Furthermore, the main characters are well-defined and bring both unique points of view to the story and interesting abilities to the gameplay. Surprisingly, Iron Harvest takes its storytelling and worldbuilding very seriously - there are three campaigns which hail from the base game, each centered around a different faction in the next Great War the world faces after a brief post-WWI period of scientific and technological innovation. I personally didn’t vibe nearly as much as I wanted to with the original PC release for a variety of reasons - this year’s port for next-gen consoles, which packs under its “Complete Edition” banner all previous expansion packs and further enhancements, fixes some of the game’s more glaring issues, but also highlights its deep-rooted shortcomings. Hype surrounding Iron Harvest was high, and both the pre-launch betas and the final release hit remarkable player numbers, yet the reception wasn’t super-positive overall. RTS fanatics gladly welcomed this premise, as the genre had been mostly stagnant ever since Blizzard’s StarCraft II came out in 2010. Once the multiplayer, competitive, and co-op features are added, Iron Harvest is sure to become a staple of the RTS genre.It’s been more than a year since Iron Harvest fully launched on PC, and now it’s bringing war to consoles.Īfter a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, German video game developer KING Art Games started full-blown development on Iron Harvest, a dream project for the team the selling point was to bring rudimentary mechs into a post-WWI setting, effectively creating an alternate timeline with abundant possibilities for a real-time strategy title. While the game is certainly not perfect, for the developers’ second attempt at an RTS, Iron Harvest has a lot of potential. Lastly, one thing to keep in mind is that for some strange reason, the pause button is defaulted to the pause key on PC, so make sure to check your settings when starting the game to map it to a more convenient button, because you will be reaching for it a lot. Were it included in the base finished project, it would have made the game more enjoyable, allowing players to balance out the frantic gameplay more and gain a better sense of control over the battlefield. Unfortunately, while this aspect was promised in the initial Kickstarter campaign and promoted on Steam, the build of the game I played did not have this feature. The ability to play this game in co-op mode is one of the few aspects that would have really helped Iron Harvest stand out against other recent RTS games, like Warcraft III: Reforged and Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. These abilities can be used to take advantage of certain scenarios but come with some hefty cooldowns to balance them out. Hero characters work much the same as most RTS hero characters, acting as a whole squad with special abilities and the same manpower. Squads can change class at any time by picking up dropped weapons from enemies or weapon crates found all over the maps, changing their basic look, firepower, and available abilities. Hero units begin with their own unique ability that is tied into their specific identity and specialization. As units rank up, their basic stats increase along with unlocking various special abilities such as a piercing shot that can penetrate cover or a passive heal that activates outside of combat. Units gain ranks by participating in combat. Instead of simply having large swathes of units, the game presents you with smaller, more diverse squads that can adapt to situations as they arise. The units themselves are noteworthy and a key element of Iron Harvest. Each map will have a main storyline objective, along with some side missions that can be cleared for extra rewards to make the main mission easier. Each chapter or mission consists of clearing a single map of objectives. Iron Harvest includes a lot of the usual RTS gameplay staples: Players lead a wide variety of units into battle against the enemy, utilizing a range of environments and tactics to defeat other squadrons of enemy combatants. You have to play them in order, but the game takes this into consideration, continuing to add more challenges to the campaign instead of resetting the difficulty back when you move onto the next character. The three separate main stories all center around different heroes of the war, each with their own storyline and influence on the outcome of the war. The maps themselves have interesting scenery and themes, with new and exciting objectives that escalate with the war and each of the three plots. The writing works well as a linking device between each fight.
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