If you've always wondered why there
were so few games like Advance Wars on PC I have good news for you, there is
now one more and in this video we're gonna see if that game is worth purchasing or not.
Before we start I'd like to be honest with you, I for once didn't finish that game, I still have
8 missions left to complete and the reason for that is simply that I was stuck at the final
mission of the third campaign that I couldn't do in a short time without a guide.
It is the hardest missio
n of the game, and it is very much like the last mission
of Advance Wars first of its name, it would have required me days to clear it,
and there is no guide for the game to help me as I probably was one of the first person to reach
that mission to begin with, since the game wasn't even released yet when I've played it.
And with that we go to the next point, I've received a key from the developer of the
game to review it, I was actually planning to publish this review before the release of t
he game
but I struggled for hours on a few missions since I was going for the S rank on each of them and
I quickly understood that finishing this game quickly enough wasn't gonna be possible.
Upon reaching the last mission I even understood that finishing it without
spending a few more days on it would be impossible so I did throw the towel there.
But fear not, I've spend around 30 hours on that game and I should have seen
most of what the game has to offer. Now that you know everything ther
e is to
know let's talk about the game itself. Empires Shall Fall features two factions,
the Black Empire and the Blue League that are waging war against each others in
every missions, each faction has three commanding officers and that's mostly all
for the story because there is really none, each missions will have a small talk that describe
a bit what's happening but that's all really. Do not expect anything fancy, most
of it is aiming to be lighthearted and comical but it's not great qu
ality writing.
If I had to talk about my opinion on the campaign I'd say that I'm not a huge fan of it but there
is a certain amount of variety in the missions, you'll sometimes have to rescue some units, one
mission require of you to properly execute a blitzkrieg on an enemy, there is even a mission
that will have you defend your base against 15 waves of enemies, which was pretty cool.
Now why didn't I like it more than this, well first of all it is linked to me
trying to grab a S in every
missions. I felt it was really the way the game was meant to
be played but if you play without that objective you might find that less bothersome.
From time to time I've simply felt that it was more of a puzzle game on how to
find the most efficient way to open up the defenses of the enemy rather than a tactical.
And that's because to obtain a S rank you need three things : Speed, Power, and Technique.
Exactly like in the Advance Wars serie if you've played it.
Speed count the number of turns
you'll take to complete the mission,
often this is gonna be the biggest problem. For example the Blitzkrieg mission
required me to end it in less than 6 turns, which took me a few hours to do.
Power count how many units you've defeated, I believe in a single turn but not entirely sure,
it was the easiest requirement to be frank. And finally Technique count how many units
you've lost depending on your total unit number, so that requirement can be a bit manipulated
by creating lots of useless
units to raise your number and therefore reduce the
percentage of loss your army sustained. I've had to spam units in the last
few turns to get a S in one of the last missions of the game and even by
doing it I was barely able to grab it. I believe you cannot lose more than 20%
of your army to hope having a S rank. Later on the missions become honestly much
harder and even if you're not looking for a S rank you'll have to most likely retry many
times to find the right way to approach the
fight, the game is really challenging, less than
Advance Wars as it seems to have simplified mechanics but it remain challenging still.
Also I wasn't a huge fan of the big missions as it felt like the enemies were spamming
units and it was a damn bloodbath, you can also spam them but it is really difficult
to gain any advantage in those situations. And it is probably what it is all about after all
since it is a tactical game about war and in war things tend to be this way, you need to find
an opening to be able to gain a slight lead, and outsmarting your opponent is the way.
