Empires in Ruins

[b]Подпиши мою петицию или это сделают выжившие члены твоей семьи! [/b] [i]Те люди, чье детство и юность пришлась на начало двухтысячных хорошо помнят эту фразу. Фразу игрового персонажа, который рвал привычные скрепы и с улыбкой до ушей решал устроить «рок в этой дыре», потому что реальный мир сводил его с ума. Прошли годы и на смену Чуваку пришли новые кумиры, а проблемы остались все те же. И порой разработчики пытаются вернуться к отлаженной схеме «героя-который-плевал-на-правила-и-условности». Иногда, как в случае с «Unepic», это работает, но чаще всего получается бесформенная серая масса в виде Ганса Хаймера, героя «Empires of Ruins».[/i] Не поймите не правильно, будь я лет на 15-20 моложе, и витиеватые оскорбления героя вызвали бы у меня улыбку. Будь я фанатом алкоголя, то всецело бы одобрил его желание выпить хорошего вина. Будь я хранителем лесов, сиречь Лешим, то естественно одобрил бы желание героя чесаться, ссать и испражнятся у всех на виду. А будь я социопатом, то, конечно же, согласно закивал, когда Ганс через предложения требовал оставить его в покое. Но увы, жизнь не идеальна и помимо сих замечательных черт, хочется увидеть хоть что-то, за что можно полюбить персонажа, ну или хотя бы сносить его характер. И нет, я не прошу героя уровня Сэммюэля Ваймса, для создания подобного нужен настоящий талант. Ведь хочется видеть перед собой никак не выходца из детского сада, что играет во взрослого, а взрослого и состоявшегося мужа, что иногда играет в ребенка. Ведь если не видишь выдающихся полководческих данных сержанта-пьянчуги или иных человеческих добродетелей, то зачем тогда следить за сюжетной кампанией? Можно пойти в песочницу и насладиться игрой… Да-а-а, насладиться. В чем прелесть хорошего Tower Defens’а? Яркий графический стиль. Сочные показатели ресурсов, получаемых за убийство тех или иных монстр. И, собственно, сами монстры. В конечном счете они и будут нашими лучшими друзьями на ближайшие часы. И самое главное – удобный дизайн карты, позволяющий выстроить систему защиты так, как душенька пожелает. Есть ли хоть что-то из вышеперечисленного в этой игре? Ха-ха, неа! Бог с ней с графикой. Те кто хорошо со мной знаком, ну или читал другие обзоры, знают, что я придаю не так уж много значения графической составляющей. Главное, чтобы игра игралась, пардон за тавтологию. И можно было бы закрыть глаза на то, что враги представлены точками на карте, а если приблизить изображение, что лучше не делать, ибо кровь из глаз, то половина карты сразу же будет за пределами экрана. И это притом, что карта-то махонькая. А самое веселое начинается тогда, когда враги идут на приступ. Нет, никакого адреналина и чувства эйфории от очередной победы. Потому что эту победу вы не видите. Башни полностью загораживают обзор и непонятно прошли ли враги к вашей базе или умерли на подходе. Не говоря уж о том, что не видно, сколько монеток выпало из того или иного врага, так что смотришь исключительно на общий счетчик. Будто бы этого недостаточно, дизайн карты отвратителен. Вы не можете ставить башни в большинстве мест поля, потому что… вам мешают небольшие камушки или кустики. И не дай бог, если вы поставите, как в других подобных играх, башни вплотную друг к другу, ведь в этом случае вам не дадут щелкнуть на ту, которая нужна. А предложат колесиком выбрать две-три идентичные постройки. Удобно ли подобное в горячке боя? Неа! Как скоро подобное надоест – вопрос риторический. Но погодите-ка! У нас тут имеется еще и глобальная стратегия, реализованная вкривь и вкось. У нас есть ситуация с бунтовщиками и вам предлагают несколько решений – задобрить их, чем разочаруете церковь или повесить самых громких, чем церковь порадуете. Ну прямо современная политика, тьфу! И дабы сравнение было более полным вот вам ситуация: У меня было 50% эмпатии и я пять раз подряд выбирал мирное урегулирование. Ни разу не сработало. Затем плюнул и решил урегулировать по-плохому. Три раза подряд, на 15% все срабатывало. И да, один раз – случайность. Второй раз – везение. Но три? Разработчики уже сделали выбор за меня, не иначе. Спасибо им за это. Зачем я тогда в этой игре нужен? Быть может, ради древа исследований? Да нет, вряд ли. Ведь помимо обычных открытий новых башен в главах, имеется тут и прокачка параметров… на три процента. Право же, надо было делать сразу на полтора, чтоб наверняка, а то как-то щедро больно. Вдруг я замечу разницу в скорость атаки или уроне моих строений после изучения подобной особенности? Ай-яй-яй! Итог? Как правило я стараюсь пройти игру. Даже если игра мне сильно не нравится, всегда можно стиснуть зубы и подавив раздражение пробираться, через все неудобства проекта, ради брильянта/мешка с картошкой, спрятанных в конце. Чаще всего в конце ничего нет, но бывают и исключения. С этой же игрой… я не могу продолжать. Мне дороги мои глаза и чувство вкуса. И я очень вас прошу, даже если игра вас заинтересовала – попробуйте сначала демо-версию и только в том случае если она вам ну о-о-очень понравилась – покупайте. В противном случае обходите сей продукт игропрома за версту, спасибо. 3 из 10 раздосадованных сержанта Дeрьmоу

