Land of Empires – First impressions

The Story

I truly didn’t understand the need for a storyline in Land of Empires. It doesn’t seem that the gameplay is driven by the story and it feels misplaced and more of a novelty. In your first few minutes you’ll need to complete the storyline to gain access to your city. You’ll have to complete side missions that, after you unlock your city, will never be see again. After I unlocked the city I thought: “if the story is not integral to the gameplay, and the side missions are never seen again, then why have the player participate?” I suppose it’s to introduce the units and where they came from?

The Gameplay

The gameplay seems pretty average for this type of strategy war game. I was really hoping for real time manual movements like RoK, but it is more of a static game. For example, if you didn’t see your troops moving around the map to take actions, it wouldn’t matter. It could be a static picture to attack, then a menu that pops up displaying that you won, and it would be the same as watching your troops walk across the map, kill a dude on auto pilot, before returning to your city. I wish you could move your troops around manually and freely across the map. That way you could meet other forces and fight for resources.

The game seems to be overly peaceful for a war game. Because no one’s troops ever really comes into contact with each other, and resources are so abundant, there really doesn’t seem to be a benefit or reason to attack another player. There just feels like there is a lack of consequences.

Heroes are currently a bit too plain and lack depth. There is no real strategy or synergy behind the heroes and the troops they command. Especially since you can only have 1 type of hero per squad. So no stacking 3 Infantry heroes and full infantry of troops. I would like to be given a lot more choices that feel like they have impact.

Pay to Win?

So just like other games in it’s genre, you can definitely pay to get ahead… and REALLY ahead. There are players blowing hundreds and thousands of dollars where there is no way you can compete with them. However, you do get enough resources and gems to not feel restricted. Yes, you won’t have the best heroes maxed out and max city level, but you will have enough to keep pushing every time you are online at your own pace. I don’t feel like I HAVE to pay in this game. I feel like it is much more of an option compared to other games. So, yes it is pay to win, but it’s not as bad as other games due to the lack of competitiveness with consequences in the game.

The Graphics

The graphics are high quality and the animations are beautiful. It feels like a triple-A title. The transition between your city to world view and zoom functions feel fine. My only complaint is I would like them to add more zoom levels. It feels a little restrictive. Also, you can’t zoom out of your city to the world view. You have to click on the city button to leave the city view. Another gripe I have is the mini map. You can’t interact on it to quickly view different areas on the map..

The User Interface

The user interface is nice and clean. All of the icons are placed at the borders as to not interrupt the middle of the screen. There are a lot of buttons, but it doesn’t seem overwhelming. Unfortunately there are not a lot of options to hide or toggle menus. You only have the option to toggle the bottom right menu. I would appreciate being able to toggle the top right events list to hidden, as it takes up a lot of room and is mostly just paid options – but I get why devs would want the money buttons prominently displayed at all times.

Final Thoughts

As I understand it, this game is relatively new and still very much in it’s early stages of development. This seems like a good starting point and definitely has a lot of potential. I am excited to see where it goes.