But it was simply not for me, I've prefered missions where building units
was impossible on both sides. The things I've disliked in this game probably
come from my completionist mindset where I was focusing on being the most efficient possible
rather than enjoying the game, but overall expect the longer campaign battles to take a long
time until you find a way to open up the front. Now I've said that each
factions have three
different commanding officers but outside of their appearances I didn't see any change between
any of them, the CO powers are faction based right now and if you want different powers you'll
have to either pick the League or the Empire and even then out of the 4 CO powers available
two are the exact same for each factions. Now if you do not know what CO powers are
because you've never played Advance Wars, they basically are powers that boost your army
with a system of po
ints that goes up to 20. There is 4 CO powers, one that cost 5 points, one
10, another 15 and finally the last one is 20. You gain those points by being damaged or by
killing enemy units, so it isn't necessarily incredibly hard to get them.
You also have the possibility to deactivate those powers if you prefer to play
without them, which can be interesting too, but we'll talk about the settings a bit
later as there is a few things there. Since there is so few different commanding
officers p
owers (or CO), I can tell them all. The black empire possess a power
call black regeneration that cost 10 points and that basically heal
all your units by 20 health points. Then they also have Shadow Strike which is
supposedly their ultimate ability that reduce the health point of the enemies by 15 and I
think it isn't possible to heal those lost health points which make it even better.
As for the blue league they have the path of glory that cost 10 points, it increase
their attacks by 10%
and movements by 1. As for their ultimate commanding officer
power, it is called Divine Crusade and it is the same as the previous one but doubled.
Basically + 20% attack damage and + 2 to every units movements, which
is honestly quite powerful. And finally I didn't talk about the power that
both factions have, those are called Fast Capture and Call to arms, they cost 5 & 15 respectively.
Fast capture is pretty straight forward, it increase your speed to capture
buildings but never by more t
han 5, the capture speed depend of the health of the
unit capturing so that skill is pretty useful to capture buildings with wounded units but not so
much if your units are fully healed basically. As for Call to Arms it allows your units to
directly move on the turn they are summoned which is quite good if you're fighting close to
one or a few building that can create units. And that's all for the powers, those are
pretty useful but as you can see, there is only a really low number of them
right now, maybe
to better balance the game or simply because this game was made by only one developer and making a
game like this take a humongous amount of time. Now I'd wish to talk about the gameplay
but for that we need to talk first about the different units the game has to offer.
There is 5 units of infantry, 5 vehicles, 4 planes, and a few special units that you might not
be able to use however you want in the campaign but that can be used in other game modes.
There is no sea units a
t all there though, while the game is similar to Advance
Wars it differs on a few points. Each type of units will require a different
building to be created, there is currently three different type of buildings and
each factions have different models for each units even though they stay the same.
Each factions also have their own upgrades, there is quite a few of them (6 per units)
so I'm not gonna start listing them, depending on the faction you'll pick you'll be
encouraged to play differe
ntly more or less as they have different powers and upgrades.
As for the units, some are stronger than others but they also tend to be more expensive,
some units are strong against other units for example the Gunner is particularly good at
shooting down planes, and of all the planes the fighter is the best at killing the others,
but that's just an example, as for example the gunner is quite effective against infantry too,
and the fighter outside of damaging planes, does very low damage to in
fantry and vehicles.
Every units have their uses even the weakest one like the rifleman can be useful to take enemy
bases or take control of an abandoned vehicle. Now gameplay wise you'll control an army as you
understood since it's a turn-based tactics game, in some missions of the campaign you'll be
able to create units in some others not. To make it simple you cannot build anything
in this game but you can take control of enemy buildings or abandoned ones, and to take
control of them you
'll need infantry as planes and vehicles are unable to do that.
Whenever you fight, the first one attacking will always have the advantage of doing more
damage to the opponent, so it is important not to be too often on the receiving end.
Each units have 100 health points and depending on how much damage their take their health
will go down and there will be fewer of them. Fewer units means less damage in Empires Shall
Fall, so therefore it is important to always keep your units as close as po
ssible to full health.
Unlike Advance Wars, Empires Shall Fall does not have a luck roll mechanic
either, damage will always be the same if the same conditions are met.
Units killing other units will be upgraded by a rank and will deal slightly more damage.