Edit: The developer is super chill, and is looking to patch out the bugs soon. This is still a hard game with hit-or-miss writing and an imperfect UI, but serious props to anyone who can indie dev something this complex. Check it out if there isn't something in the review that's a dealbreaker for you. This is a very "yes, but..." recommendation. Empires In Ruins is a thing I should like. It's a tower defense with a 4x strategy layer, and where you can econ yourself into an easier TD situation, or TD yourself out of a bad economy. Unfortunately, Empires' mechanics are a bit of a jangly, stumbling mess. I can't tell how much of this is intended---as the game puts an emphasis on imperfect information and incompetent, disloyal underlings---but gameplay flits back and forth between neat and engaging and janky and frustrating. Here's an example: The game board is a map of provinces which you slowly spread across. Each province has its own upgrade tree of structures as well as a province level. The structures provide things like food for the province's population, or resources for you. You can only directly build structures in the province you've parked your headquarters in; for everywhere else you need to appoint a governor and give them general directions for what kinds of upgrades to build. Except...they don't follow them. I ordered a province to build food, there were food buildings available to construct, the construction queue was open, and the province started building a mine. Maybe this is intended. If so, it would be fine, except for the way food works. Province populations rely on food. If the available food decreases, the province starts starving and losing pop. If it loses enough pop, it loses a level and unbuilds a bunch of expensive and time-consuming structures. It also seems to be bad for morale. However, provinces gain population as long as they're not starving. And food buildings are limited and province level locked. So you'll often have provinces that are at max food, gain a population, start starving, lose a population and morale, gain a population, start starving, etc. And heaven help you if you're foolish enough to increase a province's level without having a full on economic crash-cart on standby. The level goes up, the province's food demand goes up, it immediately starts starving like crazy, and you have to race the next several food upgrades before it de-upgrades itself. And all this is assuming that you don't get a string of random-rolled events that lower food or lower pop or de-upgrade key buildings for you. The tower defense game layer is less janky, but it revolves around the idea that enemy units can destroy your towers very easily. In normal mode, doing so removes all of your towers' upgrades. In easy mode, it simply costs a butt ton of resources to rebuild. Tower destruction isn't preventable in many cases. Fliers, on death, putter forward a seemingly random number of pixels before exploding. This means you need to set out some low cost towers way ahead of your formations to act as spoilers. Speaking of towers, better hope you research the right ones by chance---since the information on what they do is hidden behind the clunky UI. And honestly, a *lot* of Empires' information is hidden behind the clunky UI---or just straight up not included. When I started my first campaign, I played on normal. No word from the game on what that entailed. Turns out: higher enemy unit health, worse luck with random events, fewer skill points per level, lower starting skill points, fewer resources at the start of maps, and probably a lot of other elements I haven't been able to pinpoint yet. This led to my scuttling my first campaign five hours into the run, when it became clear I'd backed myself into an unwinnable state. Empires is an autosaver, and it plays slow, and it's *very* easy to accidentally go into a terminal spiral, so be ready to delete at least one campaign save partway through. Playing on easy helps, but it doesn't cure any of the stuff I talked about above. On top of that, the game's writing is...okay at best. Its main character in an antihero living in a crapsack world, and he just wants to drink himself to death, but he's been put in charge of a reconquest for political reasons. That's not a bad setup, but it requires a bit of a deft touch, and Empires' touch is, uh... cackhanded. I'm using that word choice deliberately, because Empires *really* likes talking about defecation. It does it almost constantly---both as an attempt at humor and to remind the player that this is a grim world. Neither approach really works. Now, I haven't cleared the game yet, so there may be issues or bright spots I haven't encountered yet. I'll update this review as I go. At the moment, I think there's the sparkle of a gem in here, but someone dropped it in the outhouse and you have to go fishing for it with your hands. Edit: I think there are some actual bugs. For example, when I go to set my battle board, sometimes everyone turns into clones of the same guy. Also I have a province that has structures it can build and that can be set to active construction, but when I set it to active it simply stops producing resources and doesn't build anything. 2nd Edit: More bugs! "Get Volmja to 50% authority or happiness" glitched out. I'd gotten it over 50% authority, it remained over 50% authority, but then the objective de-cleared itself. Moving my headquarters there unstuck it. This seems to be an unintended primary function for moving the headquarters: unglitching provinces. 3rd Edit: Wrapped up the last battle at the end of chapter three. The loading screen going back from the battle to the main map was a bit long, so I tabbed out and back in and the game had set itself into some sort of default state. All provinces were unlocked, my resources were all set to 1250, my objectives had updated but couldn't be accessed. I killed the program without letting it save, but this might have borked my run. (It did not, but I did end up with Schrodinger's Headquarters for a bit, as it was traveling between provinces when the chapter ended and the game got Very Confused.) 4th Edit: "Build two levels of infrastructure in Rumplitz." I have. I've also cleared all enemy provinces, and this is the only objective remaining on my board. Is the very last thing in the game glitched? Or do I have to wait for a random event to increase its food supply so I can get it to tier 3? (Edit: solved the problem by upgrading my neighboring province of Kreet.)

