Distant Worlds 2 - PC (Steam) Review

Distant Worlds 2 by developer Code Force and publisher Slitherine Ltd— PC (Steam) review written by Robert with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

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Distant Worlds 2 is by Code Force and published by Slitherine Ltd. It is the long-awaited follow-up to one of my all-time favorite titles, Distant Worlds: Universe. Similar to its predecessor, Distant Worlds 2 is a real-time with pause 4x title that leans heavily into the automation of your empire as you explore your choice of galaxy and is more than just a shiny paint job. Distant Worlds 2 has been built on an all-new 64-bit engine and uses 3D models rather than the 2D pixel art found in Distant Worlds.

Distant Worlds 2 is a mixed-bag for me, which is actually a bit surprising given how much I loved the first one. While Distant Worlds 2 is by no means “bad,” far from it—it is in fact, excellent. Where I struggle with it is in the absolutely and utterly and laughably broken civilian economy and, believe it or not … the switch to 3D feels really bizarre for some reason. The “skybox” (background, more like) is wonderful, the 3D planets are eye-catching … but the ships / stations? They feel and look bland:

Sure, some are nice looking, but most feel patched together and nearly every ship and station in Distant Worlds 2 feels (and looks) less interesting than the 2D sprites of its predecessor. While I know that this is subjective, it was very difficult to truly immerse myself when it was hard to enjoy some of these ship designs. There’s something less immersive than the blocky 3D assets in comparison to the more nostalgic 2D ships. I do genuinely hope that we’ll see modders start putting out new ship designs and community balance patches, as having a bit of variety may help with this weird displacement feeling.

While I may not be a fan of the ship models, the new, more responsive user interface is a welcome evolution over Distant Worlds: Universe. Accessing pertinent information quickly is easily done through the clean, simple icons and pages. Policies, which are how you tweak your automation settings, I found I regularly jumped back and forth between automation and manual settings. Why switch back and forth you didn’t ask? For me, it’s about immersio. Sometimes it’s nice to really get in and micro/macro-manage my empire (which, interestingly enough, I really enjoyed the Feudalism government type) it just really clicked with me and I found the most enjoyment out of tweaking Humans to fit that feudal empire style.

Fortunately the sheer amount of automation customizations that you can make are mind-boggling; with Distant Worlds 2 you almost don’t need to play. It would be a shame because you’d miss out on some great ad hoc missions and a relatively good, if simple “main arc” that covers a basic storyline. Where the story actually excels is in relation to the gameplay, not necessarily the actual story. I felt it more like a prolonged and necessary tutorial that … didn’t feel like a tutorial. Another gameplay arc / mechanic that seemed far more brutal than in its predecessor, was surrounding Pirates. They can be more than an annoyance, to the point that their protection rackets were costing so much. The tithes that I had to pay to the ridiculous amount of pirates that I encountered in the first 4-5 hours of the day put a significant damper on my excitement to play—I'm not proud of it, but I may have rage quit a few times those first few sessions. Once I was able to get away from the "here, have 7 pirate factions within stones throw while pre-warp" and just play, it was smooth-ish sailing for a solid 10-12 until the real action started.

I do think that there is some bias here for me that I have yet to work through, in part because I really truly dove into Distant Worlds well after its initial release; the first Distant Worlds first launched in 2010 and I didn’t dive into Distant Worlds until Universe came out … in 2014. By that time, Matrix Games and Slitherine had 4 years of balance patches and content in it so it was in the most polished state that it could be in. Distant Worlds 2? Not exactly polished right out of the gate. Looming optimization issues saw Distant Worlds 2 really start to chug in the later game, granted that was a test on a machine running slightly better than the bare minimum requirements. However, on my primary gaming rig, I didn’t experience the same slow down / skipping that I did on the old machine, so you’ll want to make sure you’re running newer hardware (if you can find it…) before you get into the larger galaxy maps.

Summary

Though it may fall short of its predecessor, Distant Worlds 2 is laudable sequel to what I feel is one of the most enjoyable and unique 4x titles on the market. That’s a hard gig to follow and though there are plenty of balance-related issues and more optimization can be done and I imagine that were Distant Worlds 2 given the same 4-5 years post-launch that Distant Worlds: Universe had, I imagine Distant Worlds 2 could very well be a quintessentially perfect 4x experience.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Fantasy General II: Invasion - XB1 Review

Fantasy General II: Invasion by developer Owned by Gravity and publisher Slitherine—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

It has been over 20 years since the original Fantasy General released, but the core formula still holds up incredibly well. Fantasy General II: Invasion has the look and feel of a modern game but retains the core strategy and roleplaying principles of the original, creating a thoroughly enjoyable experience that was originally built for PC but works quite well on console.

