The Real-time strategy (RTS) genre has one of the most nostalgic player bases in gaming, with a history of huge powerhouse releases that new titles can’t seem to emulate. The massive amounts of feedback and criticism Blizzard faced over their disastrous Warcraft 3 Remastered release, or the fact that Age of Empires II is still competitive, speaks to this nostalgia in volumes. These classic, titanic releases still hold powerful sway in the hearts of RTS players, who seem to have an everpresent longing for something new that reminds them of the genre’s roots.
Enter Godsworn, a new RTS title that just entered early access and is shaping up to be a titan in the genre all of its own. This familiar yet utterly new game was built with evident love and inspiration for the RTS classics that came long before. Yet it isn’t afraid to be its own thing, with creative and utterly fun decisions made when it comes to gameplay and presentation. It already boasts a Very Positive Steam review in Early Access. I had a feeling this game would be something special, and after getting my hands on it, I am happy to report that I was right.
Godsworn is a real-time strategy set in a high-fantasy setting inspired by religion, paganism, and folklore. As we learn very quickly in the game’s campaign, the pagan peoples of the land are being swiftly converted to a new religion that closely resembles a certain real-world faith, stealing the followers of the ancient Pagan gods that have long ruled the land. These new converts seem to be far more advanced than the followers of the old ways, but with monsters and old magic, the gods of the land would see them destroyed before they take any more of their followers.
The game is a hero-focused spin on the RTS mechanic, with each faction represented by a hero character in the form of one of these gods. The Sun, the Moon, the Dawn, and the Archangel Michael fight for their interests in the campaign or multiplayer skirmishes, whether online or offline.
Thank Warcraft 3, but with a lot more power and emphasis on your hero units. They are, after all, your literal gods. Each god plays differently, with its own skill tree, stats, and slight or very slight alterations to its available units and the style of its buildings.
I will go on record right now and say that Saule is my favorite. Praise the sun.
The story is compelling and super interesting, and it’s exactly my kind of fantasy setting. However, as always with this genre, what I was really interested in was the skirmish/custom game mode.
In PVP games, you’re placed with your shrine and hero. The goal is to destroy the enemy’s shrine while defending your own. Your shrine generates faith and followers, which are your two most valuable resources. Faith is a currency used to power your divine abilities, and followers are workers used to build new buildings, work at production buildings, or generate more faith.
I’ve got to say that I absolutely love the way the game balances the hero’s abilities using faith as a currency and cooldowns. I’m not sure yet if Saule, goddess of the sun, my absolute favorite, is unbalanced or not, but her abilities include a nice mixture of defensive turrets and income production buildings (both of which also make amazing decorations) and absolute nukes that can wipe a board of enemies and allies alike.
With an economy heavily focussed on faith, I was able to fill my city with Saule’s golden trees and assign passive workers to mine them, giving me an infinite amount of income, with passive protection from Amber Tear turrets, all of which looked utterly stunning as well.
Suffice it to say that each hero feels incredibly strong compared to basic troops and is utterly unique, making your choice matter. While the variety between the lot is pretty fair with the handful we have now, I would love to see the game expanded with even more gods in the future.
That being said, I would also like to see a bit of variation with faction units and building styles. At the moment, factions are pretty similar; All the old gods share a style, and the new church has a unique one of its own. While each faction gets some of its own units with its own look, some overlap exists. I’m a sucker for variety and would love it if each god had their own unique styles for building, troops, etc, with little to no overlap between each other.
Boy, do those units and buildings look fantastic! The game has a super modern look that somehow also captures the style of classic RTS games. The textures are super crisp and high quality, as are the models they’re placed over, yet somehow they look super-nostalgic.
The game is in early access, so you should expect some bugs. There’s nothing too bad at the moment, but I did face two noticeably obstructive glitches that affected my gameplay. The first of which happened when I died in the campaign. The game just sort of ended. There was no menu to return to the title or option to restart; I just had to sit in the infinite until I decided to close the application.
Secondly, on occasion, a unit or two would get stuck in parts of the terrain despite no clear reason why they should be there. Unfortunately, these units became unretrievable and would simply have to sit there, taking up housing space until they were killed, I won the game, or my shrine blew up.
Surprisingly, these are the only bugs I faced in this Early Access title, which I think speaks volumes about the passion and talents of the developers. I look forward to seeing what comes of Godsworn when the game fully releases.
Pros:
- Excellent RTS mechanics that strike a middle ground between balance and letting players have fun
- Fantastic setting with interesting characters, monsters, and a great story
- Saule
Cons:
- There is a slight lack of variety that I hope to see the devs address before the full launch
Comments