Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance

Bought this on a whim when I was starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for another RTS/RTT game... and it was genuinely worth the $30 AUD or so I paid at the time, given that I replayed it from start to finish about 4 times? For starters, I'd recommend just playing this on normal difficulty the first time around just to get a handle on things and what to expect combat wise before bumping it up in later repeat playthroughs (if you want). Though its still fun to just redo runs on normal difficulty following different strategies/army builds or trying to min max the crap out of everything. (more on that later) The game does basically push you into the deep end of figuring things out. (At the very least read the manual that comes with the game...) I haven't seen or heard of the Dark Fate spinoff (?) having only seen the first 2 movies a long time ago, so you don't need a deep understanding or background knowledge of the series to get into it. Essentially you can treat this game's story as another post war apocalypse with humanity being hunted to extinction by an AI/machine army. The ingame story narrative was probably engaging enough that I wouldn't skip it. Also its all voice acted too. Music is great and memorable, mainly when it gets to combat that I felt it was worth buying the soundtrack too. I'm not really one to describe music well, if you enjoyed the OST from games like Command & Conquer, then you'll probably like the music in this one too. If you are familiar with Syrian Warfare or its even older predecessor just "Warfare" then you'll pick this game up really easily. The game leans towards the more realistic side of time to kill and vehicle durability systems along with ammo and fuel supply management. Additionally, a lot more focus is applied to scavenging empty or abandonded vehicles (civilian vehicles with kitbash armor, APCs to tanks and various types of artillery pieces like M109's and mortars) to grow your core army or to resell at shops on the overworld for army upkeep, which I found to be quite enjoyable, since I basically spent each mission stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, the only limits being whether you have picked the map clean or you lack personnel to drive said equipment off the map to safety. It does have the same issue of having to save scum to get a better result, whether due to your ATGM missile missing its target or you accidentally blew up a vehicle you only wanted to decrew in order to steal, but I think its still worth putting up with. If you want to avoid having to do this, probably best to set yourself "acceptable casualty limits". As long as one man in the squad survives, you can always bring them back up to full strength after the mission with no loss of XP. Losing experienced crew isn't the end of the run but infantry and crew with some levels are allowed to have passive or active skills which makes them noticeably better, whether just reloading and driving faster or options to use EMP grenades to disable vehicles or increasing the squad size. Another big thing is the ability to customize vehicles with different weapons, pintle mounts with secondary weapons of varying types (MGs or a pintle mount ATGM launcher for example) along with different armor plating with obvious degrees of protections and downsides (steel armor on a car for obvious reasons makes it super slow), which of course leads to incentivizing the player to not throw away their units meaninglessly. For infantry, its limited to just the type of primary and secondary firearms, but there is still some variety going from bullets and upgrading to laser/plasma weapons for end tier stuff. Its definitely a lot less buggy than the other games in the Warfare series (as its basically the same devs, even if its not in name) but performance wise it can get pretty bad in larger maps . Graphics settings aren't too detailed for you to choose from either, though if you have a CPU with good single core performance, you'll most likely be fine. *EDIT* I forgot one more important thing of course, the bugs (and some quality of life features). I'm not saying the game is perfect but I still enjoy it despite said issues, which I will point out: - Individual soldiers in a squad can get stuck on objects, which might be an issue when boarding transports or leaving the map... though that does lead to a beneficial exploit where you can duplicate a potentially high experienced infantry squad for free - Pathfinding isn't the greatest, but the best way to get around that is to order vehicles individually, which you kinda want to anyway given how badly attack moving an army is in this game (let alone the entire Warfare series) - Not being able to pick up multiple weapons on the ground mid-mission (which is very likely an engine limitation given we had the same problem in the past games) - I don't think there was an overall hold fire command like how CoH/Starcraft II does it, so you have to turn off weapons individually for each vehicle/infantry but I really you would only be doing this on artillery pieces to stop them from just auto shooting anything visible immediately to save on ammo. [quote][i] This was a guest review on behalf of the Curator, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44230955-Narmaya-Onee-chan]Narmaya Onee-chan.[/url][/i][/quote]