The original Fantasy General was a PC strategy game that released in the mid-90’s. Now, I did not originally play it back then – I was more of a console gamer at the time than PC one. Thankfully there’s sites like Good Old Games that have allowed me to catch up on these missed classics over the last several years. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Fantasy General when I finally did get around to playing it, and as such I was really excited to hear that Slitherine was bringing us a sequel – to consoles no less.

Fantasy General II came out last fall, and it was a natural fit on the PC. The gameplay is very detail-oriented, and while I was happy to hear it was coming to consoles, I admit that I had concerns about how the controls would translate to a controller. Admittedly, there are times it was a little clunky – the design feels built for the free movements of a mouse, but it certainly works well most of the time. This is mostly due to having a lot of units on the screen at any one time, and a lot of menus in the interface. These menus are necessary to the game’s flow, but jumping around box to box is a little awkward with the controller, especially at first. After a few hours with the game, I had built up a bit of muscle memory around the buttons and shortcuts, so that doing things like cycling through units and noticing which ones are ready to level up, and then jumping into the upgrade tree and selecting what path I want their growth to adhere to… but it took time to get comfortable with it.

While the title of the game is pretty generic, the characters and story are actually interesting and memorable. There are two basic unit archetypes: troops and Heroes. This distinction is very important, as they function differently and impact mission objectives as well. Your clan is led by Falir One-Eye, and you are his son and future leader of your people. He is your first and primary hero, a balanced warrior-type with good mobility and survivability, but other hero units – including his sister – are introduced and join the party along the way.

Troops and Heroes both gain experience and have a branching tree of enhancements available to them. Heroes are certainly the more important characters, and the ones meant to be more permanent. Mission objectives often have you hunting down enemies, or reaching certain points in the map – but also indicate that all of your heroes must survive. That is not to say that your non-hero troops are destined to be redshirts from Star Trek, but they are certainly more expendable. I went into the game fully expecting that I would keep all of my units alive and grow them over time, but reality hit me rather quickly and sacrifices sometimes have to be made in order to ensure victory.

The biggest reason for this is how health is handled. Heroes have a health bar – they either live or they eventually die, but there is no in-between. The troops are built up of multiple people – so a unit of spear maidens may have ten people comprising it. If they are wounded, you need to get them to rest or they may die off. As they die off, they become less effective in combat, and there is also a better chance that the unit as a whole may get wiped out. Once they die – they die, you lose your unit. Even if the unit survives the map, but loses several of its people, you will refill their ranks at the end of the mission with fresh recruits. This may lower the unit’s overall experience or levels, because they’re now a mix of rookies and veterans. This makes it much harder to effectively level these units up – but they can also be quite powerful in later stages, making successful progression very rewarding.

The actual tactics here can be brutal and unforgiving. Some units seem really powerful at first glance, but there is a role for everyone if you use them right. You have ranged attacks, that are squishy at close range, but if placed properly near melee units, they can provide additional cover fire defensively while offensively chipping away at opposing units safely. Rider units have hit and run tactics, capable of moving along roads and fields very quickly – but poorly on rough terrain. Some melee units have high mobility over a variety of terrains and deal high damage but also can be swiftly wiped out because they have lower defense. Once you get a dozen or so of these units moving around a map, you can see how tactical Fantasy General II can be.

There are additional layers baked into the game as well. Different terrain yields different bonuses and vulnerabilities, items come in two flavors (consumables or equipment) that can offer stat bonuses, additional skills or health refreshment, and different types of magical spells. Exploration is a key component of the gameplay as well. Often times you have specific objectives such as reaching a zone on the opposite side of the map, and you can make a beeline for those objectives and move on. However, there are often other areas of note on the map (ruins, caves, etc) that can be found that yield bonuses or sometimes grant you new artifacts that could be dangerous to try and acquire – but also help make units more powerful going forward if you are successful.

