I saw a post from Gaming PH on Facebook about this game, and it's been a while since I played any RTS games, so I decided to give this a try!
First time I loaded into the game, I'm amazed by the intro and loading screen! Really liked the animation of pressing the start button!
Then, it's all about the aesthetics! I really love the art, narration, and unit voices!
Now being hyped, I played the game for one hour but got a bit frustrated on how I played, I stopped at campaign 2 haha. I wish I could've played more!
So, here are the challenges I encountered on playing by campaign:
Campaign 1
- On the start of campaign 1, I don't know where my troops were because it's really dark. The map only lightens up after I selected the troops within the dark.
- Upon encountering an enemy, it's really hard to fight them (for me). I don't know if the enemies are dead or not, and I can't micro-control my units. I wish there were enemy health bars and I can switch my units by just pressing tab. Though now, I just realized that I can just click the unit and make that unit run. lol
- I had a unit slowed after going into a rice field area and idk why! I clicked the unit and it has same movement speed with others. I let him run for a couple of minutes hoping that would fix the slow movement. After that, I had to restart the run because it's not fixing itself xD
- I got a troop stuck because of the path finding mechanics. Also, I discovered (a bit late of a discovery lol) that there were safer paths without any enemies. I wish I was better at navigating paths!
- Lastly, the objective says I need to go north and all units must survived. Some of my units died and I got on north but there's no message nor change on objective, so I restarted the game several times. Finally, I got all of my initial units without dying but I don't know where to go next. The objective changed to leave the place, but idk where to leave. I wish there were more guides on where I needed to go.
Campaign 2
- On the start of campaign 2, I'm really confused on what to do. The instructions was to build but idk how. So, I just explored aimlessly until I found out that there's literally a build icon on the character. I wish it was highlighted after the buildings were introduced.
- During the building process, I think I pressed an placed all buildings at the same time. I thought that would make them do the buildings one by one. There's only gray buildings I see and upon left clicking them, my troops won't go there and build it. After a couple of tries, I realized that I need to right click each building for the builders to go there and build it. I wish there were tooltip on top of unfinished buildings that I can click or something to help me.
- Upon multiple restarts, that's the only time I realized that my resource that I need to get troops or build house is being depleted by time. Truly a real Filipino gaming experience, high tax! Kidding aside, I tried buying the resource building but it won't let me (prolly because it got depleted or used in building), and I tried forcefully getting resources but it just backfired lol. I wish there were more ways to get resources because I can't keep up with the taxes by just killing enemies (the enemies are killing my troops too)
Other thing/s I encountered:
- The dialogue still says next when there's nothing next anymore. The highlight should be start campaign button after all dialogues were done.
- Graphics settings is bugged - shows a zoomed in graphics settings that I can't even click and the main settings buttons' hover effects are disabled but still clickable.
- No credits yet :(
TL;DR
Tried the game after seeing it on Gaming PH and was instantly impressed by the intro, art, and voice work. However, I ran into several gameplay challenges—dark maps, unclear combat feedback, pathfinding problems, and confusing objectives in Campaign 1, plus unclear building mechanics, and resource management struggles in Campaign 2, plus some UI bugs. Despite the frustration, I see a lot of potential in the game and hope future updates improve clarity, controls, and guidance for new players.
I'm very excited for the future of this game! Hopefully, I can become a better player next time around xD
My full gameplay below: