First Impressions
BattleForge
By Jorge Figueiredo - February 3rd, 2009
There’s quite a number of RTS games on the market. Each has its own flavour and balance, but a lot of them are very similar to each other. When Shaun told me about a new RTS with a twist, I couldn’t resist trying out the Beta.
BattleForge is an RTS from EA that forgoes the frenetic base-building that is typical to the genre. Instead, it adds an element of randomness by giving you a deck of “cards” (not unlike Magic: The Gathering or other games of that ilk) that you may use to build your “army.” The full set of cards is made up of four different powers (Frost, Fire, Nature, and Shadows) that each have certain strengths and weaknesses. Obviously building a deck entirely out of one power will allow you to access some of the most powerful units that you own from your deck. However, building a dual-powered deck may result in other advantages. You are limited to 20 cards that you can call upon in the game, so there is a great deal of strategy involved before the fighting even starts.
Cards are played using a two-prong resource system. On one hand, you have monuments, which dictate which powers you can cast. Now that you can use one of the four colours, you need to pay the cost of the card itself. This is where the raw power nodes come in. They steadily stream the pre-requisite points you need to cast your cards.
Cards can represent creatures, buildings (usually defensive structures), and area spells (can you say lightning storm?) and can be cast more than once. Some of the heavier cards have a longer “cool down” period than others, balancing their might with significant downtime.
I played some of the single-player and cooperative player modes on the beta server and really enjoyed tweaking my decks. I have yet to win a one-on-one match, but I will prevail at some point. Completing in versus matches and missions nets you points with which you can buy more booster packs from the marketplace.
The visuals and sounds are quite awesome, and the level of detail is great. All in all, it’s an interesting concept that I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to try something a bit different in terms of this genre. Here’s the BattleForge trailer that EA released today.
Subscribe to this page's RSS feed to be notified when someone chimes in.
2 responses so far:Subscribe to the Toronto Thumbs RSS feed to be notified when new articles are published.
Looks pretty cool, and may be a cheaper/more handy/far less bulky solution to my occasional MTG itches.
Also, had that link at the bottom been meant to go to the orchestra trailer? I found the previous one, the announcement vuhdeo, more engaging.