- Joined
- Apr 19, 2012
- Messages
- 12,062 (2.75/day)
- Location
- Gypsyland, UK
| System Name | HP Omen 17 |
|---|---|
| Processor | i7 7700HQ |
| Memory | 16GB 2400Mhz DDR4 |
| Video Card(s) | GTX 1060 |
| Storage | Samsung SM961 256GB + HGST 1TB |
| Display(s) | 1080p IPS G-SYNC 75Hz |
| Audio Device(s) | Bang & Olufsen |
| Power Supply | 230W |
| Mouse | Roccat Kone XTD+ |
| Software | Win 10 Pro |
Introduction
Chaos Reborn is a multiplayer turn based strategy game, incorporating the tactical elements of the developers previous work (XCOM), into a reboot of the classic Atari game. In fact, it’s almost identical to the previous game, merely making improvements to an already excellent mix of gameplay and mechanics. It’s also really incredibly pretty, so much so that my girlfriend walked in and went “Ooooooh that’s pretty, can I have a go?”, and as such, my entire review time was spent playing multiplayer with her. She had never played this before, nor is she a particularly avid PC gamer, so I think I’ve managed to grasp how the new crowd would fair with this game. It’s built using the Unity engine (like so many games recently!), and published through Steam Early Access. It’s worth noting I was playing with the early 0.24 build, so the game is not 100% finished, but the base is there, and it’s fully playable online competitively.
The final build will have a single player RPG like aspect to it, along with wizard customisation; however the current build is offline/online multiplayer only. The game is due to release fully this summer.
Storyline
Cast pretty spellz while riding a unicorn. Alternatively, hide in a magical jellyfish tree.
Gameplay
The online multiplayer plays a little differently to the offline version, in that offline mode unlocks all staff’s and spells for everyone, and there are no equipment screens or levels. Everybody has access to everything, and it is randomly generated at the start of each game. Online mode however, you can level up your wizard, which will unlock additional spells at higher levels, and alternative staffs. Unfortunately in the game’s present state, your staff is still randomly chosen at the beginning of an online match. Staffs do affect your playstyle however, and it is good form to check what your staff is and what your ultimate staff spell is. This can directly affect how you play, and what you play.
The two primary systems in Chaos Reborn are mana and balance between Chaos and Law. Each spell has an affinity, either being Law, Chaos, or Neutral. Each card will have a percentage chance to be successfully cast. At the beginning of the game, the balance will be at 0%, but when you cast any Law or Chaos spell, it will increase the balance to that side by 3% or more. This balance means that any spell that is the same type as the current balance of the game will have a higher percentage of successful casting. A Vampire for example is Chaos based. It has a base cast chance of 35%, but if everyone in the game has been casting Chaos spells, the game balance will probably be around +20% chaos in later turns. That means that the cast chance for the Vampire will increase to well over 40 or 50%. Law spells will still have the same cast chance as their base, even with a +50% chaos balance, but obviously a game balanced towards Law will make Dwarves and Paladins a much higher cast chance. Neutral creatures are not affected by any of this, and maintain their base cast chance regardless.
You can however use Mana to increase the cast chance of a spell. You gain mana by collecting small glowing mana trees, killing enemy units and wizards, and discarding spells on your staff. Each one mana you spend when you cast a spell will increase the cast chance by 1%. Some spells have a maximum mana boost however, so you may only be able to up the chance of casting a Hydra by 10% regardless of how much mana you have stashed away. Another interesting mechanic is that staffs have ultimate spells. Each staff will have a requirement of 50+ mana cost, and spending that mana will add a spell to your hand. This spell is usually a big game changer, being a massive spell, or summoning two of the hardest creatures in the game. Staffs also affect your gameplay by increasing the chance of drawing a spell of a certain balance, or increasing certain base stats of creatures or characters of a certain type.
Creatures all have their own mechanics too. Some creatures may be ranged, some may be ranged but only for a single shot (giants for example), others may retaliate when attacked. Undead also have their own mechanic, whereby only undead can attack, defend or engange undead. This can cause problems in some games, especially if you’re running a Law mage without any Paladins (Paladins are the only things that are not undead and can attack undead besides wizards). Other mechanics include flying, web, swoop (attacking from high ground to low ground with flying units), charge, and shatter (for destroying wizard weapons). Some creatures can even be mounted by the wizard, allowing a creature attack, further movement for the wizard, as well as the wizard’s spell casting and attacking. It will also kill the creature before the wizard if anyone lands a successful hit.