Empires in Ruins is an incredible game. There is way more to take in and analyze than one might realize at first glance and I definitely advise that you really try to dive deep when you get into this excellently crafted game. Addressing the voice acting and audio- I love the no-holds-barred attitude the developers used when building this thing. I won't quite any of the lines specifically but you can certainly tell they loved writing the dialog and recording the lines. There is a particular 'adult' flavor to this game's storytelling and narrative that taps into the cynical and down-to-earth nature of your innermost thoughts. On top of that- the fact that this type of game has a narrative and story is actually incredible. Throughout play I am constantly reminded of "Stronghold" (the first one- from way back) and I think that's an absolute plus. Regarding difficulty- this game delivers. I find that I am able to jump in and have fun with the lower difficulty items quite easily, and also am challenged with the ever increasing and ramping difficulty-based objectives in a way that is constantly pushing me to get just a tiny bit better. I have found that my favorite way to play this game is with the repeatable skirmishes because I can rapidly try out different build and deployment styles- trying different techniques to accomplish the goals and determine what works. I really, truly, feel like I am afforded an opportunity to explore my own creative solution to the conflicts, within the confines of the gameplay design, and love the feeling I get as I overcome the challenges. The story and overworld design that exists is a shocking shift in the design of the game from what I expected at first seeing the game and have to say it leaves a rather positive impression. This feels like a really fascinating mix of Tower Defense, RTS, RPG, and Kingdom Manager that had to have been built by people that appreciated the early '00s gameplay experiences to bring this together. There's some very cool feeling throwback to things like Heroes of Might and Magic. I think overall that I love this game. It kicks my butt, and there are some rough edges in the overall design-- but if you remember that this is an indie endeavor and is bringing in an absolutely astonishingly large amount of design elements into one (cohesive) package... it is just jaw-dropping in its execution. I have watched this game grow and change as the developer(s) have continued to work on it and have to say the community engagement is incredible. I have nothing but respect for how hard they're working on this project. One example of the positive response they provide to the community is an anecdotal experience: I (unprovoked) sent a list of probably 15-25 different 'complaints' (things that I thought needed to be fixed / tweaked / tightened up) and the developer immediately responded to discuss what I brought up, ask some opinions, and subsequently get to work on addressing these (minor- basically non) issues. This is a great game and you will definitely get lost in it. I only have about 13 hours in it right now (I don't game a whole lot right now because of life things) but I know this will be a staple in my regular gaming regimen for years to come as it just has an awesome soul and super engaging (and challenging) gameplay design.

