Darfall

When I started test-driving Darfall, I immediately thought of titles like They are Billions, Warcraft 3, Diplomacy is Not an Option, Age of Darkness: Final Stand, Thronefall, Cataclismo, and Spellforce 3. That's because of the role-playing elements, the focus on the rotation of the day, and the approach to building your fortress. This puts it in a fairly niche group of titles in the strategy genre. You need to appreciate both real-time strategy and role-playing to appreciate SquareNite's work.

In Darfall, we take on the role of a hero whose destiny is to save his world from destruction. We are asked to explore the continent of Aganor and defend it using wood, stone and iron. At first, we are mainly challenged by nature's dangerous animals and orcs. This changes quite quickly and we are forced to survive hordes of skeletons and demons. In this title, you control a powerful character that you can upgrade and develop during the campaign missions. Your progress is also carried over to the next mission. Even if you start as a wizard, you will gain access to other characters and more buildings over time.

Unfortunately, the story is nothing to hang on the Christmas tree. It manages to nail all the clichés of the fantasy genre before the campaign is half over. The developers admit that's the idea, but it doesn't work very well. I never get invested or interested enough in the events. We never really get to know the characters in depth and the experience is not as interesting as in Warcraft III, for example. However, I can overlook the fact that this is an indie title and despite my criticisms I have appreciated aspects of the world building. I also miss a bit more punch in the voice acting. This is because the story is explained by a voice actor speaking over black and white stills during the cutscenes. This could also be because the script did not impress me.

If you want to get everything at once, you can try the survival mode instead of the story-driven game mode. The map where you choose the missions is adorable to look at. It's a shame more of the title doesn't borrow from that design. In this game mode, we travel to various fallen cities we have to rebuild. Each level involves surviving a certain number of nights. The ability to choose your hero's class and build everything means you can really dig into strategies and tactical decisions. This is especially noticeable during the day, when you have to gather resources and send your hero out on various missions. A powerful hero with many abilities and artefacts can protect your base or improve aspects of base building. At night, the enemy will try to destroy your base, which means full focus on survival.

As your city grows, there are many things to keep track of. Resources including what you can find on the bodies of defeated enemies can be used to build houses and recruit troops. Some buildings can then refine and change these raw materials into others, meaning you can build even more advanced buildings. In some respects, the resource system is similar to Anno from Ubisoft. For example, you have to turn wood into planks or coal. I like that you can queue the amount of wood or stone to be processed. As in most modern strategy games, you can also change the speed. This can be a help if there are too many things to do at once.

I think the composition of functions like defending bases and searching for artefacts with your hero works well. While I don't agree with the art and design style, your troops, heroes and buildings are readable on the map. The user interface is clear and easy to decode. This helps when you need to quickly place many buildings and houses to get more soldiers. You can quickly see how much of the resources you have and how much you need. The costs are quite high in this game and it forces you to constantly decide whether to have more resource-increasing buildings, expand your area for buildings with lights or invest in defence.

I discovered pretty early on that the most fun aspect of a mission was about halfway through it. Once you've established your base, upgraded your hero a couple of times and got into the defence work, everything clicks. You expand, defend, and get into a rhythm that's fun. This is also where you choose which types of advanced troop layers to build or not. They are expensive and require special resources by refining wood or stone. In some cases, you have to go out and defeat bosses in the environments to access certain rare resources. Unfortunately, the start and end can get a bit long and repetitive at times. This is because you mostly follow the same pattern at the beginning and have access to everything towards the end.

The nights are probably my favourite part because you see so little of the game world. It forces you to protect your fortress and build lights out in the world. Each night comes with an increased difficulty level. As you can imagine, there is a lot to do both during the missions and outside. If you don't want to adventure in the campaign or in survival mode, you can create your own game levels with a powerful and easy-to-use tool. I think this is what will give the title longevity.

Visually, the game is reminiscent of Diplomacy is Not an Option. The edgy and simple 3D graphics are not very nice to look at. When it comes to the graphics style, I would have preferred something more visually inviting. In this category, Age of Darkness: Final Stand or They are Billions do much better. This is a me problem as I have a bit of a problem with blocky and angular graphic styles. I think SquareNite would have gained a bit by working out a more unique graphics style. Performance-wise, it works well with its simpler visual style. However, intense scenes can lead to a drop in frames per second. I also found that when you deploy a lot of light sources on pitch-black nights, this can also affect performance during longer missions. Unfortunately, the graphics settings are few, so if you're having performance issues, you don't have many approaches to tweak the graphics.

Sound-wise, there's not much to complain about. The title manages to achieve a decent level of sound for weapons, collisions and a soundtrack. For an indie title in this genre, it sounds pretty decent. What I think is a bit of a shame is that the campaign voice acting could have sounded a bit better. Whether that's due to the script or the voice actors is hard to say. Due to the fact that the whole genre has more or less shifted to showcasing cutscenes with still images and voiceover, you need to capture the player if you want to create something memorable, that stands out. This campaign fails to do that. However, SquareNite has built a universe with this title and has every opportunity to further develop this in expansions or with potential sequels.

SquareNite offers you a competent real-time strategy game interspersed with role-playing elements in Darfall. Despite a somewhat dull graphics style and a clichéd story, I'm happy with the gameplay. It offers the right amount of depth for its genre and the level editor helps users create new and interesting content. Between titles like They are Billions, Warcraft 3, Diplomacy is Not an Option, Age of Darkness: Final Stand, Thronefall, Cataclismo and Spellforce 3, Darkfall falls in the middle. I personally find the survival mode to be the most engaging thing about the game. That's because the challenge was good and the ability to build everything adds to a more interesting experience. If you are curious or like any of the other titles mentioned, you should try the demo version of Darfall.