Shoot. And I was about to buy the other version… Maybe I’ll wait and see if this goes well and plays well on Deck. Any thoughts from fans of the first?
It can be depending on what you like. You have a flying drone to help you that isn’t in multiplayer because there you all have different abilities to cover each others’ weaknesses.
Personally I think single-player gets stale and lonely quick, it’s just a lot more fun panicking and overcoming challenges with friends.
It’s alright solo, but it really shines with coop, and the community is mostly very friendly and welcoming. Occasionally you might get called an elf in a fit of pique, but I’ve personally encountered very few toxic DRG players.
I had a blast playing solo. It’s not a game I would have ever, ever picked up if it hadn’t been free with PS+, because it didn’t appeal to me in the least. Got bored enough one day to give it a shot and I’ve got 100s of hours in it. Put it aside finally for BG3… for now.
Both fun solo and with friends. I mostly play solo as friends have different work schedules but when some are available I play co-op or with random ppl
I play it in that async multiplayer they support with friends, both against each other and semi-allied with bots.
It’s cool. I love the variety, I love how that works against the sameyness these games usually develop, and it has just enough techncial qualities like pretty graphics and okay netcode to never get in my way. Plus hey, async MP! Always a huge plus to me, and sadly way too rare overall.
I can see it become boring if one players singleplayer generated maps religiously, but I got Against The Storm to scratch that itch, personally.
As far as the gameplay goes, it’s mostly the usual 4X fare, of course. Differences, if you’re not used to Age of Wonders games:
Magic is strong, to put it mildly. The games take their inspiration from the old Master of Magic game after all, and as such leader-cast spells can wildly swing battles even when your units are outnumbered and outteched. Likewise, strong summoned units and stacked buff spells make terrifying army stacks even out of tier 1 units (in fact there’s a spell tome specifically for that!).
The way you learn more magic makes for a nice little variety. You get 3 spells offered to research, you can reroll but it’s costly. Every few researched spells you get to pick a new tome of spells from which to research, and every few tomes you get to advance a tier and pick higher-level spell tomes.
From tomes + some other effects you have to “unlock” certain empire upgrades, and unlike other games some of these upgrades are instead instant effects, so at the right time they could swing things wildly (like healing all your units on the entire map to full).
There’s less focus on building your own empire - as you can only have 3-5 cities max anyways - and more on each city expanding in a huge sprawling network of influence and vassalizing more cities you take over, then getting tribute from them and hiring units with a resource specifically for that + empire upgrades.
Random encounters and events with decisions are way more common than in other such games. They’re not terrible meaningful 90%+ of the time (though cool ones do exist!), but it’s neat to get something shown so often, and sometimes you have replies that are unlocked by your specific empire attributes and setups.
The race/faction creator is something I’ve not seen that way since Master of Orion 2, not even when Endless Space 2 tried to go wild with that with later patches.
Now you made me want to play it again! But I have issues staying interested when I have to control more than one core army and one core city. Any advice?
Hrm, that’s tricky. I suffer from the same, if I knew how to overcome it I bet I’d play more 4X games.
Somehow it works for me here, I guess because I mostly play it in MP, and mostly async. Means I never spend more than a few minutes on a single match at a time.
If city building is also your thing, check out Against The Storm, a really clever roguelike take where you only spend 30-60 minutes or so on each village you build.
I was going to be all over this, especially as having the original PS4 disc edition gets me a cheap upgrade. But after watching the Digital Foundry video, I don’t think it’s actually worth it. Unless you really want the bonus material, get the original cheap and let it apply the PS5 patch.
I liked the first one alright but I remember it being a bit easy, and putting it down for rim world, a much more challenging game in the same vein. Guess I’ll wait and see on this one.
I’m also kind of bummed by this but it’s looking great so far. On the upside it will be much easier to rope my friends with more… pedestrian tastes in videogames into it
Yeah… It looks great regardless but it’s quite different from the original helldivers. I’ll have to get used to not being able to see everyone on screen and the game being heavily balanced around friendly fire.
The shared-screen twin-stick design is fine, but Arrowhead has been doing it since Magicka. This feel like them getting their shot at making a wider-appeal, bigger budget game. Hopefully they stick the landing and managed to keep the feel of the original while expanding the gameplay.
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