Graphics

Graphically, Battleforge is a rather stunning game, quite frankly. That’s saying an awful lot considering that it’s a strategy game too, as RTS games usually don’t get a huge amount of attention when it comes to the visual appeal. Tacticians are generally just as happy to look at 2D sprites as they are 3D models – the real beauty of the genre lies elsewhere.

Despite that though, Battleforge still looks fantastic and although we’re not currently able to get into the servers in order to do the usual itemised breakdown (as the game is currently prepping for launch and we’ve left this bit foolishly late), we’ve seen enough to assure you of that. The game looks great.

What’s more, the presentation of the game is excellent too – and there’s a distinction there that I’ve lectured about before, so I won’t go over that ground again. It isn’t just a case of lush, detailed polygons and crisp textures with DirectX 10.1 performance tweaks, though there is that too.

One of the most impressive things about the game in our opinion though is the hand-drawn art that adorns the cards in the game, giving them an authentic and realistic feel despite the fact that they are purely digital. The art on some of the units looks truly gorgeous, especially when you get to some of the more powerful creatures or spells. The Grimvine, a colossal entanglement of roots and ivy that can strangle enemies with its vines, is our personal favourite.


It’s a little disappointing that form does occasionally override function however, especially when it comes to the interface of the main menu and campaign map. More than once we ended up playing levels that were blatantly far too hard for our current skill level purely because we weren’t clear which mission was supposed to come next – but that’s nothing that can’t be fixed by paying attention.

Phenomic has obviously taken a certain delight in clashing the two artistic styles too, going all out with the scale of the 3D units to keep them in line with the expectations built by the card illustrations.

Unlike in games like Red Alert 3 where you expect to see huge tanks but rarely get anything that’s actually all that impressive, Battleforge actually does deliver on those promises. Your giants may not be all that huge by Supreme Commander standards, but they are big and appropriately powerful.


Unfortunately though, the contrast between the giants and the regular infantry, as well as the airborne units and buildings, can make the game a bit too confusing when you have levels with narrow canyons and multiple players. It’s often far too easy to induce stutters in the framerate and problems in the gameplay by having too many players with too large armies trying to get a slice of the action.

The level design often only accelerates this problem, with players advised to stay away from wide open spaces which are often littered with wild magic that can strike your forces. It’s similar to how players in Dune II would avoid travelling over the sand, for fear of Sandworm attack.

While the concept of wild magic does give moving your troops around a certain feeling of vulnerability and tension though, forcing players to take their troops to the smaller paths means that even small altercations can become far too confusing. On at least one occasion we ended up losing a battle purely because we couldn’t find our Sunderers in the on-screen jumble, so that enemy towers were slowly able to slaughter our forces

The idea of giants wrestling over a huge battlefield, with dragons swooping down on the archers while lava sweeps the plains and the men on the fortifications are all turned to pigs, does sound very epic and cool, we know. Unfortunately though, sounding cool isn’t worth a lot if you can’t find your troops amidst the chaos and lose the battle as a result.