Similar, but for a few things. Formations are taken out and you can now control all your units. This makes for a much faster game. The abilities are also keyed towards this style of play. The AI is also much improved!
Might those AI improvements make their way back to Mercs? (Please excuse my out-of-context curiosity, but are there any long-term plans left for Mercs? Has the game done well financially? I intend Romans In My Carpet! to be my new (and only) casual async TBS hobby, but Mercs is where my true allegiances lie )
I agree online is not ideal. I still bought anyhow because I liked ravenmark so much , this game has to be good lol. Il just play when I'm home with wifi , unless I really get hooked lol.
Thank you for your reply, Tebius. It doesn't change my mind about purchasing Romans but if a network connection is not your game design trend I will continue to look forward to your future releases.
>In any game where multiplayer and single player shares progression, online requirements are essential to combat cheating and maintain competitive balance.< Ayjona, thanks for your explanation. I am quite aware of the reasons behind this network requirement nor do I fault Witching Hour Studios for this decision. After all, it's their game and their business. But I have no interest in multiplayer gaming and, being quite mobile, I am often without internet access. Please do not mistake my initial post for a complaint. It may be that I am not alone in disliking a network requirement. If this is true of many players it will have an adverse effect on sales. I am registering my disapproval not in the hopes that this game will be modified (clearly not easily feasible) but as simple marketing feedback that may be of value for Witching's future game designs.
I too was stoked about this until I found out about the online requirement. I play on an iPod touch and only have sporadic access to wifi, and multiplayer doesn't interest me at all. I may be in the minority though.
I personally don't understand why online requirements are such a dealbreaker for people. Though, I don't typically play games of this depth outside the comfort of my own home so maybe its just me. Its relatively cheap, completely optional IAP, and made by the people who made Ravenmark. That's all I need to know. I'll post impressions after I play some more.
Yer welcome, and well put, and nope, yer probably right, well put again, and yes, perhaps WHS received the same criticism over Ravenmark: Mercenaries, so my guess is that they are well aware of the results online requirements produce from potential customers. If, as I wrote in my last post, a developer hopes to create a game where progress is shared between single and multiplayer, there really is not any other viable choice to retain a competitive balance. So I doubt they will take it into consideration in those instances where they hope to create a similar product. But perhaps it will alert them to a market segment that prefers offline access over symbiotic progress
Why are people so against the always on thing? I am almost never without a connection on my ipad or my iphone, especially the ipad. And this is a legitimate question, not trying to pick a fight
With Mercs, every time you made a move even in single player, there was a pause in game play. It just sucked, especially if you were in a remote area, which I am now. There were so many times ewre I timed out. I can state that this is extremely responsive a better experience with the connectivity.
I am totally with you on this. I plan on picking this up when I get home, I look forward to hearing your impressions though
To everyone complaining about the always online thing.. I agree. I dislike it too, however that's the future of iOS games. Many devs I've talked to have said that they're gonna be going in that direction too. Even for single player only games. It's the only way they can combat piracy/cheating etc.. Bottom line is, if you're gonna boycott games for requiring a constant Internet connection, then you're not gonna be playing many iOS games in the future I'm afraid. Yes it sucks! but that's the way it is.
I get confused when people complain about an online requirement with mobile devices? Are your data plans that crappy?
Alright seeing as there are no impressions so far, I will kick it off. I played up to campaign level 3 (which is actually just the first match after the small tutorial levels) and I WAS pretty tired when I started so my view may change when I play again later tonight, but gotta say it didn't make a lot of sense to me so far. I played the 3rd level 3 times and cannot pas it yet. I am a big strategy fan (not brilliant at them, but keen and my favourite genre) so I'm surprised it didn't click especially on what should theoretically be an easy stage of the game! The turn order thing is very hard to work around. I'm not 100% sure why it's done this way and not just allow you to move units in any sequence one at a time instead of stacking orders and trying to figure out if the path will be clear, but I found that it's more like a puzzle game in working out WHERE units can reach based on who moves first and if the path will be clear. Quite often my units would just get stuck behind another one in its way, so they stop dead and not move to where I pointed them, wasting precious moves and allowing the enemy to get the upper hand all the time. The abilities of units is not particularly clear either, but that is more a case of learning it more I guess (there is a codex to read but it isn't intuitive for me without absorbing that). The ranges that those abilities can reach seems inconsistent and I'm not sure why sometimes they can reach further (as expected) and sometimes not. You can set a unit to "chase" an enemy unit if they were to move first, but then the problem of blocking yourself for previously stacked orders rears it's head again because you have no control of what grids they will walk to when chasing, so really hard to get into the positions you planned and wasting the turn. Then I instantly take a pounding from the enemy. Also seems that level 3 I don't have any ranged units, and only have units that take more damage than they can output to all the enemy types in that mission! So I get whittled down. Best I can do is get him down to 1v1 so far, but then my last unit is already nearly dead and the remaining enemy still at full health. Maybe this movement planning is part of the intended game design (of course it is) but it's not something I got my head around yet. Graphically it is very charming, and the interactions and interface is nice to use. But I worry that if I can't handle even the first stage I will get totally lost once more abilities are given to me! Any tips? I never played their other games so might be why I am struggling a bit with the core concept. Having said all that, I don't mean it to put people off. I can see its a solid little game, with plenty to learn (not as casual as it looks) and could be a nice online skirmish game once the mechanics make more sense! EDIT: I went back and played that mission again and passed it now, hehe. We do have a ranged ability unit but it can only be used every 3rd turn. So it was still a close fight to keep them alive long enough. Am I supposed to keep moving them away from the enemy until 3rd turn? Another thing that came up, is even if you plan YOUR OWN units movement with the sequence in mind, it doesn't stop an enemy moving onto a tile before you and basically blocking ALL your other moves for that turn. I suppose this is intended too, but seems a bit frustrating to keep wasting turns and just taking damage without being able to retaliate (what with the very limited health you have, 1 block can destroy the whole mission). Still, coming to it with a fresh head I'm enjoying it a lot more! Back to mission 4 then