The way combat works is extremely blunt. There are no health pools or attack damage figures. Either an attack kills a unit or it doesn't, and that’s what makes the game very much tactically challenging. Unit stats will affect the way they perform in combat, whether attacking or engaged. Engaged prevents a creature from attacking anything, or even moving, except for attacking the creature it’s been engaged by. The attack and defence stat are what define death or failures. The % chance to kill is based on the ratio of the attacker’s attack value compared to the defender’s defence value. For example, a creature with attack 10 against a creature with defence 5 has a 2:1 or 66% chance of killing the defender. Elevation can increase that attack stat by 50%, or decrease by 50% if attacking upwards at a defending enemy. This % decreases for ranged attacks down to 25%. Engagement works similarly, in that the chance of a creature being engaged is the ratio of that creature’s agility compared to the agility of every adjacent enemy.
Basically online play is pretty damn complex, and you’ll get your ass handed to you if you don’t attempt to capitalise on all this math.
In addition to creatures, you have spells, totems, and weapons. Spells often destroy creatures and cause wizards to discard up to three spells, though some do kill wizards. Totems generally increase attack or defence value of all your creatures, though some totems can resurrect creatures on death up to three times. Weapons generally provide bonuses, though there are currently only three. A shield, which increases your base defence stat, a sword, which increases attack stats but also rewards more mana on a creature kill, as well as a bow which increases your attack range by three tiles. You can in fact have all three equipped at once, and successfully being disarmed by a dwarf will remove each in that particular reverse order (Bow > Sword > Shield).
There are currently around about 80 spells, split between each balance and neutral, and a relatively small number of staffs to choose from. The objective of any game is to kill all other wizards, as once you kill a wizard, all their creatures are removed from the game. The fact that it’s one-hit one-kill with a percentage based kill chance is what makes you think the most about how you’re attempting to take on any particular enemy. With all the cast chance nonsense, sometimes you have to consider taking a cheap way out of a bad situation, and that’s where the multiplayer fun really comes in.
Illusions play a big part in Chaos Reborn, and they can either be a glorious saviour in a desperate situation, or a crushing defeat if an opponent sees through your games. An illusion version of a creature always has a 100% cast chance, making it ideal for a first turn dragon that would otherwise only be 20% cast chance. These creatures are wholly identical to a real version, they move the same amount, have the same defence, and have the same attack. The catch is, every wizard has an infinite number of disbelieve spells, which will instantly remove an illusion from the game. If they successfully disbelieve an illusory creature, they can then cast another spell. Even more interestingly, they can continue to cast disbelieve if they think you've made a few too many fake creatures, and disbelieve your entire army if you've been avoiding the percentage dice rolls. In other words, it’s good healthy competition to mix it up a bit, as sometimes it works to your advantage, but occasionally you can disbelieve half an army and then cast your own fancy spells before you disbelieve a real creature. The only issue is offline AI is really stupid with illusions, and casts 90% illusory rat packs for no good reason, only for them to get instantly removed by a sensible player that knows the AI issues.
Controls
Controls are a little odd in comparison to your usual controls with TBC games. An important thing to note, is that the Right Click button is basically your Escape key for just about everything. If you want to go back one set during a spell cast or something, Right Clicking will take you back that one step, as many times as you want. It also deselects units. Left click is obviously your selection, and double left clicking will engage movement of units. You can also click and drag spell cards onto your staff to increase your staff’s mana. ‘W’A’S’D’ operate the camera, although there’s no turning of the angle, only standard camera strafing left and right. Bizarrely ‘Space’ is labelled as jump, but I see no function for jump in the game. Most of the control in the game is done with the mouse; I just tend to keep my fingers on the camera controls. Another useful tip is that you can skip turn playback of enemy player’s turns when your turn has begun, by pressing Right Click.
