REVIEW : Rising Lords (PC)
Rising Lords is an ancient turn-based tactics game made by Argonwood. The team plans for the game to stay in EA for about a year to allow devs the chance to work jointly with the association and collect invaluable feedback.
The scenes of Rising Lords takes place in the Middle Ages. The player takes on the part of one of the so-called lords and his job is to expand his sphere of influence.
We got an opportunity to dive into the tapestry-like view of Rising Lords to try the game out for ourselves – bring our small town to prosperity by collecting fines, gathering supplies, bringing joy to citizens and guarding the borders jealously from any who might want to bring harm.
The first thing you might see upon getting into the play is the lack of an actual in-game tutorial. Rather, the play urges you to see a short video on Youtube.
In Rising Lords, the fights are shown from an isometric view. The game takes place in a turn-based mode, and we have several tasks that need to be carried out; we must not only take care of the economic background of our heritage but also continually develop them, and if required – wage wars against enemy forces. Revolution plays an important role here (thanks to which you can secretly weaken the position of your opponents). At the same time, we must be careful not to damage the trust of our subjects, which may result in a revolt.
We derive supplies and raise taxes, take charge of production methods, build and improve settlements, and recruit fighters who then take part in open battles, sieges of hostile cities or the defence of attacked territories. During the battles, we can use skill cards that can give our subordinates an advantage over their enemies; as we progress, we not only acquire new deck elements but also develop our existing ones.
In short, in the early game, it might be next to required to lower taxes and increase the rations in your lands to add to the overall happiness and health of the population and prompt it to grow.
Sometimes it will take only a few turns to give you the boom in the population you are looking for to get some fresh peasants, but other times the RNG will not be on your side and your numbers will be ravaged by famine or other unlucky events that will hinder the already slow start of the game.
Rising Lords can be operated both in singleplayer and with up to three other players; the title supports for multiplayer fun over the Internet or in the so-called hot-seat mode. Interestingly, thanks to the system of interaction between the players it is possible to play some quite intricate psychological games.
In addition to the peasant management and city building, Rising Lords also features turn-based combat with the elements of CCG. Once you’ve reached a point where you can comfortably produce enough resources to sacrifice a portion of it for the creation of spears, swords, crossbows, light and heavy armour and more, it is time to build up an army and get more regions under control (and from your neighbours).
From time to time, you will get visited by a travelling merchant that can sell the supplies needed by your army or general resources or even hire a group of mercenaries for a hefty sum of gold.
The actual battles are somewhat like Heroes of Might and Magic – you place your troops on the battlefield as your opponent does the same. Then you can control units according to their initiative to move them across the battlefield or attack the enemy army.
You will also have several cards in your hand that allow you to perform an action such as swap two adjacent units or increase the damage of your archers or something of that effect. As your character wins battles and grows in levels, more cards become available in the army interface.
You can practice in combat by choosing the Quick Battle game mode that allows you to choose a difficulty and dive right into the battlefield with your troops.
Currently, conquest is the only way to acquire new territory, although the developers promise the addition of diplomacy into the full release version of Rising Lords. In addition to it, the full version is said to feature more cards, units, events, maps, buildings, victory conditions (currently represented only by conquest) as well as a story campaign.
Rising Lords snuck a peek at various games of the strategy genre, took some of their mechanics, threw them into a pot, shook it with vigour, and got a unique mix generously flavoured with unique medieval tapestry-like graphics. There is a lot of promise in the game although it has certain problems as well: the start of a new map is excruciatingly slow, you might get an unlucky RNG string that may feel like the game is actively punishing you for playing, there is no in-game tutorial and the music gets repetitive.
System requirements
PC / WindowsMinimum: Dual Core 2.27 GHz, 4 GB RAM, graphic card 1 GB GeForce GTX 460 or better, 500 MB HDD, Windows XP
REVIEW : KILL IT WITH FIRE: IGNITION(PC)