Now back to health points, they will also define how fast you'll capture a building,
a building has 20 health points, but since health points for capture and damage
related things are on a scale of 1 to 10 It would take two turns for a fre
sh
unit to capture it, but if your unit has only 14 health points or lower it'll
count as a 1 and take 20 turns instead. It might seem pretty complicated because I
explain it badly but it's actually simple, for example a 55 health points units
will be a 6, but a 54 one is a 5. It is the exact same mechanic
for abandonned vehicles. You'll gain gold each turn depending on
how many buildings are under your control, if the map is huge you might be able to
spend a lot each turns in fighting un
its. Each units also have different stats, which
is quite obvious but I prefer to say it, for example vehicles tend to be able to move
much further than infantry which is logical. Some vehicles will also be able to move your
infantry around the battlefield such as the Zeppelin and the Truck that are two units that
do not fight but simply help moving around. The truck can eventually become a
fighting unit with an upgrade of the Blue League but without any upgrade
it simply has no attack poi
nts. The truck possess another great use outside
of the fact it help your infantry move on the battlefield, and it is that it refill the
ammunition of your units when standing close to them which is obviously useful because some
units are limited in ammunition, not all of them, it is mostly the units that tend to use grenades
or rocket launcher that have this problem and after a while they have three choices, either
a truck come to them and they'll be full again, or they'll have to retreat
to a
building and find ammunition there. I've mentioned a third choice and it is simply
to merge with another unit that is wounded and have ammunitions left to refill it, any soldier
exceeding the 100 will be transformed into gold. Merging is a pretty good mechanic as it allow your
wounded units to fusion and continue fighting, as honestly one unit with all of it's health
points is better than two wounded ones. It is actually possible to remove that ammunition
mechanic in the option of the
game and have infinite ammunition for those units but the game
is meant to be played with a limited amount of ammunitions for Launchers, Tanks, Bombers etc...
There is two ways to win in Empires Shall Fall, either you kill all enemy units,
or you capture their Headquarters, both often come with a lot of bloodshed.
I found it quite hard not to lose any units, but in Empires Shall Fall sometime it is
better to retreat and save your units to send them to heal at one of your building than
riski
ng losing everything on a reckless attack. That game really require a certain amount of
tactics, it is not braindead and retreating to attack later on isn't necessarily a bad option.
And for everyone being worried about the A.I, I personally found it to be challenging
and not making too many idiotic moves, it seem to know what to prioritize, but as
better players than me will play the game, maybe they'll find a way to exploit it.
I've had one single instance where I could exploit it, and it w
as in a mission with tanks
and a river since vehicles cannot cross a river, I was able to use that to my advantage.
Now let's talk about the content of the game. There is three major game modes:
Campaign, Skirmish and ... Editor. I've already talked about the campaign
a little bit, there is 28 missions in total separated in 4 different campaigns.
As I've said in the intro of this video, I've actually played entirely only the first
three campaigns and failed to do the last mission of the thir
d campaign which is
the hardest mission of the entire game. How do I know ? I've asked the
developer about it and he confirmed it. The first campaign is a prologue with
6 basic missions, the second campaign is the Black Empire campaign that have
a total of 8 missions, it's not as easy as the prologue but it's still manageable.
Where the game start to be become harder is when you'll be doing the blue league
campaign which is the third one. There will be more complicated and long
missions, a
few of them took me hours to complete and finally the last
one did finish me off completely. After those three campaigns there will
eventually be another bonus campaign of 7 missions that I didn't try but the developer
mentioned that it was easier than the third one. Missions are different from one another,
it's overall pretty enjoyable but as I said I felt it was often making me feel like
a puzzle game because of how tight it was. Also the entire campaigns are single player only.
