With Artifice War Tactics, independent development studio, Silvine Game Studios, transports us to a medieval world, dripping in fantasy elements and teeming with dangerous foes and loyal allies. With it’s turn-based strategy style you will need to stay on the ball and think on your feet, but is Artifice War Tactics a game you should consider purchasing? I delved in to take a look and here are my thoughts.
Artifice War Tactics: The Birth Child of Chess and RTS Gaming
Artifice War Tactics presents us with an interesting hybrid of chess and turn-based RPG gaming. It becomes increasingly clear that Silvine Game Studios heavily drew on the ancient game for inspiration in the planning stages of this title. With each different unit having their own movement patterns, it’s pretty difficult to not be reminded of the age-old board game. However, the passing resemblance stops here. Where chess demands careful planning and strategic execution, Artifice sadly fails to reward the player for carefully planned moves.
While chess offers the spoils of victory to the player that has played the best strategies and tactics, Artifice undermines any sort of intelligent thinking through the medium of an AI model that has the thinking prowess of a cracked-up chimpanzee. Enemies will make ridiculously idiotic moves, take needless damage and just generally treat the field of battle how a small child would treat a Jungle Jim. It’s nothing short of demoralizing and discourages thoughtful play.
This lack of any discernible challenge is detriment to the efforts made elsewhere in the game. It’s always a shame to see a game with potential falling at such trivial hurdles. There’s very little in Artifice War Tactics that couldn’t have been improved on to make the experience far more enjoyable. Perhaps a future update (read “overhaul”) will see some vital changes made.
Variety Comes in the Form of Classes
Artifice War Tactics gives the player ample choice with a broad range of twelve different classes. Being a firebug at heart, I naturally went for the Pyromancer; a champion of fire! I did notice that as I was levelling up I was growing noticeably stronger and the gear I was locking was giving me that much coveted air of badassness (for wont of a better word). It’s always good to visually see your character levelling up as you progress through a game and Artifice War Tactics, to be fair, executed this with style, and indeed panache.
Wanting a decent scope of the game, I also tried my hand as a Ranger and a Necromancer. Not only did these classes offer different ways of approaching the game with different movement and attack patterns but they also offered their own equippable gear, opening up the character customization and levelling up the overall image of the champions.
While these characters injected a little depth into the game, the buck sadly stopped here to make way for more repetitiveness and monotony. The game holds its own over the space of a few hours, but it’s around this mark that the novelties begin to wear off before it beats you into submission with a metaphorical bat of abject tedium.
Summary
Artifice War Tactics is a great game made badly. The concept is interesting and conjures up images of deep tactical thinking but as you have recently read, the execution doesn’t hit the bar set by the idea. Don’t get me wrong, the game isn’t exactly terrible but it could have been far better given a little care and attention to those details.
Artifice War Tactics is out now on Steam and priced at $15.
REVIEW
OUR SCORE - 4
4
SCORE
Artifice War Tactics is a great game made badly. The concept is interesting and conjures up images of deep tactical thinking but as you have recently read, the execution doesn't hit the bar set by the idea. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't exactly terrible but it could have been far better given a little care and attention to those details.
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