TFC: The Fertile Crescent

It's a fun little rts while it lasts. You can fly through the story mode within a few hours and skirmishes get dull fairly quickly. Hordes is a good concept though I wish they had some way to modify it so you're able to actually build up a base and see how many waves you can truly hold out. As it is, you have to survive at most 15 waves on the hardest mode, which I have not yet beaten, but you don't really get a chance to build defenses, you are basically trying to manage your population to withstand the waves without everyone dying. It's a good challenge but a mode where you actually have time to build a proper base and hold out for an unlimited number of waves would really lend itself to more replayability. As it is, I'm already getting kind of bored with it after 20 or so hours. Given it was only like $10 I'm not sour about it and am still happy I gave it a go but I think they had a good bit of squandered potential. Put a little more into the development of different modes and you have a proper game worth $25+. Perhaps with their sequel game they will do so, fingers crossed.

Age of Empires with a solid Bit art style and great flavor

Before I talk about anything, if you asked "is this game worth it," I would unhesitatingly answer "yes." It is now flawless, however I think this would be a great first RTS for a newcomer to the genre, or any RTS fan who likes the setting of Age of Empire 1 but would like a more relaxing game. The pixel style is pretty good, although I don't usually play modern pixel games. The gameplay is pretty similar to Age of Empires at the outset. One unique thing is that the town center automatically generates workers, which I think was a positive design choice. your units constantly consume food, so first you will be picking redberries and hunting for food until your farming infrastructure is good enough to sustain an economy of workers and warriors. Unlike AOE there is only two stages, one as a nameless pre-civilization culture, another where you fall into the sphere of influence of a major Bronze Age Power, either Assyria, Babylon, or Egypt. I would have loved to see the Hittites in this title, but I hope it is in the next game, which I bought and installed while writing this review. I actually like this more than AOE. Each civilization has an unique flavor, and while most of the units are the same, it feels less monotonous that vanilla age of empires does. Each civilization you can upgrade to has a different playstyle, especially technologically speaking, so that keeps things fresh. The Campaign is basically a tutorial so you can play skirmish/PVP. It was entertaining, and although it only took me 8 (more like 6.5 or 7, since I had tor eplay a few matches due to computer issues) that alone was worth the $10 I spent on this one. They were fun, graded scenarios. Before playing them I couldn't beat medium difficulty skirmishes, I think I could now since I played the campaign on the 2nd easy setting with almost no problems. Technically speaking, I did start to have some balance issues and technical issues around the final three missions. In the wonder building one, 2/3 of my competitors starved before the end of the game, which was disappointing because I wanted to go and conquer them. in the next, the horde mission, I was royally beat up the first time (which is great, I didn't want to breeze through the game) because I wasn't developing my economic and military infrastructure up fast enough. So I restrategized and got a small army out in the next match. But I was overwhelmed by an honestly pretty crazy horde of troops. The third time I played I got my army out pretty good, and I was pumping out spearmen and archers by the end of the timer. But then the hordes invaded with what looked like 10,000 troops lol. Also, during these missions my framerate would sometimes drop, pretty unusual because this is not a taxing game. Anyways, I don't hold these against the game because I have an old computer, and I was also having troubles with internet and the steam cloud syncing. I reinstalled my entire library at one point, and finished the missions with 0 problems. Still, balance on the last missions was not ideal. The very last game is where you use all the tools at your disposal to win a 4 player skirmish map. I think it would be better with no wonder building victory condition, as I felt kind of sad to end that game with a sort of boring win condition. Yet it is just too easy to finish the wonder and claim victory, and trying to rush the map with my military was not the right bet. Games with wonders often turn into a rush to construct the first lvl 4 wonder 1st. I may replay on hard so I can have the trhill of needing to destroy the wonder of an enemy who is building one faster than me. The campaign is basically a 6 hour long tutorial. I can honestly say the mission writing improves in the second half of the game, but dear god is it bad in the 1st half. I appreciate that it has a job to do, but I think in future titles, the writing is what is going to make this a cult classic for fans of this time period. The developer should really consider finding some writing talent and creating interesting RTS campaigns if possible. they have the art style down, the base gameplay loop is fun, but sell me on the bronze age setting. I also wish there was a little more city building/world building elements like doing something interesting and unique with the religion system, since it's such a niche time period for mythology and religion freaks. I also wish you could continue campaign missions after beating them, because in some cases it would have been fun to continue to play the map and militarily defeat the people I already won against by building wonders. I hope it's not to late to create a continue game option for some of the campaign missions so we can have some sandbox fun afterwards. all in all, a series off to a promising start. Kinda AOE vibes but you don't have to sell your soul to get o.k. at the game. I like TFC more, as someone who didn't play AOE until later in life. Excited to see what TFC 2 and future titles hold. I'd love to see them get creative with the RTS genre and their setting once they feel established. If you like RTS that is relaxing after work or on an hour or two break, this is a good one.

I enjoy the art, it's pretty fun to play but it gets frustrating. (I'm less than 6 hours in but I think I'll easily put in another 30) The second easiest difficulty is far to easy and the skilled setting is far to difficult. I think if the game had some difficulty adjustments, adjustment to the AI (they don't seem to attack one another and they seem to be coordinating their attacks together) and how strong walls and towers are, it'd be a 10/10 at current I say it's a very solid 7.5/10

yes. #DLGbump

Ein schmales moderates RTS mit einer interessanten Prämisse und einer intressanten Idee. Jedes Dorf fängt bei 0 an, dadurch kann schon die erste Entscheidung Spielentscheidend sein: Wo kommt das Dorfzentrum hin? Die Ressourcen sind alle Selbsterklärend: Holz von Bäumen, Essen von Tieren, Beeren und Äckern. Lehm aus dem Boden, der aber auch für fruchtbare sprich produktivere Äcker notwendig sein kann. Man kann sich Boosts durch das Erobern von neutralen Gebäuden holen. Irgendwann später kommt mit Kupfer/Bronze dann natürlich die Epochennamensgebende Ressource um dann wirklich coole Sachen machen zu können. Mauern können gebaut werden und natürlich muss geforscht werden um am Ende ein starkes Militär ausbilden zu können. Oder man versucht es mit andern Siegbedingungen wie bspw. dem Wunder. All das hat man schon gehört und gespielt. Die Basis ist sehr stark und gut gemacht, da steckt nicht viel Innovation oder Faszination hin. Aber auf ein starkes Fundament kann man große Häuser bauen. Das wurde hier schon Ansatzweise gemacht. Im Laufe der Zeit muss man sich für eines der 3 Völker entscheiden. Jedes mit einem eigenen Fokus und einem eigenen Twist. Die Assyrer sind auf den ersten Blick diejenigen fürs grobe, haben aber auch ganz schnell einen Wissensvorteil, die Ägypter sind verdammt gut im Nahrungherstellen, haben aber auch gute Gebäude, Babylon steht für seine beindruckende Architektur und gleichzeitig dem großen Wissenszuwachs und der Religion den anderen beiden in nichts nach. Man muss sich während der Spielrunde für eine der Völker entscheiden und kann so versuchen auf die ersten Spielminuten zu reagieren, oder einfach schnell sein und die Gegner zum agieren zwingen. Das Spiel macht aus einigen Gründen Spaß: Das Setting ist einzigartig! Die Grafik erinnert an LucasArts von vor 30 Jahren und es spielt sich recht fluffig. Es kann altbacken aussehen und einige funktionen sind eventuell für den RTS-Veteran zu umständlich versteckt.