[i]Can be annoying sometimes, but it's absolutely worth your time.[/i] I played the base game, [b]We Are Legion[/b], and [b]Uprising[/b], finishing everything in about [b]115 hours[/b]. I came for the gameplay and ended up spending over a hundred hours with it, which says a lot. [hr][/hr] [h2]Pros[/h2] [list] [*]Fun combat system. [*]Interesting campaign choices that affect your playthrough. [*]Good unit variety and faction design. [*]Uprising offers a much more open-world grand strategy experience. [*]Plenty of content. [/list] [h2]Cons[/h2] [list] [*]Timed missions can be annoying. [*]Certain enemy factions can become extremely annoying to fight. [*]Defensive missions are repetitive. [*]The game can become laggy during very long play sessions and may require a restart. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]The Main Campaign[/h2] The story is okay, but it's good enough to keep things moving. The campaign plays somewhat like a grand strategy game where you move your forces across a world map, capturing cities and managing your resources. The catch is that the story remains fairly linear despite the strategic layer. That said, you do make several decisions throughout the campaign that directly impact your gameplay, and I really liked that aspect. The gameplay itself is where the game shines. The combat is fun, tactical, and satisfying. Fighting the Legion can be frustrating, but they're killer robots, so that's kind of the point. The Church can also be annoying, and the Militia isn't much better. [hr][/hr] [h2]We Are Legion DLC[/h2] The story is decent, but the biggest change is that you finally get to play as the Legion. The DLC changes the reinforcement system. Now you earn points by completing objectives, and then you can call in reinforcements. I liked this mechanic quite a bit and don't really have any complaints about it. It's a solid expansion and a nice change of perspective. [hr][/hr] [h2]Uprising DLC[/h2] This was probably my favorite part of the game. Unlike the main campaign, Uprising removes much of the linear structure and gives you a map where you decide where to attack and where to defend. Every territory provides different benefits, making strategic decisions much more meaningful. That freedom alone makes it feel very different from the base campaign. However, it can still be annoying at times. Sometimes you may have to play multiple defensive missions in a row, and they are quite repetitive. The timed missions also aren't very enjoyable. [spoiler] If you rush the objectives and spawn camp the enemies, most missions become pretty easy and can be completed very quickly. [/spoiler] [hr][/hr] [h2]TLDR[/h2] The game is pretty good. The story won't blow you away, and some mission designs can test your patience, but the gameplay is strong enough to carry the entire experience. Between the base game and both DLCs, I got 115 hours of entertainment, which is hard to complain about. One thing worth mentioning is that the game can become laggy if you play for too long without restarting it, so longer sessions may require a quick restart to keep things running smoothly. If you enjoy RTS games and don't mind a few frustrating moments here and there, I'd definitely recommend it. [b]Recommended.[/b]

The mechanics of the game require you to constantly pause and play. Bad. Pausing to command is fine, but having to do it three times every time a shot is fired is excessive. Super confusing in many aspects and difficult to learn. The other factions are you, so you have to command WAY too many units. Should be one faction which you choose to play as and the others should be AI. It's just unrealistic and stupid. Seems like they only focused on hooking you and not retaining your attention and hype. The world map is garbage. The micro-management of units is too excessive. So many bad and frustrating things. Graphics looks good. Map sizes are good. But this game is just half-assed as to what it could have and should have been.

If i could i'd refund it. Past tutorial the game becomes a save scum simulator, there is no other way to play it.

Only buy this if you have a top tier CPU. Or a 1080p res. Because this engine relies on one thread. Shame really. The game looks awesome but runs very poorly.

