Imperia Online is a free to play browser empire building RTS from Imprint in which players take on the mantle of ruler of their own fledgling kingdom on the road to greatness, like many MMOs of this type the game primarily focuses on managing your resources and your time, engaging in diplomatic relations with other players whether creating allies, trade partners or enemies. Fundamentally the game is a PVP focuses game where players are encouraged to form partnerships with each other to prosper and simply survive.

Checking out the game for a while and playing through it we have to say that whilst the game doesn’t offer a massive amount of unique content to the empire building strategy genre, it probably is one of the better ones out there in terms of options and overall look. The graphics are particularly well done and the detail of your ever growing city is particularly pleasing as far as artwork goes, though essentially buildings are added automatically once constructed and players don’t choose their position, so a players city view is essentially a piece of artwork in its own right and elements are added bit by bit. Constructing a new type of building will add the artwork to the city, with a number next to the building signifying how many of those buildings have been erected in the city.

 

Navigating around the game is relatively simple, a tutorial questing phase guides you through the basics, even asking multiple choice questions requiring players to seek out information in their various menus, it was a nice touch and makes the masses of menus and sub menus feel slightly less overwhelming. The UI lacks the clutter you often get, forgoing the flashing signs and bells and whistles trying to get you to log into this and that feature and claim free rewards; it’s simple and tasteful even when navigating through the various information windows it all flows easily and has a surprising amount of information.

One of the features we liked was the personal touch to your character profiles, able to upload your own picture for your avatar, leave comments on your profile for other players, or fill in your personal information; the game encourages a deeper player to player interaction. Likewise we also found the addition of the “Great People” feature interesting, a Crusader Kings style family tree where your ruling Emperor has bonuses and boosts when in charge of certain tasks or locations, who also has his own dynasty with his heirs, and their children and beyond; your family can be paired up, Marriage proposals be made, all the while each character gets older and develops their own bonuses.

The actual gameplay is fairly rote, gather resources, train up technologies, construct buildings and train up units; each tech unlocked, building constructed or unit trained will of course take up a certain amount of resources (as well as ongoing maintenance) and can take anything from seconds, minutes to hours and days to complete construction. All of these can of course be rushed to completion by spending Diamonds premium currency, bought with cash or earned in a variety of ways through the game; from what we can tell the only other perk to Diamonds is buying Premium Membership that gives a variety of boosts and perks to an account, but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be anything restricted as a Diamond only purchase (which for us is a good thing!).

Once more when it comes to combat it is all fairly standard, players get to choose from a variety of offensive and defensive units that they can spread about their various provinces to guard these areas or amass an attack on AI towns or rival players. Whilst players can try and gain the upper hand by spying on each other, and gaining Morale boosts from assigned Great People, essentially the game will automatically determine who is likely to be the victor of a battle based off the composition of both players armies; their number and their unit type. Unsurprisingly there’s no major battle animations or actual battlefield tactics, the game is all about the numbers, watching them go up and down and trying to make sure you’re moving ever upwards when comparing your rankings against other players. The end-game is the most important aspects with players teaming up to add a more immersive and involved element to the game, coordinating joint attacks, helping defend each other’s provinces and supporting each other.

Whilst the early game content isn’t exactly what we’d call fun, it’s casual enough to be able to play it whilst doing other things and keep chipping away and building up your settlement. As you progress it’s natural to feel more invested in your advancement and protecting what you have built, so the very nature of playing the game with the intent of playing it long term already makes it more fun, however, for those just picking up to check it out then it’s probably easy to put down and never pick up again.

CONCLUSION:

• Graphics: 6


• Gameplay: 5


• Performance: 9

• Pros: Good graphics, a handful of unique features, simple UI and easy to navigate menus.


• Cons: Doesn’t add a whole lot new to the genre, early gameplay is a little tedious.

Rating: 6.5

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2015 at 11:41 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.