The first thing I would like to mention, is oh my god, the artwork is absolutely STUNNING. There's something about hand-drawn artwork that really catches my eye in games; that's not to say that artwork is what makes or breaks game, but rather good artwork in a game is the icing on the cake. Yeah, it's weird that I would start with something that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things... but artwork like this really isn't seen often enough in my opinion.
So let's get into the meat of things: The first thing we're greeted with when starting the game is a pretty sweet fight scene that makes you think you might be playing some sort of third-person fighting game, weirdly there's like no context to this which is a bit confusing right off the bat. Then it transitions into a bit of a tutorial on how to command units and how to start playing the game.
So at this point, we've seen a guy killing people, gotten a bit of introductory gameplay, and we're thrown into some more beautiful artwork with a nice narrated voiceover telling us the story of what's going on and why it's happening.
Now we get into another tutorial scenario where we learn more about the mechanics of the game. So what's this game all about? Ancestor's Legacy is all about squad management; we're not dealing with massive groups of units doing tons of different things all at once. With a maximum squad limit of 10 squads, we're maybe fighting over two, POSSIBLY three different locations at one time.
The gameplay relies heavily on a combination of unit counters and terrain management. All foot-squads have the ability to make two different types of traps; either a trap which slows enemies down and makes them unable to run away, or a trap which instantly kills some of the units. Much of the gameplay revolves around managing what looks like fields of wheat or tall grass where the players are unable to see into unless they have at least one squad inside the field. Some squads have the ability to spot traps at the cost of not auto-attacking, though in my experience the traps are only effective in certain situations which realistically are NOT in the early part of the game.
When not fighting around fields and trees and traps, there is a struggle to be had over what I would call "village points" which are points which must be captured which then earn resources as the game goes on. These points are quite important in the early- to mid-game, though I could see how they would fall off in the later game if there's a buildup of resources and not much fighting because both forces don't engage to the point of death. Without more time in the game it's a bit hard to say really.
From what I was able to experience, the single player campaigns are well done and well driven... but after only a short time, I started to feel like the whole experience was quite slow. I'm sure there are many more fun scenarios to play with much more things going on, but honestly I found myself getting very bored of the campaign mode due to how slow it was waiting for units to move across the map, especially during the end-game where you know you've won the scenario but it's now a matter of actually finishing off the enemy units.
It was at this point that I decided I would make my overall judgement on the game based on the multiplayer aspect as that would obviously have to be the part of the game which would need to hold up over time to make it work the purchase. As fun as single player games are, why wouldn't a person want to test their mettle against another human player to see if they have what it takes to out-smart and out-maneuver a real live opponent? Now I didn't exactly have the experience to get myself into a bunch of live multiplayer games (though realistically, I do play a lot of RTS games.... so I don't know why I would be uncomfortable with dying and learning to play a game like this...), so I decided to test my excellent prowess against a poor soon-to-die computer AI opponent... this was an awful idea.
If you watch the livestream footage of me playing this game, you'll get a very good idea of how I was feeling throughout my experience. One one hand, I did enjoy the competitive skirmish multiplayer sort of thing... but on the other hand, I have strong feelings against it.
I first decided I would play as the Slavs who are supposed to have strong archers including horse archers, which sounded like a pretty fun time to me; my opponents I would set to the Saxons who I had been playing against in the campaign mode, so I figured it would be a bit of a familiar experience that I wouldn't be playing against all sorts of new units that I hadn't seen before. I also decided each side would start with a hero... unfortunately after bashing my head against my opponent for probably at least two hours I finally had to give up based on... the Slavs, who only start with basic swordsmen in the early game are much too weak against the Saxons who start with access to slingers as one of their first units.
As it turns out, having a ranged attack is quite important in the early portion of the game because on the low amount of resources available in the early-game, constructing traps is much too expensive as an attempt to fight back against the enemy. Let me explain it this way: One group of swordsmen get pelted by the ranged slingers until they get in range, the slingers then run away unobstructed because there's no ability to keep them in place. As the Slavs, if you make another group of swords men... you'll then find yourself in a two squads of swordsmen against two squads of slingers, which as you may guess, means you're getting hit from afar even more than before; once again, if the swordsmen engage the slingers, the slingers run away with little more than a scratch. Alright, so that didn't work, instead I would try making the trap which would cause the enemy squad to be unable to run away; in the early portion of the game, this means either the enemy squad STILL gets to run away because one group of swordsmen isn't enough to kill the opponent fast enough before they regain their ability to run away.... or they miss the trap altogether. Oh... and then there's the problem that you're also now one squad of swordsmen against TWO squads of slingers, meaning one group can run away while the other happily throws their rocks at your group futilely trying to chase them down.
Okay, so let's try a different strategy: I then decided to try starting out with one group of swordsmen to assist the hero capturing the first village, then going straight into horse archers! This was probably the closest strategy to really being effective, but once again the Slavs fell behind in power because of the extra resources required to even get into a fighting position. No matter how hard I tried or what I did... going after different villages first, trying to avoid the enemy, trying to harass them... it all turned out the same; the Saxons pulled ahead each and every time in every scenario I attempted.
Could it be that I'm just playing the faction wrong? I tested this theory by switching factions with the computer AI and continuing to play on the same map. This time I played as the Saxons and had my enemy as the Slavs; yeah... the game lasted a little bit longer with the computer playing the Slavs than when I was playing them, but the sad reality is that at no point did I actually feel threatened by them. The Saxon faction didn't just feel overpowered in this matchup because I was playing the wrong way, it was in fact because the Slav faction just has such a weak start in comparison that they really aren't all that threatening at any point.
Verdict
Gameplay: I'm still torn on how I feel about Ancestor's Legacy, but I do think there's a lot of potential to it which is why it's still on my wishlist to keep an eye on and see how it progresses.
Sound: Sound design in this game is great. There are lots of good sounds for each unit including voices, movement, and fighting. The bit of single player experience I got was fully voiced over for the story bits which made it very nice to listen to.
Replayability: The campaign felt slow to me and got very boring quickly. I would work through it if I had the time, but probably not all in one go. The multiplayer (vs AI) experience was a much more fun game mode, though I did find (after MUCH experimenting), that I had quite a large concern that the different factions may not be well-balanced.
Bonus: A little bonus in this game that isn't found in other games is the ability to go into a third-person sort of view where you can see very well designed fights with each unit in the squad doing their own thing. This is a much higher level of detail than what I have normally found in other RTS titles which some people may find to be quite an enjoyable addition.
SCORE: I've given this a lot of thought and I am in fact giving Ancestor's Legacy a score of 8.5 / 10 due to being a very well-designed game. I do have my worries about it which is why it's not getting the highest score, but it does have a lot of promise which could be easily patched into balance with future updates.
~ Kyle Welykholowa
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