After only a few days of us getting a chance to play the preview of Confrontation, our good friends over and Tripplepoint Publishing, an associate for Focus Home Entertainment passed us the full version of the game. So let us push on with the game review, created by Cyanide Studio, developers behind the upcoming RPG ‘Game of Thrones’. “I am warning the developers now ‘Game of Thrones’ better be AWESOME or I shall have to take a trip”.
Confrontation is inspired by the desktop game with the same name expect you get to play with little figures around a board “Ok not really something I want to do, each to his own I guess”. This is an RPG mixed with tactical elements, where your main role is to control and group of heroes and defeat the enemy within small scale tactical battles (There is no LOTR Epic battle here). The game is set in the fantasy world of Aarkash, where the coming or should I say the age of Rag’narok is due. You take control of a small group of heroes or as the developers call them ‘Griffin Warriors’ to explore dungeons, enemy territories, non-open world environments, secret labs and much more.
So gameplay, ‘basics’ this is a squad based combat with the ability to pause, plan your actions assign your heroes a set of commands un-pause and kill or be killed “ The Choice is yours” players familiar to the likes of DragonAge (The original) and the epic Baldur’s gate series will feel right at home with this type of game. The only major difference is what I can only call as an action sequence, where you queue up to four actions per character, this allow you to plan several moves to defeat your opponents. When planning your attacks you really need to learn your opponent as they have their own skills and abilities, this is paramount to any successful win. Without knowing who to take down first what to anticipate and what to counter, you will simply have no chance of winning “Maybe some pure luck”, so learn from the start.
So now we introduce the A-Team “heheh”, Darius the leader the protection class, Zilia a powerful pyromancer, Lothaire the inquisitor, an up-close and personal kick arse class and finally Nekhys the hunter class, and you might have guessed it, a range class. Class levelling “which I touched upon within my preview” is fairly simple, as you level up you will gain experience points, this in turn allows you to improve your attributes. Attributes include Wisdom, Agility, intelligence, constitution, strength and last of all vivacity. You will also gain skill points which of course allow you to improve your heroes’ skills.
When a member of your team drop dead “Do not tell anyone they not really dead , they just playing dead” to bring a slacker back to his feet all you need to do is send a member of your team to them and heal them up (This does take some time).
While traversing the land you will find chests, inside the chests contain Glyphs which in turn allow you to improve the quality of the gear your characters are wearing (Not visual). Each glyph you find allow you to choose from two skills physical or spell (Magical) or you can choose to improve your squads damage output. One down side which still has not changed “Why the hell don’t any of the enemies drop anything” they dead you expect them to drop their stuff.
I am going to cry now because this does suck “Where the hell is my inventory so I can give my heroes new gear so they look more awesome ”Ok A-Team rescinded” this game does not have one. Your character are stuck with one set of gear and one set of weapons and the only way to make any difference to them is by finding runes found in weapon and armour racks. Another bit I found that upset me, the game was pushed out as an ‘RPG’ type game as well, but only having stats and skill upgrades is just not enough to class a game in today’s market as an RPG
Ok advice, add loot drops, and gear upgrade, in-game voice acting, if not voice acting, some sort of communication in-game that allows the user to choose the answer and outcome. By adding just these elements will give the gamer a feel for the characters that he or she is playing.
This game is not the greatest when it comes to graphics, then again graphics do not make a game great, a good example here is Minecraft (ok not the greatest example but you get my drift). So what is the game like in terms of beauty? Simple answer it all looks beautiful from the deserts to the dungeons and the fight scenes. You might take you some time to get used to the camera controls, but once masters you are away.
Overall, now let’s look at section and give it a score it deserves Great visuals but not up to standard with technology available. Cyanide said this was an RPG, yet it does not feel like an RPG in anyway. The combat can feel slow and the camera can be a pain until mastered, so overall I am on the edge. Ok I enjoyed a few levels, but started to get bored with nothing much more to do than walk & fight and my characters regardless of levelling and killing never changed in anyway. The lack of standard elements of role play, made me not care for the characters, there was nothing really keeping me to the game, nothing to make me want to go further. Do not get me wrong the tactical elements are great and if this is what you like in a game, then you will most likely love confrontation, however if you are a role-play lover, then I would look for a demo first, but do not expect much.
We where hoping for a lot more with confrontation, however we where sadly let down. The game has only just come out so lets hope the developers create some new content via DLC, as Confrontation has a lot of potential to be had.
We are however hoping that Cyanide’s next game “Game of Thrones” will live up to all its hype and bring us an epic adventure.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
