Empire of the Ants Review (Gr3g [AUT])
I would give it a neutral rating in its actual state but since there is none I have to give it a thumbs down.
Its recommended on sale around 20-30 bucks no questions asked but its not worth the 39,99 or 49,99 for the digital deluxe edition because there are too much things bugging (haha!) me.
The graphics and music are beautiful! I am now through the whole story campain with ~15 hrs played. Its fun to run around as ant, jumping from leaves to leaves (yeah you heard right, you can and have to jump in the story when things turn into a plattformer for some missions) and just gazing at the landscapes.
Maybe you asked yourself "Dafuq, normal ants jumping??!!11" Ah, I see you are an ant nerd! Don´t expect to much realism from the game, you will be disappointed in the details. But if you always wanted to ride a mantis while commanding armies of ants towards other ants then keep reading. Thats the kind of game to expect and it looks damn good! :)
That beeing said I got the feeling alot that the devs cared more about the visualisation then other stuff. There are a few mission types during the story campain. I would describe them as skirmish, scouting, hunting and plattforming. Whilst the devs tried to put variety to those missions, the feel very repetitive after a while.
Same goes with me for the combat. Its supposed to be an RTS but it feels like playing Overlord or Bannerlords with ants.
You are limited to a maximum of 7 legions, with 3 basic types of units (melee, gunner, worker), one of three superpredators and one of three support units. While I had a fun watching the battles the combat didnt suck me into it wanting more.
I was also disappointed that your ant character cant doing anything besides giving orders, building stuff and buff troops.
There is no way to interact with the enemy yourself. Even if you get "attacked" there is only a health bar depleting. No enemy is interacting with you at any time... maybe this was lazy development or it was because of the multiplayer part of the game to not get stucked colliding or beeing surrounded by troops. I dont know but its not immersive at all.
Other stuff that annoyed me was at one point at the story you gotta fight against black ants. In the cutscene you gotta see that they are colored black but ingame you are just fighting against the same model of ants as yours. That and other stuff seemed just lazy for me.
One can also only hope no one with arachnophobie is playing this game. I dont think they will make it through the story...
So in short I regret to buy the digital deluxe edition for the head up start. I wanted to support the devs because its an ant game but in retrospective a little discount would have been the right way to go for myself.