War for the Overworld (2015)

This is a fun spin on the RTS genre with a stronger emphasis on base-building and macro with very little micro play at all.

The theme and art style are very funny and reminds me of another game with similar stuff called Overlord (which I'm tempted to revisit now). The humor mostly still hits though admittedly some of the jokes and language certainly have aged and although I'm not too sensitive to that because I get that this game is older, it make a weird vibe at times.

Mechanically I mostly really like the game, the base building is very enjoyable and its great seeing your dungeon start as a little cave and grow into a huge spanning structure with chambers and themed rooms.

The game is lacking in two major ways though in my opinion. First is that I don't feel like the game does a great job at communicating how exactly to be good at it while playing through the campaign(s) (I played the base game and first DLC campaigns). By this I mean that although I never struggled too much (with one mission exception where you are fighting a different Underlord in their realm), I both struggled to understand how to manage my units/base well and never knew if my attacks would go well or not because I couldn't judge the strength of my or the enemies units. Expanding on that a little I mean that I would constantly get messages that my minions were unhappy but I'd look at them and their stats were fine, or they were mad because they hadn't been paid or couldn't sleep despite open bed space and piles of gold sitting right next to them. Then some missions would require me to move my units all the way across the map but by the time they were halfway there they were complaining about their needs not being met because they were rallied or straight up rebelling. Most RTS, even old ones, would use UI elements to show if you were missing a certain resource or if some kind of condition wasn't met and this game could really use it. Then not understanding army strength was a big problem too, sometimes I'd rally early into enemies and just get devastated even using my spells to help and other times I rally my units and they just walk through the enemy base with no issue or loses. Those two things combined meant that my missions often went super long because I didn't want to rush, lose my units, then get messed up in a counter attack, and I overbuilt beds, food, and vaults because I didn't want any of my units to be mad until I was so built up that I could just win at the end by sticking my rally on the objective. That was how I played RTS as a kid on purpose but I try to be better now lol, though I admit there's a chance all of this big section just boils down to being a skill issue.

The second way the game is lacking in my opinion is that the story doesn't go anywhere and the DLC just starts a new story...that also doesn't go anywhere. The campaign is pretty short (and the DLC is super short) and seems like a cool act 1 for a narrative but it just doesn't evolve after that. And the story DLC doesn't even mention the first game or followup on the revelations from that ending. My understanding is that none of the other DLC I haven't purchased continue the story either. I don't know if there were big plans that got cancelled for this game or what but it does leave it feeling lacking playing it now.

I spent a lot of time focusing on the criticisms in this review but I don't want to make it seem like I was hating on the game, I liked it quite a bit overall I just feel like a little bit of extra quality of life and a conclusion to the plot could have made it truly great.

3 / 5 Stars

though maybe I'll change it to 3.5 once I play some of the other game modes if I love those, it's very close to that next .5