izigame.me

After 4.1hrs, 4 campaign missions and a couple skirmishes for first impressions, I can say that The Valiant has a ton of things going for it, and I was enjoying myself and excited about the game while playing it. However, I think ultimately it lets down the player on some key elements to the point where I wouldn't recommend it over other RTS out there.
First off, the good: story, narrative, voice acting, general style. This game's campaign is essential Dawn of War II except you play as a Knight Templar on a quest for Holy Relics, against your evil brother (sort of a Cain vs Abel situation). That, in my opinion, is pretty sick. I loved that. And the missions did well to bring that to life. Activated abilities on most units and heroes, as well as gear and leveling your heroes was awesome.
Where the game struggles to compete with existing titles, is in the unit controls and strategy elements. Most units either sit back and shoot until they get charged at (archers) or charge into a mosh pit and you wait for them to finish clubbing (infantry). Cavalry feel good, but they don't seem as strong as infantry, which seems backwards.
In principle, that sounds fine, but in practice I found myself waiting for a lot of fights to play out, knowing the conclusion. And I felt like I could put my units in general areas, but I could never be precise with where and how they moved, which is essential to me in an RTS, including squad based tactics RTS.
Then there is army building and economy, which you spend very little of the game actually doing. I played a skirmish and the technology system feels very arbitrary (click square to allow you to do more of what you expect to do) and inorganic. Whereas, in a similar game like Ancestors Legacy that has very shallow base building, there is at least a visual and mechanical progression that makes the progress of the tech tree and production feel right. Also, I almost always felt like the army size was too small. This is perhaps fixed in late stages of the campaign, but skirmish can be won with like 5 squads against the AI. I want an army!
I commend the developers for what they got right - and they got a lot right - but I think the missing parts are actually the ones that are critically important for putting hours into an RTS long term. I hope they do well with this game enough to give it another go and invest in those areas, because the concept is incredibly badass and the execution was *almost* there.
Pros:
-Great story
-Great voice acting
-Cool units, heroes
-Great progression and gear system in the campaign
-Excellent use of activated abilities on units
-Fortitude/valour systems are great
-Experienced no bugs (in 2022 this is a plus for new games, sadly)
Cons:
-Unit balancing seems off
-Controls do not feel precise
-Combat is unwieldy, often does not feel impactful
-Little thought to the strategy element of composing an army, building up an army, map control, etc.
-Main Menu UI looks ugly (just a pet peeve - in-game UI is excellent)
I hope I worded this in a way that is both helpful to consumers and encouraging for the devs. I still have a lot I like about this and likely will play more, but I know most of my friends who still play RTS with me would be too disappointed with the mechanical issues to recommend this as a purchase.
Thanks!