Rising Lords – It is a fact that the Turn-based Strategy game genre is becoming more and more complex, the main reason is because long-standing game series have to prove their uniqueness in order to overcome the eyes like ‘cat owls’ and ‘greasy’ heads of fans of the series, The most obvious is the game Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Becoming very ‘difficult’ for newcomers to this game series, leading to the revenue level is difficult to ‘breakthrough’ as many game developers expect.

That’s why there have been a lot of efforts to make this genre simpler and more accessible to young gamers who are new to the game, such as the title Civilization Revolution Representing the game series Civilization Launched on consoles, or some indie game developers also released a few games with simple structure, but with new ideas and contexts such as Before We Leave.

Based on this same model, Rising Lords of Argonwood is also a standalone turn-based strategy game, developed in a similar way set in medieval Europe, which has been quite well received with a lot of feedback for the development team during the experimental operation phase of Early Access, moving to expand to release on consoles to easily reach the majority of games head.

Does Argonwood strike a balance between the simplicity and appeal of a turn-based strategy game?

Let’MarkGame find out through the following review, guys!

YOU’LL LOVE

Simple, yet charismatic!

The simple philosophy of Rising Lords shown in many aspects, but the first impression of the writer for this game is that the capacity is of the unprecedented ‘pepper baby’, only about 600MB, even enough to fit into an old CD, in contrast to the fact that the games are increasingly bulging with tens of capacity, even hundreds of GB as it is today.

To achieve this extremely ‘respectable’ capacity, the graphics platform has contributed a significant part.

Indeed, the team at Argonwood used fairly simple, yet colorful two-dimensional graphics in the way illustrated on medieval books, somewhat similar to the game Pentiment, but in a somewhat more serious style but no less artistic and beautiful.

Although it is only a 2D image, the team of artists has taken great care and care in all aspects, from the environment, to the units of soldiers or special characters, even the movements of the model, although using very few frames, create a feeling of rigidity but bring with it the aesthetics of the sentences Ancient stories are told using paper puppets commonly seen in medieval works.

At first when it was introduced in 2020, it seemed Rising Lords is a complex game when it contains a lot of elements from other game genres, such as role-playing, cards … In parallel with the turn-based tactical ‘skeleton’ with two different tactical and battle maps that make people afraid, even the game development team has to create a tutorial and force players to complete before embarking on the main game.

However, when starting the ‘real battle’, the writer realized that this gameplay is quite simple, easy to get used to, even a little ‘reflective’ of the style of the games Heroes of Might and Magic First, with the economic management mechanism without many factors to consider, the ‘heroes’ have their own mechanism while the cards have a bit of magic.

The instructional play of Rising Lords Built extremely carefully, helping players, including those who are new to this genre or young gamers play games on consoles.

All elements in this gameplay are strung together by a leading storyline throughout the entire level.

You will start each level on a strategy map (world map) divided into hexagons in the style of a game series Sid Meier’s Civilization and spends most of the first half of the game managing resources, producing weapons, and solving problems that arise such as bears attacking villages… At the same time, accumulate money and nurture the population to build your army.

The instructional play of Rising Lords Extremely carefully built

Meanwhile, most of the second half of the level will be spent on armies and conquests.

Due to being set in the Middle Ages in Europe, there are not as many races and units with different features as in the series Heroes of Might and Magic, Rising Lords Follow the mechanics of developing equipment and weapons to form an army, somewhat similar to a real-time strategy game Stronghold.

The not too big difference between the types of troops with the ‘scissors-hammer-sack’ style mechanism and the different terrain advantages also make the battles more balanced, not just ‘crushing people’ like some other turn-based strategy games.

Even this balance sometimes leads to stalemates in defense and attack, which leads to development space for cards that can help level the terrain superiority, help increase the fighting spirit of our side or terrify the opponent. thereby bringing to break the deadlock of the match.

As your domain expands with more strongholds, you have to spend more time managing the output of resources, food, tools and weapons… in separate strongholds to regulate and specialize production to suit the terrain. However, you can completely ‘ask’ for help if you do not want to waste too much time caring, making your experience much easier.

There are almost no superfluous mechanics in the game thanks to the links that are smoothly linked together, forcing players to use these tools smoothly to overcome the challenge of the game without biased any element in it as some modern turn-based strategy games often use to create his own highlights.

Overall, the simplicity in graphics, gameplay, but still no less tight of Rising Lords has created attraction for this game not only for newbies, but also gamers who are used to the complexity of this game genre.

YOU’LL HATE

The plot is ‘hugging’, the gameplay is somewhat ‘homely’ in the later stages!

With a turn-based strategy game, of course, Rising Lords Not simply limited to economic development and battles, there are many other elements such as relationships between characters or events that are cleverly integrated into the plot.

As easy as it is, in fact, you’ll almost encounter pre-designed events for each turn, which can affect your ability to increase or decrease your earnings, creating ‘jobs’ for you to avoid turn-only free time in the game.

But invisibly, this design of Rising Lords makes the plot ‘hug’ too much, even somewhat overwhelming for players and distracting from the main plot.

Not to mention the ‘cramming’ of too many elements, events also somewhat dilute the plot, making it difficult for players to follow the development of the plot, especially when it is all expressed through the form of a book with … a lot of words.

Besides, with a lot of content that is somewhat repetitive, repeating one screen after another can also make players feel bored. Especially when the rhythm of the game is quite slow, it is enough to make players somewhat impatient.

When combined with a ‘hugging’ storyline as mentioned above, you will find yourself very easy to ‘get lost’ during the game, which also reduces the attractive experience that the gameplay and simple design of the game brings.

This design of Rising Lords makes the plot ‘hug’ too much, even somewhat overwhelming for players