playing the second in the series a few months ago, I had exactly the same issue with this game when it came to the second level, I tried several tactics and none of them helped me to survive long enough to create a large standing army so that I could capture enemy resources. Lightning bolts occasionally appeared near my resource centers and often wiped out half my army at a time, and in later levels other natural phenomena will intervene to hinder or help you in your quest.

Conclusion:

The following is an edited version of what I wrote for my conclusion to Old War 2 that was given away on the ; the conclusion also stands for today's game, so I've re-posted it below:

I've purchased hundreds of RTS games over the last two decades. They used to be my favorite genre for years. For example I must have spent tens of thousands of hours playing games like Age of Empires, Warhammer 40 000, Cossack's: Art of War and later versions, as well as early favorites such as Dune and Civilization I and II then later Civilization III, IV, and VI. The Total War franchise is one of my favorite RTS game s partly due to the ability to modify the game, for example my copy of Total War Attila has several mod added that change the look of the game to the Lord of the Rings, Medieval and Ancient Warfare.

Age of Wonders (that was given away via The Humble Bundle a couple of times over the last few months) is an example of a decent AAA RTS game. Today's game comes nowhere near as good as any of the ones I've mentioned above, and I'll probably never return to it after today; that said, I do think this is an ideal game for anyone who hasn't played or rarely plays RTS games. It has the basics, which is all you need to start. If you like the game, then you could work up to the more complicated and much better games i've mentioned above plus many more titles that I don't have the time the mention here. For a beginner (Noob) I'd score this a 6.5 to 7 out of 10; however if you are an experienced RTS player this wouldn't be worth more than a 1 or 2 out of 10 at the most.(and I'm being generous). So, in conclusion, a game worth downloading if you aren't familiar with the genre. Despite its lack of a help document, its still relatively easy to pick up due to it being a very simple RTS game.

Today is the last chance to get the atmospheric Metro 2033 Redux (one of my favorite post apocalyptic shooters) plus a reality simulation called Everything HERE. They will change over to a game called Minit later this afternoon (UK time). Indie Gala also have some new freebies to check out HERE.