battle

Alright, so after last week’s cull from my watch list I had a few holes in my review line up for this week, and so I decided to post my impressions of a game that was recommended to me through another blog. It isn’t my usual genre of gaming but for $4 I was game to try out Lost Technology and see how it went. After some false starts, I think I finally have the hang of it.

Lost Technology is a single player real time strategy simulation game which means for those of us used to a pause button in battles this is kind of highly stressful and I’m really glad that at least early on assigning a lot of your units to auto-mode will work (as the game continues relying on auto will get you wiped out real fast so I recommend using those early turns to figure out what you are doing so that you can actually take control).

There are story modes for some of the factions available, but a lot of factions don’t have a story mode yet, and to be honest, the story really doesn’t do much to make me want to help most of the factions win as it generally makes me dislike the characters. In practising and learning, I’ve started a campaign in most regions just to see how different units work and to try out different strategies, and I kind of enjoy the game equally as well whether the faction I’m playing has a story attached to it or not.

While we’re on things that probably aren’t great yet, I’ll point out the music is incredibly repetitive. Like one track that just loops over and over again and while it sounds really impressive for the first hour, subsequent hours make that music really start to get annoying. Ditto for the dings and clunks as you select units and navigate menus. Not to mention, while there is a full screen mode here, don’t expect it to actually work (or at least it doesn’t on my computer regardless of how I tweak the settings), and in windowed mode, opening and navigating the many layered menus can get really awkward and I’m just thankful that this part doesn’t happen in real time and I can take my time negotiating these before ending my turn.

That said, for the price of the game on Steam, this is actually really fun. While I had to play the tutorial twice because I wasn’t really used to this kind of game and it took me awhile to get the hang of what I was supposed to even do (even the easy game mode doesn’t actually give you any kind of hint it just kind of drops you in and says go), once I had grasped the concept it became pretty simple to figure things out. Of course, like most brilliantly addictive games, playing is simple but winning is not.

I’m still very much on easy mode and while my most recent attempted campaign has survived long enough to get down to three factions, I’m pretty sure I’m now stretched so thin I’m about to be overrun in more than one direction (late update on that: I actually managed to beat them into submission and now I’ve just got one faction to go). Still, I’ve finally figured out plans of attack, how to minimise losses, when I should fight and when I should run, where to place units in the first place so they are actually effective, and most recently I realised I can actually change which ones are front and back line fighters (probably should have figured that out a bit earlier).

Perhaps my favourite part of the game is that the terrain makes a huge difference in every fight. There was one faction I was so close to defeating and I could crush them easily in every region but one. My troops were no good on water so every time I entered that territory I was wiped out even when I had the larger numbers. So instead of chasing them, I simply set up camp around their territory and whittled them down when they stepped on solid land. Eventually I’d reduced their numbers and chipped away at their reserves by isolating them, and finally managed to crush them. It was a pretty satisfying victory, and I managed to recruit one of the survivors into my troops and gained a unit of fighters who actually could handle water.

But all terrain makes a difference. Trees, hills, forts, deserts, they can all be used to position troops and turn the tide of battle once you figure out which troops work well on that particular terrain. Magic users as well add a bit of spice to battles as early on they are just pretty weak support troops but later in the game they become fairly destructive forces of nature.

Anyway, if you have a few spare dollars, this game is oddly fun and you will definitely get enough hours out of it for the price tag.

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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