Video Settings
Nothing particularly inspiring here, although when the video option says fantastic, the game looks the part. Annoyingly there is VSync and it’s forced on. Besides your choice of display and windowed mode, there is almost zero tweaking available for systems having specific issues. All you can do is start off at the prettiest and work your way down.
System Performance
CPU: i5 4670 (Stock)
GPU: MSI GTX 970 (Stock)
RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
Storage: WD 1TB 7200RPM
Display: 2560 x 1440
Ok, so I had a spout of overclocking my monitor last week, and stuck with a refresh of 70hz. As such my FPS chart will be locked at 70 because my machine ate the game for breakfast, but was being held back on the leash because of the forced VSync. Performance tended to depend entirely on the number of players, but also was largely affected by the randomly chosen map. CPU usage went up from a mere 21% on a basic map, to above 30% on the more complex map types. The CPU went beyond the single core usage level with no problem, so it is capable of using more cores, although it’s not a huge performance hog of a game. The GPU usage on maximum settings on 1440p was still quite subtle, maxing out the GPU load, but not putting a heavy enough load to warrant much more than 80% total power draw. Overall it’s possibly one of the best optimised games in Early Access that I've ever benchmarked, however I’d have liked to see a removal of the forced VSync so I could see just how much room I had to spare.
1440p
1080p
Recommended Hardware
Any modern Pentium dual core would be ideal, as the processor usage is so light. A moderately clocked (3Ghz) dual core would provide ample power to run this at 1080p. In terms of the GPU department, any midrange GPU would suffice for maximum settings, and even at 1080p, the 1GB VRAM requirement is nothing to be worried about. This would happily run on a modern Haswell iGPU system with marginal cuts to graphical settings, and still throw out more than playable frame rates. It’s a very hardware agnostic game, and will run on just about any system with graphical adjustments to fit acceptable FPS figures. If you can play with “Fantastic” settings, I wholly recommend it, ‘cause damn it looks pretty!
Conclusion
Obviously this is fairly early on in production, but what’s there is most definitely finely polished to the nth degree. The game performance is stellar; the art direction is unique, and quite beautiful by any standard. What’s more, my girlfriend was found regularly sneaking on the computer and playing this game by herself, because it was so easy to pick up for a new player, but satisfied her need for shiny pretty things too. She even beat me on one occasion, and began to take the game all too seriously. That example, of a non-PC gamer enjoying such an odd genre and unique kind of game, with rather a simple concept, is a shining example of what the game has done right. It is an excellent formula, and the illusion mechanic is perfect genius. It brings an additional level to a game that would possibly otherwise be a bit of a bore.
It’s not all perfect however. There definitely needs to be a much more complex array of spells, as games become extremely repetitive in nature. Most of the time everyone chooses one particular balance and players find themselves discarding hard to cast creatures that would otherwise waste a turn if they failed. Every single game, people all summoned pretty much the same creatures, and from there it was more a tactic of luck instead of actual masterful play. Eventually in the late game things would begin to get a little more complex and interesting, but I always found in 3+ player games, there would always be an underdog, as opposed to finding a balanced sort of dancing around the map. A lot of people have complained about the undead only able to defend against the undead, and I can see that issue with Law having so few ways to deal with it. By no means should the mechanic be removed, but it looks poor due to a lack of content, which can only be remedied by waiting for more content. There’s also some creature mechanic related problems involving the paladin, and the fact that being able to cast 5 tanglevines or darkwoods ends up screwing over all players when you've blocked off half the access of the map.
I also kinda want to see staffs become a little more interesting. The devs have started on something cool, but it’s a sort of hollow addition that needs fleshing out a bit more. Besides that, it’s a very pleasant game, but not for everyone. Some people prefer having health bars, and the simple act of having your wizard die to stupidity in the middle of a game you’re clearly winning is a crushing blow. It’s merciless, exceedingly calculated, and has depth that has been brought in with some original, and some non-original but refined mechanics. At this stage I would not buy it purely based on content alone. I’d wait for additional spells, unlocks in single player, including the equipment section for wizards to come to fruition. Once all that arrives, I see it becoming an exceedingly popular game with fans of tactical titles. I won’t compare it to Hearthstone, but I feel it would fit in with a similar crowd.
Chaos Reborn is available on Steam Early Access for £14.99/$19.99
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I guess this isn't Crysis.