Clash II

Review

When starting a new game, you will have the option to play either the Campaign or Skirmish modes. I decided to play the Campaign, which is split into two factions: the Heathens and Purians. You can choose to play either of the factions as both sides come with their own campaign missions. As the Heathens you play as Elena who is doing her best to protect against the invaders and their new gods. As the Purians you play as Harwig de Trevil, a knight of the Albertine Order.

There is a small amount of information on the first mission and the mission objectives. After choosing which faction to play first, a small intro will start after which some chat text between you and some other characters will take place which explains the current situation; this will happen after the start of each new mission. Once the mission starts you will go over a small tutorial explaining how things work.

On the world map you will move Elena and any other units you may have under your control. The world is covered by a fog of war, this will reveal itself as you move about the world. Moving around the world will cost points, as will performing an action at a place of interest. Once these points have been used up you will have to end your turn, the enemy will then take any necessary action.

Throughout the map there are places of interest, these could be Sign Posts which will uncover some fog of war around the local area. There are Monoliths where you can collect Glyphs, which can give you a bonus in your next battle, health for your units or some other bonuses. There are also Battlegrounds where you can find artifacts and altars where you can heal.

There are also places such as enemy camps or enemies which will block your way through to an area. The enemies will have a number above them and a bit of information on how difficult it would be to defeat that enemy. You can get a bit more on the enemy and the units by investigating them. Starting combat will let you choose how to proceed; you can either manually control how the battle plays out or you can have it automatically play out.

When you initiate combat, you will be taken to the combat screen, this is an area divided into square grids. Here you will move your units around the combat area and attack the enemy until either you or the enemy is defeated by having no units left or losing Elana. There is an area where you can adjust the starting position of your units and there are squares where you cannot move to. At this point you can even decide to choose whether to have the battle play out automatically, or if you feel that you are getting your bottom spanked you can withdraw so you can save your current units.

You can gain new units from locations around the world but mainly you will have to recruit them from a stronghold. You will require gold to buy new recruits, although you will only have low-ranked recruits to buy to begin with. You must unlock new recruits by unlocking them in Research, which will also cost you gold. Some recruits can be bought from the Tavern, these units are usually better ones but will cost more than normal if you were to unlock and recruit them from the barracks in your stronghold.

You can have a total of eight units in a group, with various types of units: spearmen, shielders, archers, horsemen and heals to name a few. It’ll be down to you which ones you have in your group.  You can have multiple groups of units to help deal with the enemies throughout the world, but your main group will be the one which contains Elana.

In the Research you can also unlock new technologies for things like hardened arrows or spears and toughened armour along with other things, all of which will cost gold. The only problem with the Research is that when you move to another mission any research you have unlocked will not be unlocked in the new mission. This is not a big problem as gold and units can be found around the world as you move through it. There are also places which can earn you gold, such as mines.

There are six missions for each of the campaigns, all of which will have several quests for you to complete in order to move on to the next mission.

In the settings you have Gameplay - Voice Language (English and Polish); Text Language - (English and Polish), Show |Blood and Reset Help Messages; Graphics - Graphics Quality, Resolution, Anisotropic Filtering, Antialiasing, Texture Quality, Shadow Quality, V-Sync and Display Mode; Sound – Master, Music, Speech, Sound Effects, Ambient Sound and UI Sound Volume Sliders; Input - Edge Scrolling, RMB to Speed Up Moving; Common, Camera and Adventure Map Key binds.

The graphics are nice, and the game is fine although I did find it a little bit boring. Some of the text when chatting between characters had white patches around and between the letters. This made it hard to read at times, which wasn’t always the easiest for me anyway (yes, I’m booked into Specsavers next week).

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

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