I’m not an RTS guy, but as TheGamer’s resident Warhammer boi, I was elected to attend a recent hands-on preview of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t jazzed about turning up for three hours of playing a genre I haven’t much experience with in my least favourite 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Warhammer un🐼iverse, but hey, there’sꦇ Orcs. Sorry, Orruks.
The game is pretty simple in itself, even for someone who’s only played a handful of RTS games – 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Total War: Warhammer being the only other series I’ve put serious hours into. There are three objectiv💜es on the map, and capturing each slowly drains your opponent’s health. There are a few currencies to collect by scouting the land and holding strategic positions, which will allow you to upgrade your towers, use your abilities, and build more units. I’ve seen everything in Realms of Ruin before, albeit with different names. You’ll be surprised, then, to learn that I absolutely loved my time with the game, and can’t wait to jump into another match whenever I get the opportunity.
Our group played the tutorial first to ease ourselves into things. This was a linear experienc🅷e that showed you all the necessary skills required to play in a digestible manner. One objective at a time, one enemy at a time, one ability at a time. It was a good way to learn the basics, but there are a couple of things for the multiplayer section of the game that could have been better explained (more on that later). However, I’m not sure whether these mechanics serve the same function in the campaign, or exist at all in that mode, so I’ll reserve judgement for now.
The most surprising꧂ part of the tutorial was at the end, where the Stormcast characters had an impressive cutscene discussing their explorations so far. The production value is high, the animations detailed, and the voice acting stellar. There’s a range of accents, and while I didn’t hear a scouser, there was plenty of northern representation among the ranks of Sigmar’s finest, mostly hailing from Yorkshire.
Despite not getting any of the campaign itself barring the tutorial, it whet my appetite big time. Like seeing the waiter walk past with a steaming roast and deciding to order the same yourself, I can’t wait for the main course to arrive in a fully-fledged campaign with more story than most Warhammer games so much as think about. The soldiers of 🏅Azyr are my perfectly golden Yorkshire puddings, and I can’t wait for Realms of Ruin to coat them in lashings of thick, narrative gravy as they do battle agai♏nst legions of Orruks.
While the quality of the campaign – or at least the cutscenes – was a big surprise, the multiplayer is where players will spend most of their time. The only mission available to us was a simple map with th𝕴ree objectives (called Victory Points); one on each team’s home turf and another in the middle. It’s your standard setup and, while I hope there’s more than one map variation in the final game, it work🌌s perfectly.
This is where you almost need another tutorial, however. While you know how to control your units, there’s nothing to explain how to earn either of the game’s two currencies. It took me a while to work out how to upgrade my Command Post or construct Bastions on Arcane Conduits, and more time than I’d care to admit to figure out how to create new units. The menus aren’t particularly intuitive for newcomers, but as soon as I’d figured it out, everything clicked. It doesn&rsqꩲuo;t help that everything🐽 has a Magic Warhammer Name, which confuses things a little when I just want to build a healing Bastion or a currency Bastion.
My opponent was thankfully a fellow newcomer to the genre, but in this time he’d built up a healthy lead. My saving grace was upgrading my Arcane Conduit༺s to harvest more Realmstone, allowing me to quickly upgrade my home base. That meant I could build new units, specifically brutal monsters like Troggoths and Sloggoths. These obliterated swathes of Stormcast, and turned the tides of battle in my favour. The comeback was cemented when I took my opponent’s home base, and won by just eight victor♍y points. Considering our two subsequent games ended more like 400-0 in my opponent’s favour, this nailbiter was the perfect showcase of Realm of Ruin’s multiplayer excitement.
I encountered a couple of bugs and some abstruse systems that weren’t quite explained well enough upon entering multiplayer, but this is a game still very much in development. Its cutscenes and voice acting immediately grounded me in its world, its beautifully-designed units led me into battle, and its exciting multiplayer format provided an exciting competition that I didn’t know RTS games could manage. It plays well and looks great while it doeꦇs it, with the polished models and 🌜combat animations shining even on my cloud-streamed session. Realm of Ruin surprised me on almost every level, and with two more factions (I assume one of Chaos and one of Death) and a whole campaign to come in the full release, there’s plenty of room for dessert.