I wouldn't exactly call it a good game. It's got a lot of ideas mashed together that culminate in a hodgepodge of "WTF is going on"? The main gameplay is the tactical RTS game, similar to COH, Sudden Strike, etc. But they also sprinkle in some light RPG elements here as well. You units can level up and gain skills, can be equipped with various guns and armor pieces, better engines, and so on. Or conversations with decisions, side quests, arena fights, you name it. My first gripe comes with the this part of the game, because on the "standard" difficulty, the game just completely ♥♥♥♥♥ you up. Enemy units will hide in plain sight, only to instantly murder your long-range snipers who can somehow not outrange them. Your main battle tank will die to a freak missile shot from halfway across the map out of the fog of war. Your breachers will get slaughtered before they even get to attack an enemy position... and all the while you're micro-managing each squad's abilities and attacks, check their ammo states, the fuel of your vehicles, set up supply posts to resupply, and look for weapons or vehicles you somehow haven't completely destroyed yet to salvage, because here comes part 2... The overworld map management where you need to spend resources to travel from place to place, decide if you'd rather keep moving or get premium currency to buy "the good ♥♥♥♥", resupply and repair all your vehicles, refill your inevitably lost squad members, and so forth. On paper it all sounds quite well, in reality you'll need a masters degree in hardcore RTS gameplay, even on the easiest difficulty. To give you a comparison ... Easy here is harder (imho) than StarCraft 2 on Hard, almost as hard as Brutal even, because you will need the same foresight, you will save-scum and you will lose everything if you even look away for a second. There IS a tactical pause, but I don't feel like it's very useful if your units just get swarmed and overwhelmed. If your infantry could at least refill their lost squadmates IN a mission it might be somewhat okay, but as it stands right now you might have 10 squads just standing around somewhere, because they have lost 90% of their squad mates. Units cannot make a running retreat, either. So, once they're surrounded and get depleted, they're as good as dead. Pathfinding is a mess of its own, with units just not doing what you're telling them to do 80% of the time. Oh, and by the way, I hope you like losing units to your allies, because they WILL just take over any vehicle that you've TEMPORARILY lost due to fire or crew deaths (when a vehicle catches on fire, your crew has to evacuate, and if allies are on the map, they will simply take over YOUR vehicle, which means it's gone for the rest of the campaign, WTF?!) Missions routinely spiral out of control and just won't end, which exacerbates this problem. You start off with having to just "go here, do that" kind of thing, then suddenly you're supposed to protect a civilian, raid a supply camp, hold 2 positions, defeat several armed convoys around the map, liberate a heavily fortified prison, destroy an HQ under time pressure, while being attacked from all sides by enemy reinforcements that are more numerous, more accurate and more deadly than anything you can field ... it's exhausting, because these missions can take upwards of 2 hours ... without reloading! Now, this is all pretty realistic, yes ... Is it fun to play, though? That really hinges on your definition of fun. This game isn't for RTS enthusiasts or for people who dabble in this genre every once in a while, also called "casuals" ... it's for a very niche, very hardcore audience. And I am still giving it a thumbs down, because I think that it just doesn't mesh all those things very well, and because player information is very limited on and off the battlefield. It's also very RNG based. I've been trying to get through this on the "intended" difficulty, and I'm just constantly having to reload, and reloading takes ages in this engine, so then I wanted to just lower the difficulty, and lo and behold, it's not possible once you're actually in the campaign ... 8 hours in ... unless, you happen to google a bit, find a Steam post that tells you you can just start a NEW campaign with your intended difficulty (the custom one let's you reduce damage taken to 10% I think and completely remove travel costs if you're so inclined, while also removing friendly fire, etc., so I'll just give that a go and see what that's like for like 1 mission), and then load your original save, and the difficulty will apparently be applied to that campaign ... lol. At least my supplies now last 21 days instead of 10, so I'm assuming it worked. One last thing: the story really is ... balls. The voice acting sucks, the dialogue sucks, the characters are caricatures. And they do talk so much, but have so little to say. The chatter while gameplay continues is fine ... but all the forced cutscenes and ♥♥♥♥ isn't good.

