Iron Harvest 1920+

Review

What an absolutely fabulous concept in terms of an alternate history this game is! Being born in Europe, I have been to many war museums in my lifetime. It’s so fascinating to me to be able to see what soldiers were wearing throughout the disturbing events that humankind has inflicted upon itself throughout the ages. And discovering what sort of mechanical inventions were developed first to deliver massive blows to enemy armies, populations and cities. So, imagine a typical World War scene with soldiers in their conventional gear with conventional weapons, and then add hero units with unique abilities, and throw in some Mechs for mobilised armoured units, and you have Iron Harvest 1920+.

Iron Harvest 1920+ Real-Time Strategy game developed by KING Art and published by Deep Silver and was released on the Steam platform on the 1st of September 2020.

The game consists of three solid single-player campaigns, which are the Polonia, Rusviet and Soxany. Each of them has 7 long missions as well as very good cut-scenes. You can also play online on 1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3 format, but there is a limited number of maps currently available. If you don’t dare playing against somebody else online, you can choose to set up a skirmish game against the AI, which has three levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal and Hard. 

At the time of writing this review, I have played a couple of skirmishes and a few games online. I must say that I had no difficulty finding a game; it only took me around 30 seconds to find a lobby. The 1vs1 online game was mostly against experienced players, but the other two (2vs2 and 3vs3) were pretty well balanced in regards to the levels of the players.



Most of my gameplay took part in the Solo campaigns on the medium level of difficulty, which is relatively intense. I’ve finished the Polonia campaign and am halfway through the Rusviet one. You must complete all the missions in the Polonia campaign to unlock the Rusviet, and complete all the Rusviet missions to unlock the Saxony campaign.

In each campaign, you play a hero who has special abilities. Anna Kos is a sniper who can kill an enemy with one shot with her marksman ability when activated, and also has a pet bear that carries medical supplies on its back and can heal soldiers. The bear is terribly aggressive and claws enemies to shreds. As I mentioned above, each mission is pretty long, with a bit variety. Some missions will be progressive where you’ll have to complete primary and secondary objectives. In this type of mission, you’ll be in control of your hero and a limited number of units. You might start the mission with only your hero and a couple of units, and then more units will join your party as you reach your objectives. Other missions will basically be an old-style RTS gameplay, where you have to gather resources, build and upgrade your base and will have a certain limit on how many units you can have. And finally, you might have a combination of both, which is usually really fun and especially difficult.

In terms of the resources, you’ll have stockpiles of iron, and oil barrels scattered all around the map. You can send units to retrieve them, and they will automatically be added to your resources.  Ultimately, what you need to do is to take over Iron mines and Oil pumps so you can add on several resources every five seconds. The trick is to make sure those pumps and are mines are still under your control so that you keep accumulating resource points to buy units, upgrade structures and regenerate health to your wounded units. That’s right, and you must keep the resources flowing at all times. If you can’t, there are several medic packs around each of the maps, but only the unit that picks it up will have its full health back. There are weapon crates too, and when you open them, you’ll have the ability to change to another one unit. For example, a medic unit opens a weapon crate which reveals an engineering icon (shovel), allowing you to swap your medic unit for an engineer unit.  But it might be a cannon, a flamethrower, a grenade or a submachine gun inside the crate, in which case you can choose to exchange your unit to become a cannon/flamethrower/grenade or submachine gun unit. This is not applicable for Mechs.

I really like the feel and the layout of the 1920’s world, which is also fully destructible. It’ so much fun to see these mechs walking into buildings and reducing them to rubble.

The graphics are top-notch and I really like the story so far. I must say that I am having a few issues with dropping frame rate in the Rusviet campaign, but I haven’t experienced this issue in the Polonia campaign at all.  The other weird thing that I am experiencing is the placement of units when they are taking cover; for some reason, I always have one and sometimes two units taking cover on the wrong side of walls or rocks and therefore perishing rather quickly. If you enjoy playing against other players online, as mentioned you’ll find a game online reasonably swiftly, but don’t expect too much variety in terms of maps at this stage.

 

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!

Iron Harvest 1920+ Steam Store Page


Positives

+ Stunning graphics and atmosphere
+ The world is fully destructible
+ A great story which consists of three campaigns
+ Ability to play skirmish or online against 1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3
+ Fabulous 1920+ Mechs units
+ Three levels of difficulty
+ Easy to play but c

Negatives

- No achievements or trading cards as yet
- A few frame rates issues
- Infantry issues while taking cover

Review Summary

What a superb solo and multiplayer RTS game set in a 1920’s alternative fully destructible world with plenty of Mechs in sight!

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Zeepond Rating: 8/10

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