Achron

I don't want to be too mean to this game; the time travel mechanics are well thought out, interesting, ingenious, and have emergent consequences with strategic implications. That said, there is the MASSIVE issue that the game is basically unplayable, especially to a newcomer. There's a lot of things that are just kind of broken with the game. - The pathing is really bad; units that are ordered as a group to move will inevitable fan out into a giant line, even if it leaves them vulnerable. - The interface is pretty confusing relative to the sheer complexity of the mechanics. - Although theoretically the time travel takes the focus off of the whole RTS APM thing, in practice it doesn't seem much better; the literal pause doesn't actually stop the timewaves, or your opponent, from moving. - The graphics are pretty bad, in a way that personally made it more difficult for me to play, and my library is largely filled with faux 8bit games. But even aside from that, there is a major problem because here are 2 major modes: story, and PvP/multiplayer. Now, the first steps of the campaign are played with the human faction, which apparently back when the game was still being updated were actually kind of overpowered and were nerfed. This makes the first mission very difficult; you need to get lucky to succeed. The second mission is even worse; I'll admit I'm not amazing at the game, since I'm not a big RTS player, but it is near impossible unless you already fundamentally understand the game, before being introduced. Of course, you could try the multiplayer. if you find someone who already plays to teach you, you might even learn the game. (Writing this review made me saltier than I realized it would) I love Achron as a concept, but I cannot possibly recommend it as a game. It has lots of flaws, and it has a learning curve that makes Dwarf Fortress look friendly and approachable.

A bad RTS, but a great demo of the Resequence Engine. I really can't recommend this as an RTS, it just suffers from too many problems. Lack of visual clarity, bad pathfinding, dull textures, mediocre core gameplay... Which is a real shame, as the central time-travel mechanic is amazing and almost single-handedly makes up for the rest of the game. Considering the multiplayer community is now dead, I would only recommend picking this up if you have friends to mess around with or a masochistic longing for the campaign mode (which suffers pacing problems).

I'm sad I can't recommend this game. Although I love the main concept, it's shortcommings and extreme lack of polish end up beeing to much for me. I hope someone picks up this idea to try it again in the future.

Note: Written by someone who enjoys RTSs but is bad at them, and only after a short amount of time with this game. Pros: - Interesting concept offering something different to the standard RTS - Good soundtrack - In-mission graphics are fine for what the game is Cons: - Slightly cumbersome and not particularly intuitive control scheme - Steep learning curve. I failed the first mission, before the time-travelling gimmick had even been introduced, through being rushed while practising the command I'd just been taught. The game likes to drop you in at the deep end - once you're taught something new, it seems to expect you to instantly have mastered it with no margin for error on initial attempts. - Voice acting is not to a particularly high standard and at points can be comically bad to the point of distracting from the storyline. Overall, the concept has a lot of potential and I wouldn't say that this necessarily a bad game.Those that master it may have a lot of fun with it. That said, I was unable to get to grips with it and was not encouraged to keep trying, and so cannot, from my standpoint, recommend it.

Achron is, as other reviews put it, an incredible demo of the Resequence Engine, which is effectively a monstrosity of a database that allows a game to rebuild its world state at any point along a specified chunk of time for freeform time travel and manipulation of causality. It is also, as other reviews put it, incredibly tiresome. Having read a little of the developer's AMA on the subject, it's pretty clear the technology of 10 years ago left them with precious little headroom to design crucial elements of the RTS experience, such as unit pathfinding and awareness, which leaves the game feeling frustratingly unresponsive at the best of times. Everything about the time travel system is incredibly well thought out and manages to be mostly intuitive after some time with the game, which is a feat in and of itself, but the commands, graphical design, and UI all remain very rough, as do the campaign scripting and map design. More than once in the campaign I have quit out of frustration at the game just not doing anything I ask it to and expecting me to use time travel to reattempt jockeying my units around a cliff in time to avoid being slaughtered, one by one, by a comparatively smaller enemy force. So, why am I recommending the game? Well, it's because nothing like it has come in 10 years, and the engine is brimming with untapped potential. I think more people need to see this game for what it is and ask that either the developers use today's hardware to rethink and remaster it... or someone, Hazardous Software or otherwise, takes this engine and does it justice with a different game. Hazardous Software has a few other products on offer, but they largely suffer from the same pattern of flaws: implementation in a very harsh resource environment with a bad sense of aesthetics and UI. They seem to have largely moved on to pitching the engine to corporations and military, because it's very, very good for intuitively visualizing emergent change in complex nonlinear systems. If anyone sees this today, I ask that you give this game a look, give it a ton of patience, look past all the ugliness, and try to imagine what could be done with legitimate, solid, freeform time travel. I'd love to see something like XCOM done with Resequence.

Good idea, execution is acceptable...but the learning curve is just too great. I'd love to see what this game could accomplish is it had a more production value and maybe some more design muscle behind it, but as it stands it's simply not worth buying at full price.

Only play if you really want to try out the time travel mechanics, as that is the one things it does better than any other game out there. It has all of the fundamentals of a RTS game, but unit pathing and bad AI intelligence in non-scripted situations plague it. Worth a try on sale for the uniqueness, though.

If you are looking for a interesting experience this is your game, if you are looking for polish, not so much. It was difficult to maintain control and diferenciate units. It does have a good story, but the dificulty level curve and difficulty with the interface (not the time travel interface) made me take a long time to beet it as I had to take extended breaks from it.

Ready to get a headache? Achron is probely the most unique game ever made It combines both time travel and RTS into the ultimate headache machine the RTS aspect is kinda bad but youl live but for example what you can expact: the enemy travels back in time and destroys one of your units that unit than can't travel back in time to save your resource gathers from an enemy attack then in the near present you didn't have enough resources to buy the units with in your attack so in the present your attack has less units, and so it fails yeah complicated right? but to wrap it all up 10/11 MUST HAVE! (why do i write all the RTS with capitals letters?) (BECEUSE I WANT TO)