King Art Games dropped the newest beta of Iron Harvest on Kickstarter backers, so I gave it a go. The beta is quite complete, featuring single player skirmishes, online multiplayer, and a some story campaign missions with cinematics and voice acting.
It's quite a complete package for a beta, there aren't any major bugs (like game crashes or major graphics glitches), but small imperfections are present all over the game.
Iron Harvest is the real-time strategy version of Scythe, focusing on squad-based combat. If you've played Company Of Heroes, you'll immediately know how to play: almost every part of the scenery acts as cover for infantry, and such cover can be destroyed by the various mechanized units every faction has. There are two kinds of resources, iron and oil, which are collected by scavenging crates scattered around the map or by capturing extraction points.
The campaign stars Anna, a red-haired Polanian girl that looks like straight out of that famous Jakub Rozalski: she even has a bear on her side. Voice acting isn't the greatest, and the story doesn't sound particularly original, and the bad guy is a bit too "mustache-twirling" in some scenes. It's enjoyable, and a decent backdrop for the various missions.
Mission themselves might be a bit too long for their own good, and it really feels playing a steampunk version of Company Of Heroes, in both offensive and defensive situations. Even the rhythm of resource collection, unit building, and combat feel like Relic's game.
The bugs are nothing major, once a prop in a cutscenes was pure purple, one mission objective never got updated after loading a save, and cutscene dialogues start before the visuals have faded in.
Graphics could use a bit of tweaking during cutscenes, and performance is good enough, though there are some framerate dips even when the situation is not all that chaotic.
Interface could use some working, it gives the impression you have a limited number of units available but in fact you can build as much as your manpower allows, and scrolling through selected units to activate special actions is a bit of a pain.
Still, it's fun and a competent real-time strategy game.
It's quite a complete package for a beta, there aren't any major bugs (like game crashes or major graphics glitches), but small imperfections are present all over the game.
Iron Harvest is the real-time strategy version of Scythe, focusing on squad-based combat. If you've played Company Of Heroes, you'll immediately know how to play: almost every part of the scenery acts as cover for infantry, and such cover can be destroyed by the various mechanized units every faction has. There are two kinds of resources, iron and oil, which are collected by scavenging crates scattered around the map or by capturing extraction points.
The campaign stars Anna, a red-haired Polanian girl that looks like straight out of that famous Jakub Rozalski: she even has a bear on her side. Voice acting isn't the greatest, and the story doesn't sound particularly original, and the bad guy is a bit too "mustache-twirling" in some scenes. It's enjoyable, and a decent backdrop for the various missions.
Mission themselves might be a bit too long for their own good, and it really feels playing a steampunk version of Company Of Heroes, in both offensive and defensive situations. Even the rhythm of resource collection, unit building, and combat feel like Relic's game.
The bugs are nothing major, once a prop in a cutscenes was pure purple, one mission objective never got updated after loading a save, and cutscene dialogues start before the visuals have faded in.
Graphics could use a bit of tweaking during cutscenes, and performance is good enough, though there are some framerate dips even when the situation is not all that chaotic.
Interface could use some working, it gives the impression you have a limited number of units available but in fact you can build as much as your manpower allows, and scrolling through selected units to activate special actions is a bit of a pain.
Still, it's fun and a competent real-time strategy game.
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