Impire (2013)

Intro

Impire is a RTS in the style of Dungeon Keeper. You are an evil overlord and have to construct a dungeon, build an army and attack enemies while defending against invading heroes.

The Good

• Standard room sizes means no more clunky fiddling.
• Only one map, raids on the surface are automated.

The Bad

Rooms have invisible borders and can only be placed attached to existing hallways. Hallways are permanent and rooms can't overlap with them. Combined these elements make it impossible to properly plan your dungeon.

There is a ton of micromanagement. A new unit has to be sent to train and then you have to upgrade every bit of equipment manually - you can't even do the latter for entire squads. And while squads are a decent idea it is incredibly annoying that they are so limited. For the first 4-5 hours you only have 3 squads of 4 troops. Other examples of the game needing annoying handholding include workers not automatically staffing rooms they repair, workers having to be summoned from a context menu on your character and constantly having to send troops to the kitchen to replenish morale.

The biggest problem the game has is that it's boring. Enemies on the map just stand around waiting for you to kill them and invading heroes are basically irrelevant. Cranking up the difficulty just means more tedious micromanagement. The campaign also unlocks new rooms, units and upgrades waaaay too slowly. The unskippable dialogue makes the campaign feel even more sluggish.

Conclusion

While Impire is a bit better than Dungeons 2/3, it's still far from an enjoyable experience. I think these types of games should focus more on the tower defense aspect of traps and make hero invasions a real but manageable threat. Now you're just going through the motions.