Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin

Ah, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin—a game so bafflingly mismanaged, it makes my own failed schemes look like strokes of genius! Let's delve into this disaster, shall we? Gameplay: Imagine commanding armies with all the responsiveness of a petrified forest. The controls are so clunky, you'd think they were designed by my bumbling henchmen! Units respond to orders as if they're considering a career change, and strategic depth is about as profound as a puddle on a sunny day.​ Visuals and Audio: The graphics are reminiscent of a time when I still had flesh on my bones—dated, uninspired, and utterly forgettable. The sound design is equally lackluster; I’ve heard more inspiring battle cries from a frightened goat.​ DLC Practices: Well, it's Games Workshop, it's Age of Sigmar...therefore predatory game practices are to be expected! Charging exorbitant prices for single heroes as downloadable content is a scheme so devious, even I must applaud. It's as if they peered into my dark heart and said, "Let's monetize disappointment!" Players are expected to empty their coffers for minimal additions, making this a predatory practice worthy of Skeletor's scorn.​ Final Verdict: It's a chaotic mess that even the forces of evil would disown.​ Or approve? I don't care enough. Pass and go scratch that RTS itch elsewhere. If you are an Age of Sigmar diehard fan, then by all means support this travesty. At least the 'creative' minds behind this abomination will see some scraps falling down from the corporate table. [i]Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to plotting successful schemes! NYEHHH![/i]

60 percent of people finishing chapter 1 and then less than 10 percent reaching chapter 10 tells you enough about this game... I do not want to bash creators... BUT.... As a huge Warhammer fan - yea story is okay cinematics are sometimes even fun but that is pretty much all the positive I can say about the game Game feels like you are in the backseat of your friends car who from times to times asks you for directions. You are absolutely sober but your friend driving the car is wasted drunk. Does this categorize as RTS - yes Does it play like a game that falls under the category of RTS - absolutely no Units receiving commands from you are pretty much just suggestions of what they should do. Skills are honestly straight up mental designed - who in their sane mind would design spells to cost a resource which you receive really slowly - who in their right mind would lock the skill which can be used for long distance attack only because you are in close vicinity of enemy units - not even attacking just being close to them. So yea attacking archers with your amazing long range skill while battling close combat haha NO. Ahh your units are in combat and you want to swap target? haha no. Ahh your units are overlapping each other? Nah why bother walking around I will just stay in my spot and wait till my squad units die. Oh you want to move them midfight? You want all of your controlled units to attack something and not half of them walk up to the target and half of them attacking? Nah not in my book - then again not to be too harsh sometimes when youre lucky they do attack - but then again sometimes. What they sneaked by you and attacked your base? No biggie I will just repair it - nope you cant You really want to finish all objectives and not just speedrun it? Nah dude forget it we will spam the freak out of units till it gets unbearable. Yea well if youre not in for the story but for the game skip it not worth the mental damage it will leave upon you.

I got this for 4 dollars and honestly I regret the purchase. In theory the game should be awesome. It has great visuals, atmosphere and a soundtrack that helps you get immersed in the Age of Sigmar world. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't reflect that. At it's core it's a extremely simple RTS, with little unit variety, no base building, focus on capture points, strong (not OP) heroes, small skirmishes, questionable designs and a surprisingly lack of QoL. There are 4 factions each with a couple of units. The units are organized in 4 categories : swords, shields, arrows and heroes. Swords counter shields, shields counter arrows and arrows counter swords. Heroes as usual are the exception. This system means that units in combat have that weird rock, paper, scissors balance. A troll ( or troggoth) should be a battlefield menace but can be easily defeated by the right types of troops. Heroes are strong and can take multiple squads of units, unless you focus fire them. Each unit has abilities, but I found them to be awkward to use. Mainly because clicking the ability button a second time results in a cast. Very MOBA like. You also can't modify the wargear of your troops and unit upgrades aren't that exciting, When in combat units lock up and the only way to get them out of combat is either destroying the enemy unit or retreating to the HQ. There is almost no base building. You get 1 HQ building with upgrades. Same goes for capture points. You pick one upgrade option. Despite that the gameplay can feel slow. Units have running animations, but the speed is closer to a walk. You capture a point, but need to wait a while for it to be 100% captured for additional resources. The exception being victory points. For some reason you can capture them in less than 10 seconds. If the enemy is near your capture point he decreases control and you get less resources. Even with a fortified outpost. The game also lacks some basic features and QoL. The user interface is very bare bones, clicking on a unit does not give you information about their stats, there are no hero portraits for fast hero selection etc. The campaign is there. The missions have your standard RTS objectives, but some are basically skirmishes with victory points. You literally must capture victory locations and drain your opponent out of points. You can't fasten this process by any means, since the enemy doesn't have a main base on those missions. That results in a 15-20 minute waiting room. Some missions have a weird difficulty spike (overall the AI seems to get very strong cheats in the campaign). and some missions are something I call "spam" missions. To put it bluntly this type of mission is characterized by the absurd amount of units your opponent throws at you. Of course the AI is a dumb bag of bricks and can be exploited, but that does not excuse lazy mission design Overall I found the game overly simplified and slow, which resulted in me uninstalling this after only 4 hours. I would not recommend this even on a sale. You will end in disappointment and regret.

