Taste of Power

Review

Taste of Power is set in an alternate medieval world, where you’ll be able to play as one of three nations on offer at this current time. Build and develop your city and surrounds, upgrade your troops in this real time strategy/city building game brought to you by OneOcean LLC

On the main menu screen, you’ll find Single play, Options, Unit Review and Exit. Clicking on Single Play will take you to the options for setting up a game to your personal preference. Here you can choose the map to play, currently there’s only two maps to play, with a third map for use as a tutorial. Choosing the map Art of War (tutorial) will reveal six chapters: Tactics and Management, Features of the Europeans, Chinese Warriors and the Timurids, Technology and Features of the economy. Each of these subjects will take you through how to play the game, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each nation. Once you’ve gone through the tutorial to familiarise yourself with the game, it’s time to start. Currently you only have the choice of two maps to play on, either the Frontier Island or the Rise of the Sun maps.

The Frontier Island is a medium-sized map, where you can develop your city, recruit troops, investigate technology and build new settlements at certain points around the map. The object of the game on this map is to destroy all the enemy’s administration centres.

The Rise of the Sun is larger than the Frontier Island map where you can improve your strategies and manoeuvres as you battle with the enemy. This map represents two nations battling over border locations, with plenty of space to build and grow settlements and cities.

Once you’ve decided which map to play on, next up is choosing a nation.  There are currently three different nations you can choose from: Europeans, Chinese and the latest edition, Timurids. Each nation has their own strengths and weaknesses.  To help you decide which to play, you can check out the Units Review on the main menu screen, where you’ll find information on each of the nation’s units, buildings and technologies. Next you have the choice of three game difficulties, either Beginner, Normal or Experienced, and finally your choice of opponent from one of the two remaining nations.

You start each game with an administration building, farm and four houses to help you on your way. Each house will have a squad of workers, who can be sent out to collect resources, manage the materials and for the construction of new buildings. A city will need at least eight sets of houses to maintain it with enough workers. Once you’ve got a few more houses, and resources are coming in, you’ll need to build a barrack. This will allow you to train your troops; at first, you’ll only have two types of troops at your disposal. Creating other buildings like the arsenal, academy and fort will allow you more options and new technologies for your troops.

Before long you’ll soon have to expand into the lands surrounding you; to do this you’ll need a Settler, which you can acquire from the administrative building. Once you have one, click on him and an arrow will point out of the city where you’ll be able to settle down. Send the settler to this point and they’ll construct a new administration building, from here you can start building another settlement. Once you have two or more settlements then they’ll start trading automatically between settlements.

As you move around the map and uncover more of your surroundings, you may run into the enemy and have to fight your way out. If you have some spies, though, you can move them ahead to scout an area (they can have invisibility). Another neat trick of the spy is that they can start rebellions in your enemy’s camp which will pit them against each other. In total there are fourteen types of troops, nine buildings and thirteen technologies for each nation, although they will differ slightly from one another.

Once you’ve massed enough troops for battle and have found the enemy’s base of operations (if they haven’t already come for you) then it’s time to attack. However, make sure you’re using the right troops when attacking an enemy’s unit. Things like smoke or spike walls can help protect your troops, while turning the tide in your favour. So off you trot, get building your city, settle in the surrounding areas, build a devastating army and conquer your enemy!

In the options on the main menu screen you’ll find the settings for Sound (Music and Sound volume controls), Display (Quality and V-Sync), Controls (Keyboard and Mouse Sensitivity) and Game Tips (some information on game play).

The game is currently in early access and there’s a couple things which need sorting. There’re some grammar mistakes here and there. Also, you can’t always see information when you click on the icons on the bottom right of the screen, which I think is being worked on. The game is enjoyable to play; it could do with some more maps but hopefully there’ll be some in the future.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!