Да, это игра по фильму. Да, это игра по далеко не лучшему фильму. Нет, это не "игра по фильму", это ИГРА по фильму. Но обо всём по порядку. Сначала немного конкретики - указанный в разработчике и издателе "Slitherine Ltd." это не совсем правдивая информация, "значительную часть"(кто поймет тот поймет) в игру вложила наша российская студия Cats Who Play. Это важно потому что Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance появилась не сама по себе, а является логичным допилом их предидущей игры Сирия: Русская буря (которая в свою очередь является допилом игры Warfare, но это уже другая история) и по этому принадлежит к целой небольшой династии видеоигр. Зная это становится чуть более понятно почему игра по фильму получилось ИГРОЙ по фильму. Итак, что по сюжету? Самая скучная часть, по этому давайте быстренько. Сами последние фильмы по терминаторам я не смотрел и вы не можете меня осуждать, но из того что я знаю у игры с фильмами нет практически ничего общего кроме, собственно, сюжета об ИИ захватившем мир и повстанцах, ему сопротивляющимся. Игра засовывает нас в шкуру небольшого самоиспеченного командира местных сил сопротивления, чей день однажды начался далеко не с кофе а с больших проблем, в результате чего ему придется потерять свое командование, взорвать собственную базу, объединить местных бомжей в что-то напоминающее армию и выгнать ИИ пинками под зад из своей зоны ответственности(не из всей Америки, фильм пока даже не начался, не будем пока наглеть). Отлично, а что у нас по геймплею? По жанру это стратегия в реальном времени и геймплей можно разделить на две части - экономическая и тактическая. Начнем с экономической. Нет, никаких баз и постройки тут нет. Вместо этого живем мы за счет найденных в процессе миссии людей и техники, кормим и перетаскиваем между миссиями их за счет припасов на складах, прокачиваем их за счет кредитов. Ну и продаем если приспичит что бы получить кредиты на которые покупаем те же припасы и прокачку. И тут, абсолютно внезапно, всплывает одна из главных проблем игры. По неопытности же или нет(но я уверен что по неопытности, потому что в ДЛС так или иначе эта проблема прямо обходится) разработчики в этом уравнении пропустили одну маленькую проблему - игрока. Что будет если игрок соберет слишком много войск и техники и у него не будет достаточно припасов что бы перетащить их с одной миссии на другую? У игры на это нет ответа. Ну, точнее есть, если считать "ну начинай всю игру заного, чо" ответом. По этому при игре крайне. Нет, не так, КРАЙНЕ, рекомендуется вооружиться табличкой расходования припасов, которую можно найти в местных гайдах. Ну ладно, с экономической частью вроде бы разобрались? Что по геймплею? Ну тут уже более понятная РТС, если из неё убрать всю экономическую часть (мы ей занимались на глобальной карте, так что небольшая потеря). У нас есть карта, враги на ней, по началу слоты на пару джипов и пару отделений пехоты и точки интереса, захват которых приносит дополнительные ништяки - от подкреплений до лута который можно награбить(ну, приватизировать). Казалось бы всё просто и скучно, звучит как РПГ миссии из старкрафта. И, по видимому так подумали и разработчики, по этому решили "разбавить" неторопливый геймплейный цикл весьма серьезными требованиями к микроменеджменту. Только что отреспавнился? Вон там едет вражеский конвой, бегом останавливать. Остановил? Молодец, вон на другом конце карты сейчас ещё один поедет. Кстати, здания мимо которых он поедет заняты врагом, их надо сначала взять штурмом. Что бы ты не скучал твои позиции переодически будет атаковать враг. А ещё тут есть нейтралы которые выдают задание по штурму базы других нейтралов. Кстати, если ты на секунду отвлечешься и твои юниты зайдут на их территорию то тебе объявят войну. Как там с остановкой идущих конвоев? Норм? Ну вот тебе конвой из четырех тяжелых танков. Да, я знаю что тебе их нечем нормально останавливать. А, ну и да, пока не забыл - нужно будет ещё захватить два маршрута, по которым тебе будут доставлять подкрепления. Можешь конечно не захватывать, но.... Звучит страшно? А ведь это всего то вторая миссия(ну или пятая если считать три миссии обучения). В общем, если без лишних слов и пламенных речей - игра не дает продохнуть ни разу за свои 15 миссий. Каждую миссию победу приходится вырывать у неё из лап. Само по себе это может показаться как минусом, так и плюсом, если бы несколько но... Серьезный закос под реалистичность - птуры практически без шансов уничтожают любую технику кроме абрамсов с бредли, если в здании есть пехота то с вероятностью в 100 процентов в том же здании есть гранатомет, опять же без шансов уничтожающий любую технику кроме абрамсов и бредли и ты не узнаешь в каком здании прячется гранатометчик пока он не выстрелит в твою технику. Связано с первым пунктом - высокая рандомность игры. Все летит по физике, всё взрывается, беря в расчет кажется не столько броню, сколько текущую комбинацию положения на небосводе Марса, Юпитера и сошедшего с орбиты российского спутника. Один и тот же танк может как поймать с первого попадания крит ствола и с окей фейсом уехать ремонитроваться, так и расстрелять прямой наводкой любую угрозу в радиусе километра. Пехота и техника то не казенные. Производить их не на что, только покупать на честно заработанные и наворованные кредиты, которых ограниченное количество, по этому потеря техники от рандома, сбоящего ИИ и ошибок с микроменеджментом, вызванных высокой концентрацией событий в любой миссии создает серьезное давление на игрока. Как итог - вот эти все факторы по итогам выливаются в тотальный сейвскаминг которыми занимается комьюнити, что в свою очередь и приводит к проблемам в экономической части, о которой я писал выше. И так, стоит брать или нет? Тут, на самом деле очень спорно. С одной стороны - объективно это не самая геймплейно проработанная и очень недружелюбная к новичку РТСка. Субьективно же - я готов простить игре очень многое, потому что после всего того говна что она выливает на тебя в миссиях она на самом деле дает тебе передохнуть. Моменты, когда ты открываешь закладку с армией, видишь кучу "затрофееных" Хамви пополам с прочей бронетехникой, планируешь что из этого стоит продать а что оставить, какой экипаж на них посадить, какую пушку поставить, кого из пехотинцев повысить, какое оружие им выдать и всё это очень важно потому что это не просто рандомные безликие хамви и пехотинцы, произведенные на рандомном безликом заводе или казарме, это то что лично ты отвоевал, нашел и вывез с миссии. Сложно обьяснить, но в такие моменты мой мозг дико кайфует. Если у вас мозг устроен так же - то однозначно брать, если же нет - то брать очень осторожно, может и не зайти.

I've just finished the human campaign and just about to start the Legion campaign. This is one of the best RTS's i've ever played. Severely underrated and i'm so confused as to why it doesn't get spoken about more. This is genuinely great. As a long time fan of RTS's from the original Warcrafts, Starcraft, KKnD and odd-balls like Dark Reign, this stands strong. It has some pretty hectic difficulty spikes, but aside from that it's really good. If you can handle the, at times, extreme difficulty, you will enjoy it a lot. It's nothing that being a little save scummy can't fix. I give this, five big booms.

challenging and thought provoking. good tactical .

Cannot play for more than 20 minutes witout a crash. Have tried everything now and still not working