Darkness is everywhere and ready to attack us and it is our sacred duty to defend our village from the attack of many, many enemies. This is the basis of Age of Darkness Final Stand, a promising strategy video game developed by PlaySide e Team17 is available now in versione Early-Access and this is his review.
Our Age of Darkness Final Stand review
Age of Darkness is set in a world invaded by darkness where only our village will resist it. At the head of the village we will have a hero with special skills and a great willpower to lead the soldiers against the infinite enemy armies that every night will try to breach the defenses. Currently, the early-access version of the game has no real lore and the only hero available is the brave Knight of the Flame Edwin. Thanks to him and his powers we will be able to keep the dark forces at bay, at least for another night.
The game is presented as a strategic one with typical Tower Defense mechanics. We will have to start expanding our little village and keep ours safe fortezza, the only building we will have at the start of each game. By building houses we will acquire new inhabitants who will have to be fed to increase in number and start collecting resources for us. Gold, timber, stone and metal will be the resources needed to develop buildings and train new units. To these is also added the dark matter, extremely rare and difficult to find with which we can give details buff all squad.
We currently only have four types of troops: Swordsman, Archer, Defender e Crossbowman. We will have to combine their characteristics in the best possible way to be able to survive. The defender has the typical characteristics of the Tanks with very high life and defense, archers and crossbowmen will have to stay in the rear to attack from a distance while the swordsmen and the Hero will be on the front line. On paper, the strategic challenge seems simple enough and not very stimulating were it not that …
… come out of the walls
The enemies to defeat are many, many, not really, by the thousands! The pace of the game is marked byalternation of day and night. During the daytime the enemies scattered around the map will remain quiet as the sunlight makes them weak and slow and this is the right time to start to explore. We will soon have to expand and discover new natural resources to collect and above all understand the structure of the map to better prepare our defenses. During the night the enemies will be more aggressive, quicker and more dangerous and a small platoon may even decide to enter our borders and attack the structures. Even during the night we could explore to acquire more resources ed experience for the troops.
The Hero in game will in fact be able to level up to level 5. In addition, for the first 3 levels, he will be able to develop skills. Edwin, for example, at level 1 will unlock a passive skill that will improve the performance of the troops close to him, at level 2 and 3, he will instead develop active skills necessary to eliminate a large number of enemies in one fell swoop. Troops do not have a lvl Up system but by fighting for a long time they will acquire Audacity which will prevent him from being terrified of enemy troops and fighting more effectively.
And it will be necessary for them because the arrival of the night is the least of your problems. On a regular basis, in fact, we will have to face the Death Night, a cursed night that will cause the arrival of a large army of enemies of which you will have to kill until the last Ghoul or perish. The first Night of Death will come after 3 day-night cycles, the next after 4 cycles and so on. It goes without saying that with each Death Night the army to be faced will be more and more numerous. First there will be a few hundred, then thousands and then … many thousands!
Developer:
PlaySide
Price:
21,99 €
The best defense is experience
With so many enemies, your handful of soldiers won’t be enough. Here’s why you’ll have to erect massive defenses with walls, gates, towers, ballistae and siege units. In addition to the amount of enemies we will have to deal with the various types of opponents. Not just Ghouls slow and mindless but also armored soldiers, ranged spearmen, tough Ghosts and huge abominations. As high as your skill in strategic video games is, believe our words, you will lose. Once, twice, dozens of times, before you fully understand the best strategy to defend your village.
LThe game map is automatically generated from scratch with each new game so forget about memorizing area patterns. But you will be able to understand more and more the limits of your army, those of the enemy, the merits of the hero, which defenses to use and so on. Add to this also places of interest scattered around the map that will provide you with resources, extra troops and other benefits to discover. The most interesting part is predicting where the enemy army will strike on the next Death Night. The day before this happens, in fact, a Dark Crystal will reveal itself on the map making you guess which side the army will come from. However this will follow a path that is not necessarily what you anticipated and the area of the village that you have properly equipped could be blissfully ignored by the army that, OPS, has already entered!
Unexpected events like this will happen constantly and they will make you nervous but they will also be a great incentive to do better and better. The challenge is assured! And as if that weren’t enough, to further increase the degree of challenge and replayability we have well 5 difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Veteran, Terrifying, Nightmare. We anticipate that already on Medium difficulty you will sweat a lot, while already from the Veteran difficulty we will have increasingly stronger enemy armies and we will be able to save the game a maximum of 5 times. We do not know what lies beyond this difficulty … the heart did not stand up to us.
Age of Darkness Final Stand review in a nutshell
Age of Darkness is one of those surprises out of the spotlight that has managed to keep us glued to the screen for hours and ore. Although the Early-Access version is still immature, the amount of troops and structures is substantial and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. We already know that a new Hero, Aelis, the Queen of Nothingness, is in the pipeline, which bodes well for the attention that the developers will give to this game.