A couple of days ago I talked about Conqueror’s Blade, a new free-to-play MMO tactical medieval warfare game that’s planning a 2019 release. Well, they had an open beta and of course your boy jumped in to see what it’s all about. I got hooked!
OK, to give you some background about me, I get easily hooked to games like Age of Empire, Sid Meier’s civilizations, Sim City and basically any type of games that lets me build something from the ground up. I dunno, there’s something about planning, building and strategizing that really captivates me. So when I jumped into Conqueror’s Blade, I honestly enjoyed my time with the game. The game offers a pretty simple, yet robust tactical medieval warfare game that a hybrid of military strategy and deeply tactical third-person gameplay. Controlling your units in the game was pretty damm easy but knowing what to do with them is where the real challenge begins.
I’ll start with the character creation. When the game starts up, you can choose from a number of flags from various countries in the world. Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and North/South America are mostly represented. There were some flags missing though, which I found odd but since it was a beta, I kinda let it slide. After that, you then get to create your character. Now this is where it might be a hit and miss for some people. As of this writing, you can only create a European or Asian character.
This is probably because of the theme that the game is going with. I don’t know if the developers are ever going to expand to other regions in the future to include other races in this fictional medieval war but if that’s not in their pipeline or fits the narrative they’re going for, then it’s cool. After that, you’ll then have to complete a pretty tedious but necessary tutorial to help you get the hang of the controls.
The reason why I say that the tutorials are tedious is because, you constantly have to go back and forth to get the missions to start the next training. I feel like they could’ve just make the training go back to back to save time but it’s whatever. Once you’re done, you get to choose which map to land on and you are good to go.
Lets talk about the gameplay. For the most part, controlling your character and units felt consistent. The only issues I’ve had with the game is fighting other heroes. When I started, I picked the Sword and Shield fighting style and during combat, I found that I could never lift my shield fast enough to protect myself from incoming attacks. I don’t know whether it’s because I was just utterly shit at playing this class or the response time from when I clicked the shield button has a delay to it but I think that the only gripe I had while playing. That and getting stunned, not fun at all. Other than that I had fun.
The game really makes you feel like a warlord on the battlefield. Nothing beats that feeling of approaching a camp with your units, only to have the enemy warlord waiting for you with his/her units in perfect formation, causing you to put your units in a defensive formation. And then ordering you units to attack while rain of arrow pouring down on you as you watch your units melt away. Amazing. Not to mention that it’s you and I think five other warlords vs six other warlords, each controlling about 40-50 units at a time. Crazy!
The graphics are pretty good for what they’re going with. I was very impressed with the fact that you could have more that 500 units on screen at once, with arrows raining down, catapults firing fireballs and in occasion, rain pouring down and not once have it lag on me. I mean, I have a pretty decent PC but still I was impressed.
Overall, the game has a lot of potential and seems to be offering something no one has done before. I’ll be following this game’s progress and see where it goes. However, for now, I’m impressed.
