Ancient Space is kind of icy, and devoid of air, like a refrigerated vaccuum cleaner. Another RTS game thrown into space with some spooky visuals and 100% gpu candy, but lacks any gameplay that warrants such a drain on my electric bill.
Sins of a Solar Empire is one of my favorite games in the universe. Creating massive ship armies and throwing them all over the map to conquer planets and systems is exciting as heck. Ancient Space tries to do this, in a sort of copy paste fashion with no real innovation. There are ships, there are small battle areas you jump to, and there are the RTS standard elements. Standard is about all this manages to squeak by with in every aspect.
Too many cutscenes and story elements felt annoying and lacked punch during the campaign. Interrupting the battles and moving the camera around while I’m in the middle of some battle is frustrating. With the convoluted camera controls it just drives me insane.
Small marked off areas keep the battle map scaled down to managable sizes, but I think that’s defeating the purpose of a ‘Space’ RTS. I want lots of giant open everything happening, like Sins of a Solar Empire. Ship units look super tiny, and having five or six battle points on the same small map is just not necessary. They’ve managed to make space feel crowded and linear. Campaign missions are a dull minigame of goal after goal.
Battles in 3D definitely pushed beyond my tolerance level rather quick. Flying the camera around with WASD is fine, but there is a huge like 10 mile Z axis of depth. Panning up and down with Q & E keys is insane. I didn’t see any necessity to zoom in except when I couldn’t select an enemy target because the controls are all janky. I don’t even know what to blame for this. It could be better, anything above the bare minimum, but it isn’t.
A depressing upgrades system tacked on and offers confusing choices. I don’t see why I need to choose a separate upgrade for extra damage vs small or large ships. That’s the best idea anybody came up with? Srs? Good effort.
Bare minimum seems to be the goal for this release. I was hoping for just anything to surpass Sins of Solar empire, which is about a thousand years old at this point. No innovation and tedious controls make this much more frustrating than fun. It’s a dull experience, I just don’t enjoy playing it. Another generic RTS. Feels like a tower defense game.
Ancient Space launches a disappointing 2 out of 5
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/249190/
Ancient Space: Review Ancient Space is kind of icy, and devoid of air, like a refrigerated vaccuum cleaner. Another RTS game thrown into space with some spooky visuals and 100% gpu candy, but lacks any gameplay that warrants such a drain on my electric bill.