[h1]Funny and... Nothing Else[/h1] This game's dialogues are hilarious and made me laugh out loud several times, which is very rare. But everything else about it is so-so at best. [u][b]The not-so-good:[/b][/u] - 9.7 hours were enough for me to beat the Campaign on Hardcore and the Sandbox mode once. After that, there isn't any real reason to play more. You can make a few different choices in the Campaign, to see how things turn out, but... why bother? - The 4x facet of the game is nothing special. You build one structure after another, in towns, upgrade these, get more resources, more bonuses to attacking other territories, reduce rioting chances and that's it. You don't need to make specialized towns or anything of the sort, there is no need to put much thought into it; - The Tower Defense aspect of the game, which should be its strongest suit, turns out to be pointless. You can automatically resolve every battle (other than the Campaign's final one) and doing so tends to yield much better results than playing it manually. You can automatically get a 3 star outcome (requires no damage whatsoever to your HQ) on a battle that you previously attempted manually, tried your best and got defeated in. So, you simply don't play the combat. [i]Ever.[/i] Which leaves you with a 4x-only game; - If you decide to do battle manually, despite having no actual reason to do so, you'll find it rather annoying. There are some debris scattered over all maps, stopping you from building towers on some of the most logical places. What is really irritating, though, is that you need to send workers out to build and repair towers. When they go out, if they cross paths with enemies, they die. At the same time, some foes can [i]very[/i] easily damage and destroy your towers, and repairing them costs quite a lot. After a few waves, most of your resources are spent on repairs rather than on building or upgrading your towers, sending you into a downwards spiral as waves keep becoming harder. You also need to send in wave after wave, as fast as possible, to get extra gold, so enemies keep coming while you keep frequently trying to repair several towers at the same time. It's quite unpleasant; - There's a fairly extensive research tree in the game, but all of it is combat-focused. Since you simply automatically resolve every battle, the whole research aspect of the game becomes useless. I don't even think having more techs unlocked influence in auto-solved battles, at all; - There's this mechanic, Tributes, in Empires in Ruins. Every 30 or so turns, you have to pay a large amount of resources to the Crown. If you fail to do so 5 times, you lose the game. It's annoying, but at least it gives you some [rather useless] bonuses when you pay it off. You can turn Tributes off before starting a game and, if you do so, everything becomes ridiculously easy -- the Tributes are basically the [i]only[/i] thing that provides a little bit of a challenge (the combat might but, again, there's no point in fighting manually); [u][b]TL;DR:[/b][/u] Empire in Ruins' dialogues are hysterical -- it's potty-mouth sarcasm at its finest. It sounds cheesy but, honestly, it's funny as hell. The gameplay itself, on the other hand, is rather generic, bland, unbalanced and easy. The 4x part is simple, while the Tower Defense aspect is thrown straight out of the window as auto-solving [i]every[/i] battle is [i]way[/i] better than actually playing them. Once you know what you are doing, you can finish a sandbox game in 2-3 hours. If you remove Tributes, you might be able to do so in 1. I've never seen or said this before, but the best -- if not [i]only[/i] -- reason to buy this game is to laugh at the dialogues. The humor is like 8/10. Everything else, 4/10.

ゲームのコンセプトは面白いのですが・・・ 先にレビューされた方も指摘されている通り、バグなどが目立ち、完成品とは到底言えません。 一部のステータスの詳細が表示されず、それをスルーして進めてみましたが今度は画面から 一切の文字が消失しました。 ポテンシャルはありますが、きちんと完成するまで購入は待った方が良いでしょう。

