Tribes of Midgard Review (Jocommando)
Imagine if Diablo instituted a wave defense mode. One could picture the village of Tristram needing to be defended against cyclical, ever more difficult waves of demons, with the objective being to see how many waves the village could survive under your protection. Periodically, Diablo himself would spawn in some far-flung corner of the map to advance towards and eventually attack alongside those waves. To add to that base game, tack on a resource gathering/gear crafting/structure building/town upgrading scramble into the mix, the ability to play with up to 9 friends or strangers, and you have the highlights of the hypothetical Diablo Town Defense that Tribes of Midgard wants to be.
Now imagine the whole thing goes to hell, but not in the way one would hope for in a Diablo game. In Tribes, the combat is basic, tedious, and dull, consisting of animation-locked click attacks and special attacks that build up over time. The UI is cluttered, poorly explained, and glitchy/laggy. The resource gathering and construction mode are haphazard, time-wasting distractions that add complexity without truly enriching the experience. The town upgrades are expensive and reliant upon the aforementioned lackluster resource gathering. The boss fights are infuriating: mindlessly repetitive damage sponges, even when they aren't curbstomp-difficult.
All in all, Tribes of Midgard feels like it's trying to be too many things, and not doing any of them particularly well. In each session, the early game emulates the survival crafting genre, having you pick up resources off the ground before upgrading to gathering tools. Late game, Tribes borrows the node-based resource trickles as seen in RTS games such as Dawn of War, if you can be bothered to manually find the resources needed to repair those dilapidated nodes on the map. All the while, you play from a fixed third-person isometric perspective reminiscent of better hack & slash games, without offering the tactical nuance and interesting loot that makes those games engaging. Finally, session play stretches on for hours, meaning its a serious time investment with little in the way of reward or enjoyment to be had.
But hey: you and 9 friends can dress up like vikings and thwack monsters... yay?