Then the
re is the skirmish mode that is a mode with a few maps that you can play
against the CPU or your friends. There is currently 12 maps there and
while most of them are two players only, a few of them also allow for up to 4 players which
I can definitely see being very interesting. Now there is a small problem, the game currently
has no online servers and only support couch coop, or if you're ready to bother you can use the
Steam Remote Play together feature to try to play with your friends bu
t I have to say
I've never been a huge fan of that one. And finally the level editor that
allow you to create your own maps, I believe Advance Wars also had that feature,
there is no denying that it is great. It just is a little ruined by the fact you
cannot right now play online with people and share your maps with them, which I'm sure plenty
of fans of Advance Wars would have loved to do. Now before we go to the next I'd like
to talk about the options because I actually appreciated what
they offer.
Like I've said earlier you can change the game to simple mode to remove
the ammo consumption and CO powers. But you can also disable the dialogs, tutorial,
remove the fighting animations of the units, increase the battle, game and CPU speed.
There is a lot of customization and it's all for comfort whenever you play the game.
It might seem like nothing but I tell you that all those options are very welcome
if you play the game for a while as you won't lose time on animations that
you've already seen hundreds of time. You'll also have a danger grid to help
you move your units and not put them in danger without having to remember every
single thing about each units of the game. If you enjoy the gameplay one thing is sure
that game make it easy to not be bothered by small things, and I've appreciated that.
Graphically wise, the characters definitely lack the charisma that those of Advance Wars have but
overall I think the game is more pretty and each units are easy to r
ecognize at first glance.
The animations are good and to be quite frank the sound design is relatively good too,
it is really well polished in that domain. Now the soundtrack isn't anything particular let's
be honest but it didn't make my ears bleed either, I can easily see myself mute it if I had to
play the game for a few more hours though. Do not expect any killer soundtrack here but
I do not think that's what this kind of games aim for anyway.
Conclusion: Empires Shall Fall is a game tha
t share
a lot of similarities with Advance Wars, the overall design of the game is very similar, and while it is prettier there is also
less content and it is also simplified. I have to admit that I actually had fun while
playing Empires Shall Fall, more so at the beginning than toward the end because of how hard
the game was becoming for a poor casual like me. I felt like the game was turning too much
into a puzzle of finding the right way to get into the enemy base to storm the Headquarte
rs
before the enemy start to spam recruiting units, which is something I wasn't too fond of.
But that might be due to me being a stubborn person and wanting to get those sweet S ranks
everywhere, If you do not mind losing your whole army, everything should be less complicated.
With 28 different missions the campaign is quite lengthy especially if you're
not using a guide as you'll pass a few hours on most of the last missions.
The level editor and skirmish mode allow for even more play time a
s you'll
be able to create your own levels. The only problem is that lack of
online that is really a huge bummer, as with the level editor and the possibility
to play with up to 4 players it could have led to some intense evening between friends.
You can still use the Steam Remote Play but let's face it, it's not as good as a server system
or what any other type of online could be. Especially since you will need friends
to begin with to play online there, or you'll have to use the Steam for
ums.
And since there is no online, there is no leaderboard, which is something that even if it's
flawed and infested with cheaters in this day and age, can be really fun for a small community.
If you're a fan of the Advance Wars license and do not mind some simplified mechanics I
believe you might actually enjoy it as it was really well polished, I've seen no bugs
at all during all my time playing the game. The game also feature controller support for
those that wish it even though I do not
see why someone would prefer controller over
mouse & keyboard for this kind of games, unless you're aiming to play it on the
Switch then I suppose it would make sense. Now it still remain a niche game and while I
do recommend it, I'd also like to repeat that there is no online currently and that it is a
huge problem with this game, as most of your game time will be spend playing against the CPU,
unless you want to bother with Steam Remote Play. If you'd like to purchase this game it
was re
leased on February 19 on Steam and I believe it'll be released sometime in March
for the Switch if you prefer to buy it there. That's it for today folks, do not hesitate to
comment if you have anything to say, whether it is useful or not so we can share our opinions.
Not much else to say about it, take care guys, have a good day and we see each
other very soon for another video.
Comments