This is a short review of a turn-based RPG game Fort Triumph. Actually, before playing I wasn’t expecting this gameplay, I was thinking that the game will be exactly like X-COM, but when I saw the element of Heroes of Might and Magic I was like “Ah, what a pleasant surprise”. Indeed. Here you, as in Heroes have your “horse”, which looks like a hooded person and you have your castle where you can build various stuff. Except here, instead of a hero and various beasts, you have only hero units, such as Paladin, Ranger, Savage, Mage, and a few others. Sadly, again, no Vodka Bender here, but at least you can rename your heroes as you see fit. So here you can make a party consisting of three heroes and later when you upgrade your castle, you can add a few more.
During the battle, they are gaining new levels, and by doing so they also get various skills or can upgrade existing ones. There are many various abilities you can choose from, every class has its own: from simple damage-dealing bash with a hammer to powerful flesh melting spells like fireball, from passive healing skills to aggressive knocking down abilities. The environment in the battlefield plays the main role, you have to execute your commands carefully, because, at least in normal or higher difficulties, one misstep can lead to your death. You can knock down pillars with whirlwinds, kick rocks or just pull one enemy into a boulder or to another enemy and stun them for one turn. There is a lot of possibilities to earn your victory… or defeat I guess because when I played the campaign on normal I was loading my game all the time. And on easy it is too easy – you can just steamroll through your adversaries without any planning whatsoever.
This game truly lacks one difficulty between normal and easy, because normal… it’s not normal, yeah… it is hard. At least in campaign. And at least for me, huh. And one thing that is not finished in this game is an automatic camera roll, when you hero attacks, you usually get some blurry stuff in your face or an obstacle filling the screen. It is really really bad. And it is a huge part of this game, so they have to fix it as fast as possible. And now let’s talk about the exploration part – the one where you roam the world with your figurine and collect various items, claim to produce facilities, and so on. So, you have a lame looking castle where you can build various buildings that help your heroes become stronger. Basically all you do here is upgrade your party. You need certain buildings to make your party bigger, certain upgrades to make your party do more damage, have more armor, more speed and so on.
There are three kinds of currencies: one is gold, that your castle generates, one is magic that you can find and claim as yours and the last one is awarded for your performance in battles. Sadly that is all boring. If, let’s say, in Heroes, you are waiting for some cool building that produces Devils or Ghost Dragons, here you will feel nothing like that. No thrill of upcoming amazingness is felt here at all. It sucks. Yeah. And while there are 4 factions in-game, humans, trolls, undead and goblins, heroes have the same skills in every single one of them. Of course, there are some minor things that differ from faction to faction, like the ability for goblins to hide better behind rocks, but human mage and goblin mage will act exactly the same and have the same spells whatsoever. So, the factions here are more cosmetic. It cannot be. I know, it is sad, but it is how it is. I have a feeling that they tried to chew more than they can handle and fell short with finances and stuff, because, come on, you can definitely do better. And the exploration part is also quite dull.
While Heroes of Might and Magic has zillions of different objects for you to visit, here you can find only a handful of those. So, after a few minutes of playing you have already seen almost everything the game has to offer. Well, except artifacts, there are many different you can get and then equip your heroes with those. Although they are similar to unique items of the first Diablo game whereupon equipping you got some good things, but also something bad was applied to your hero. If you get more defense, then your attack power is reduced, if you become faster, then your accuracy becomes worse. If they implemented vodka as an artifact, it would give you more self-confidence, but also depression.
So, my brain is instantly saying that we should have not made this bargain. Yeah. Now when you get the new shiny artifact, it is not as rewarding as you would hope for. I know that if you tried to play this game on a professional level and not just casually, those artifacts would be way more important. For example if you can stack more damage while sacrificing health, you would build a glass cannon, but you would also need a first strike ability or better speed, so your hero could stay alive a little bit longer. Because here, if your hero is killed – it is killed. If you win the battle, you will stay with as many heroes as you managed to keep alive. So, building badass glass cannon may be a very expensive decision.
Also, enemies are not flying away when your party is zillion times stronger – you have to fight every single time no matter how weak your opponent is. Also, somehow there are no automatic battles. Let’s say if I have to kill some low-level spiders with my super powerful heroes, can they please do that on their own? It is weird, because this game has AI, so why AI can’t control your units for a while? So, in Fort Triumph you can play skirmish and campaign modes and also there is local co-op mode if you have some friends or siblings willing to play the game with you. That is actually great, it can really prolong the action. That’s what she said. Yeah. So, the verdict for the game would be 7 vodkas out of 10, because I had fun playing for several hours, but I’m definitely not impressed.
Although the game has Very Positive reviews on Steam, meaning you might like it more than I did. This is just my personal review, but I think I made my point. If I were you, I would buy it in the sale, so be sure you wishlist it so you don’t miss the sale when it happens.
