It’s about time the real-time strategy genre makes an appearance on the world stage again. People have been dying to get their hands on this genre once again because it seems that it slowly faded into the background. I mean, the mid 90’s seemed to be the era for real-time strategy games, just think about what the Age of Empires, Command & Conquer and Starcraft series brought to the table and even though technology and creative minds haven’t sat still, these beloved series left their mark on the current strategy games. Sometimes, sticking to the hardcore genre is the best way to go. Forged Battalion is definitely going in the right direction…
Petroglyph has had their fair share of real-time strategy games. They worked on important titles such as C&C and even Dune, which had a great influence on the next generation. You can tell that Petroglyph is a hardcore fan of the Old school real-time strategy games because their project “Forged Battalion” is shaping up to be a fun RTS game that’ll bring some fans back to the genre where it all began.
The story of Forged Battalion starts off at the 21st Century where society and planet Earth is crumbling down to a pile of bogus. Climate change has influenced the Earth’s resources badly and it also starts to affect different areas of the world. Places are becoming like dry plain deserts where life’s success is turning into zero. To take advantage of this situation, a group called “The Collectives” has risen from the ashes to seize control of the world. The player takes on the role as a leader of a group of resistance fighters who want to break the grasp of “The Collectives”. This is the main concept of the game and it’s told through dialogues. Even though the story doesn’t succeed in convincing the player as an important character, Forged Battalion succeeds in its action-based gameplay where customization will shape the player’s armies.
Forged Battalion definitely feels new and yet familiar. The game will make old players like me feel like “coming home”. The game sticks to the main principles, gather resources, build factories, strengthen your defenses and produce different units that’ll bring havoc to the enemy faction. The game will challenge you with different objectives like eliminating the enemy, protect civilians and hold captured areas. Even though the game feels familiar and the gameplay itself feels rock solid, you’re not being helped to get a grip on the game’s controls or functions. You have to play the game in order to figure the whole thing out, it’s not lab science but I had to play a few matches before I actually understood everything. An in-game tutorial could have helped. I also can’t help the feeling that the game still needs some polishing. Some units don’t react like they should, you actually have to instruct your units to battle other units… It seems like they don’t have the common sense to start attacking themselves. Of course, the game is still in Early Access, so I do believe that most of the problems will be fixed. The game had a good start, but it’s still not perfect.
Forged Battalion also focuses on faction customization which is one of the game’s best features. These customizations will affect the warzone immensely. Everything that’s yours can be altered: faction’s name, weapons, and armor of units, your superweapon, and headquarters. The game offers a nice variety when it comes to “playstyle”. There are a lot of different “upgrade” options to choose from, there will be something to your liking that’ll suit your playstyle perfectly. All these upgrades to make your units better or faster will, of course, influence the respawn rate and cost. It’s just a matter of making the “right choice” at the “right time”.
“Forged Battalion is a solid RTS that can mean the comeback of the Old School RTS genre…”
Your performance during the whole match will reward you with research points that can be spent on the tech tree to upgrade your skills. The more research points you gather, the more options that’ll be available to your set of abilities. It’s a great way to alter the battlefield, in the best way possible but all of these abilities/ upgrades have to be unlocked along the way which causes for a bit of a disappointment because of the “slow start”. It would be much cooler if these upgrades are “open to upgrade” from the beginning. This flexibility will make your faction even more unique. This will, of course, have an influence on the game’s balance, so it’s a choice of the developers that can be respected but maybe we’ll see some changes that’ll make the whole game a lot more “flexible”.
Like I said before, the game is still in Early Access. There is no full game yet, but the developers already offer some great content for you to test out. There are a couple of campaign missions, a skirmish mode to test out your battle sense on 10 different maps, ranked/unranked matches and there are 2 playable modes: Annihilation (destroy every last bit of your enemy) and Destroy HQ (destroy the opponent’s HQ). The game offers an 8-player battle on each map and the difficulty of the AI can be changed. A lot of things to do, even though it’s in Early Access.
Conclusion:
The game will definitely go far as it will attract old and new players thanks to its action-packed gameplay and customization feature. It’s quick to pick up and a blast to play with other people. The game still isn’t perfect and will hopefully be polished in the near future. The story and AI still need some work, but Forged Battalion is a solid RTS that can mean the comeback of the Old School RTS genre…