I’ll give you a quick drive-by review: I bought the game during a huge sale, finally deciding to give it a shot. I had been keeping a close eye on it. The launch was underwhelming, and unfortunately, development and balance updates stopped shortly afterward. I focused only on the campaign to get a feel for the game. PROS Warhammer Age of Sigmar setting (the first game based on Age of Sigmar). Great art and visuals — the art team really did a good job. Funny campaign with a decent story. Great representation of AoS factions. I just wish there were more. CONS My main issue is with the overall game design concept — the game is just too slow. It’s similar to, but worse than, Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes (if you like this style of RTS, play those instead). The game is very slow: slow movement, slow economy. (Dawn of War 2 feels much more fast-paced and dynamic.) Units can’t use abilities without spending resources, which slows the game down even more. (Basically, if you want to tech up quickly, you avoid using abilities.) UI and unit management are really poor. (There are very specific ways you have to click things — it drives me nuts.) CONCLUSION The game is heavily undercooked — though not completely broken. If the game were faster, had a better UI, and removed the ability cost, it would be much better. Only buy it if you love the setting, enjoy the visuals, and want to play the campaign. Multiplayer is dead, and the controls would make it a frustrating experience anyway.

Realms of Ruin poses the question: What if a game is well-made, but not fun at all? In my opinion, I would rather play a bad game that is fun than a good game that is not fun. The presentation of this game is spectacular, with amazing music, great cutscenes, great graphics, and a good amount of content for you to play with. (Not 50 bucks' worth of content, but still a good amount). But this is not a movie, it's a game, and gameplay is where this game fails. The Campaign may have a good story, but it is unplayable with how dragged out the missions are. There is exactly ONE gamemode for skirmish matches, and it is a terrible sector control mode; all strategy is lost, and you have to rush and play aggressively. Would be okay if you could build structures anywhere other than nodes on the map, so you can choose where you have to defend your base. But you can not, and you start the match with almost zero resources, so it is all a slow and tedious mess where the battle is decided within the first 3 minutes. The game is also just so damn slow. If you can play other RTS games (which there are thousands of), then just play those. Above all, this game is certainly not worth its price. I would pay like 10 bucks for skirmish mode only.

we NEED a good aos game so bad. we were so close. you've already got great art, music, actors, awesome cinematics, decent characters and story. now there's only one thing left to do. you know. The Game

... this is actually kind of fun in single player. Surprisingly strong characters and entertaining story with great presentation. Missions are also somewhat varied and requires at least some strategy. It is not a real RTS though - way simpler. But for singleplayer this is not really a problem - it is fun to play For a lower price this is a fun singleplayer experience. 7/10

Let's get the obvious out of the way, this game was launched with a lot of fanfare and then very quickly put to bed and most of the player base went with it. That said, I keep finding ways to enjoy it and I think it's a fantastic deal on sale and a must get for any Age of Sigmar fans. The campaign is amazing, fully animated and voice acted, the Orukks in particular are some of the most entertaining characters I've seen in an RTS game in a long time and the story is as good as any of the Age of Sigmar novels. The Skirmish AI is also fully fleshed out and a significant challenge to a newer player and this can be expanded on even further in Conquest mode. The gameplay itself owes a decent debt to Dawn of War II with the goal being capturing points and map control with minimal base building. I have not tried the map editor or used the army painter a ton but they seem like excellent tools for AoS fans who want to put their spin on the factions. All-in-all this is a game that, while unlikely to get new content, was released with a fairly robust feature set on launch and is very playable. I hope that more people discover it and can get more folks into the multiplayer!

Boring, basically not an RTS, awfully overpriced (tho I got it on winter sale and for that price it's "ok") and uninspiring in general. Could have been a good way to introduce the god-forbidden AoS setting here, but we got what we've got. Kinda meh. P.S. that son of a * who made every menu in the game blindingly-white deserves to be fired and blacklisted immediately. That just hurts.