Most of the stages were not terribly difficult, but I have been plying strategy games for about 30 years now, and I thoroughly enjoy the tactics / RPG hybrid. That being said, some of these scenarios are will definitely provide a challenge. There are additional settings to make the game even more brutal if you are looking for a challenge. The computer is particularly adept at using hit / run / recover tactics that make their forces feel much larger than they are. I won’t go so far as to say the higher levels of difficulty cheat – but there were definitely times where I swore and asked myself: how are they able to…

In terms over overall presentation, Fantasy General II delivers a quality upgrade over the original. The musical score is moving, and the loading screens deliver a variety of tidbits – including one that says that this game’s theme is a re-orchestration of the original. I did not recall the original theme, so I fired up my GoG copy and sure enough, there it was. Nice nod to the original. Visually there is plenty of detail to be had. You can zoom out to see more of the battlefield (at least the visible parts, as the game does employ a Fog of War to obscure unexplored sections of the map), or you can zoom in and see the reasonably detailed units and environments. There are RPG elements beyond the unit progression also, as you get to make choices that can impact story elements later down the line.

Summary

Simply put, Fantasy General II: Invasion is a deep, enjoyable strategy game that works surprisingly well on consoles. It offers a lengthy campaign that provides ample challenge and replay value through the unit development and choices that can be made along the way. There is a bit of a learning curve to the mechanics and controls, but once you’ve learned how to play, Fantasy General II: Invasion is a must-play for strategy fans.

Score: 8.5 / 10

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Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock - PS4 Review

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock delivers a fantastic strategy game that provides hours of tactical combat and edge-of-your-seat encounters. That it is also a great representation of the Battlestar Galactica property is just an added, but very welcome, bonus.

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Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock - XB1 Review

Robert was a big fan of Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock on the PC and there's no much of a question as to why. Slitherine is a name that already boasts confidence and with them behind Black Lab Games, the first Cylon War in Battlestar's history was something to experience. Put in charge of a very formidable installation, welcome to a deadlocked situation which will often have you questioning if what you just did was actually a good decision.

I'll start off with the fact that Deadlock is not something that you can dive into headfirst and expect to succeed every time. This is also a good thing as there's a depth to the system that can both make or break you. While I found the controls a bit iffy through the controller, you'll eventually adapt as the hours roll on by.

Deadlock puts you into an interesting situation that while being turned based also contains real-time elements. All decision making will be done while paused but once you are done with your choices you get to see them played out in real time. This allows you to adapt from a potentially previous bad decision and hope that your next one will save you.

Your turns themselves will have you plan out the movement of your ships and their orders for that turn. Using their turrets, missile barrages or repair orders on the numerous fundamental systems can all be issued while either closing the gap or trying to create one between your ships and the enemy.

What I truly appreciated is that because this is “space” there's more than simply two-dimensional movement. When issuing move orders you can also tell ships to adjust, using the two-dimensional logic, up or down. This allows for some feats that could be considered tactical brilliance while it could also be the cause of you wondering why your fleet isn't attacking the oncoming enemy. Elevation matters for firing solutions and it may have happened more than once that I oops on this effect.

One of the other features that I appreciated was the choice in difficulty and exactly what you could expect. While the choice is a fairly common thing that one could expect it was the specifics that left nothing to the imagination as to exactly how evenly matched or out-matched one would be. Even on “normal” in which you are given the same allotment as the enemy things can get tough if you stupidly issued orders getting your ships destroyed. I swear I'm not talking from experience…

The only part of the experience that I didn't like per say were the controls. Even after a good deal of time I still found myself getting the directions to pan or zoom in wrong. If anything, and I don't say this often, I would have preferred a mouse and keyboard in order to issue my orders and let my fleet carry them out.

That said that was the only issue. Not only is the overall system that handles the gameplay great, but the visuals of the ships and the systems that you explore are pleasing to the eye. The music that accompanies your starting orders and the battle sequences sound great and fit the experience very well.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is not only an amazing strategy experience in the depths of space but also a great Battlestar entry. While losing battles to the toasters can be a bit disappointing because you only have yourself to blame, winning brings about a sense of accomplishment that you won the day and that humanity can keep going on for a little bit longer. So say we all.

Game Information

Platform:
Microsoft Xbox One
Developer(s):
Black Lab Games
Publisher(s):
Slitherine Ltd.
Genre(s):
Strategy
Mode(s):
Single Player
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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