[h1]前言[/h1] 《废墟帝国》（Empires In Ruins）是一款4X塔防游戏，本作有三种模式可以选择，有剧情并且限制的战役模式，无剧情章节限制的沙盒模式和纯塔防建设的街机模式，本作的中文翻译有点太接地气了，个人并不喜欢这味道，下流段子和浑话扑面而来。 [h1]体验[/h1] 本作采用卡通画风的形式来展现剧情对话以及大地图内政模式，但塔防所用的地图肉眼可见的粗糙，特别复古。要说这类塔防模式，个人还是喜欢那种卡通形式的，完全可以和大地图以及战役剧情那样，用一样的画风来展示，不得不说这样的地图有点劝退。 玩家需要抵抗一定波次的进攻，并且利用每回合增加的资源进行伤害射程以及新建筑的建造升级，之后还可以在大地图进行塔楼，士兵与工人以及资源和建筑的研究，战役模式随着各章节解锁，沙盒模式则无限制。 个人比较喜欢塔防类型的游戏玩法，玩家可以利用在侦察塔来查看即将到来的敌人信息，不过我还是先利用资源在主要路段进行守护塔的建设了，并且可以利用点数进行研究，一遍建造伐木场等获取资源的建筑以及弩炮塔，除了研究解锁之外还有着升级部分，并且可以给工人解锁一些东西增加属性。 资源管理的同时进行防守，不过工人要建造好一个建筑跑回去在出来建设，并且修复时建筑无法进行作用，正好敌人来守卫塔可能都不攻击了。 而大地图的据点管理和郡县像极了三国的内政建设，玩家可以随时查看该郡县的自然资源和生产，了解后还可以向其他郡县派侦察兵，进行进攻，甚至可以直接自动战斗，不过判定机制我其实还没搞清楚，比较有策略性的玩法吧。 [h1]结语[/h1] 游戏中玩家扮演一个得罪了权贵因而被派去西域的将军，塔防建造玩法在加上回合制的内政式管理经营构建了比较策略性的游戏玩法，虽然是我喜欢的类型，不过粗糙的塔防地图有些劝退，对于资源的分配也有一定不合理，太过接地气的翻译也比较有两面性，还是建议小伙伴酌情决定了。 [code]欢迎参观我的： [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33217084]真实评测[/url] 喜欢这篇评论，也麻烦点个赞，让更多人能够看到。[/code]

I wish I could give a separate thumbs up and thumbs down for the two parts of this game. The strategic province management side of things is well-written, has great art, and reasonably engaging gameplay. The tower defence side had much worse art and much less impressive gameplay that didn't really innovate on a genre that has way too many samey entries. Auto-resolving the tactical battles to avoid the boring tower defence generally resulted in my guys getting massacred, so I had to slop my way through them instead. Until I realized I wasn't having fun and just ended things. I wish I could recommend. The strategic level is really very innovative. It's just too bad it was yoked to underwhelming tower defence combat. Swap out the existing TD combat for something else, and you'd have a Total War style contender.

I tried to play the game after leaving it for a while, it has some interesting aspects, but overall it is lackluster. It seems that not much thought went into the UI and the game isn't good enough to make up for this. To give an example, when you click to get to your research, it has to go to a loading screen and then you have to "Press a key to continue". Why do I need to press a key to continue to just get to the research screen? Just load the damn screen!!

첫 인상은 에오엠3 정도의 그래픽입니다. 퀘스트, 스토리, 전체 지도, 인물들은 전부 텍스트와 움직이지 않는 일러스트로 구성되어 있습니다. 여러분은 세기말 기구한 운명에 놓여진 병신 마을을 지켜야합니다. 정신차리라며 든든하게 부모를 찾아주는 효심 깊은 서사시가 시작됩니다. 참담한 마을 형편에 맞게 타이무스타푸에 걸려 미동도 하지 않는 등장인물들이 반겨줍니다. 괴이한 선율의 뿔피리 브금을 들으며 플레이 하다보면 칼람하이어 폭동에 동참해 지휘관을 죽이고 싶어집니다. 뭐 날아다니고 움직이고 흔들리고 하는 효과들이 있는 것 같지만, 베이스에 몹이 박치기 할때만 조금 화면이 흔들리는 수준입니다. 포탑에선 형편없는 실력의 운치궁수들이 배치되어, 힘없이 내리 꽂히는 화살들에 적들이 죽기를 기도할 뿐입니다. 등장인물들의 턱주가리만이라도 움직여줬다면 더 몰입해서 플레이 할 수 있었을 텐데 말입니다.. 추욱 늘어져 행거에 매달려있는 시체들과 정갈하게 잘 다듬어진 건강한 마을 오솔길이 뭔가 기묘합니다. 이 게임의 적정가격은 5,800원 정도가 적당할 것 같습니다. 다들 즐겁게 하세용~~

3/10 most of the time you do nothing and end your turn....... this game is trying to be sooo many things at once that it just all around fails + music - garbage city builder - garbage tower defense game that can be skipped. - garbage story - you have a notification!!!! click here. is it the one i just read??? YUP!!! ok you saw it a 2nd time its read now - most my play time is afk card farming - ran into a few minor bugs - ran into game breaking bug where i need to build 2 levels of infastructures in Rumpiltz and thats all i need to reach the next chapter but the game strait up WONT let me. unlocked every single research and played past day 600 and i still cant. im done, uninstalling