Maestros

Review

Two factions are battling it out for control of the floating islands of Tenshii; choose your commander, transform minions, build your squad into battle ready monsters and smash your opponents in this RTS/MOBA game by Systence Games.

To start a game click, play on the main menu screen and it will open the games browser which will show any games currently available. You can also host a game from here; clicking on host will open a lobby where you can choose which team you’d like to play as, red or blue, and even as a spectator if you wish. Next, you have the choice of five different maps on offer along with the game type of either Round Based or Team Deathmatch. If you don’t have enough players or fancy playing on your own, you can add bots to compete against. You can set the difficulty to each bot you add to a game, so you have varying levels of a challenge. There’s also a chat box so you can tell players how you’re going spank their botty while you set a game up!

Once done, just hit the Start button and you’ll then be taken to another screen where you pick a commander to lead your minions. To start with you only have the choice of three commanders of the Knights of Teutonian faction; there’s another three commanders to choose from once you unlock the Alchemists of Regalis faction. The choice of commanders are TinkerMeister (Melee), BlasterMeister (Ranged) and RoboMeister (Ranged) for the Tuetonians; the Alchemists have Serpent Master (Melee), Rambam Queen (Ranged) and finally Hive Mother (Ranged). Each of the commanders has their own abilities and attacks to aid you in your conquest of the opposite team.

Once the game starts, you’ll need to run off to attack the neutral leafy monsters you’ll find dotted around the maps. Defeating these leafy monsters will give you basic minions which you can then mutate into bigger and better minions. To mutate them you’ll need four basic minions and have them enter transformation points; the more basic minions, the more botty-spanking minions you’ll have control over. All the mutated minions have their own abilities which you can use to trap, blast and melt the enemy team, so choose the perfect combinations of minions.

Somewhere on the map there’s a powerful monster, which, if you tame, will help you against your enemy. But tame him quickly, otherwise you’ll find your enemy in control of it. If you do tame the beast, you’ll also need to put it to use quickly as, once you tame it, it starts to lose health. To win a game you must defeat your enemy commanders or destroy a shrine, gaining points as you do. In team deathmatch, it’s the team which is first to reach five points who wins, and in round-based games, your commanders only have one life per round, no respawn like in team deathmatch and it’s the best of three rounds to decide the winner. Winning or losing games will give you some experience points which will allow you to level up and unlock commanders as you do so.

On the main menu screen, you’ll find Play, Tutorial, Credits, Feedback, Report Bug, Exit, Settings, Discord link, Player Profile and a welcome message with chat feature. The settings consist of Resolution, Volume Master, Screen Mode (full screen or windowed) and Graphics Quality (Low or High). While in game you can also get to the settings by hitting escape on the keyboard, you still get the same options except that it will show you the keys used to play the game. It also tells you the basics of how to play the game; the tutorial is more hands on. The tutorial is made up of four parts: Basic 1, Basic 2, Practise and Alchemist (must unlock Alchemist Commander before selecting this by reaching level four).

I tried to host a game against the bots, but I was forever trying to connect to a server. In the end, after about ten minutes of waiting, I’d have to tab out of the game to close it as I couldn’t get back to main menu or anywhere and Alt+F4 wouldn’t work. I’m hoping that it’s just the servers down for maintenance or something simple which will get fixed shortly.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!