RATING:
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 1
Overall: 7
Pros: Nice design & graphics, intuitive UI & plenty of features.
Cons: Major early content/ progression block due to the time it takes to acquire resources and build/ train. No sound in closed beta.
We’ve lately dedicated some of our time to check out Tribal Wars 2, InnoGames’ newest browser-based medieval strategy city/ empire building MMO, which is the sequel to the tremendously popular original Tribal Wars and offers new features, an enhanced interface and updated visuals. The community of the original title was asking for an updated version of their beloved MMO, this way inspiring developers to create Tribal Wars 2. For first glimpse into the game’s closed beta testing, we spent around 25 minutes going through the tutorial and the initial stages of gameplay in order to gather an impression of what the Tribal Wars 2 is all about.
A quick registration was all it took to enter the game, where we were immediately posed the question which direction we wanted to build our city to and chose to let a random dice roll decide. We then were presented with our city screen, which rather resembled a small settlement or village. The game’s tutorial introduced us to the basics of construction and resource production, which basically consisted of erecting different resource production buildings to acquire wood, clay and iron. The amount of time it takes to gather resources in this way is all but the fastest of processes though.
We were therefore introduced to an alternate method that required building up a barracks and training some Spearmen as the first makings of our military force. Directed to the region map, we were then encouraged to attack a barbarian village/ encampment, which our units successfully returned from with some resources, allowing us to carry on building up our city. The construction of the various buildings requires different types and a specific amount of resources, as well as a certain period of time, which may range from minutes to hours depending on the type and level of the building. Players are able to accelerate the construction to instantaneously complete the building by spending Crowns, the game’s premium currency, of which we’d been provided with a nice amount in order to jump start us.
At this point, the tutorial was over, but we were still offered some guidance by the Quests we were asked to complete, which tasked us with performing certain actions such as erecting or upgrading a building, training units and using them for an attack on the Barbarians, which gently holds a new player’s hand and prevents them from feeling unsure about what to do next.
After completing several quests and playing for about 20 minutes, a quite big issue arose: we were confronted with a rather large progression block that didn’t allow us to build anything as there weren’t any resources left. We therefore intended to send out some of our units to raid some barbarian villages and acquire resources (with which a quest also tasked us). However, when giving the marching order, we realised that this attack, in contrast to the tutorial, would take 37 real-world minutes, which wasn’t quite an option for the video. So we took a look around but didn’t notice anything obvious what we could or were supposed to do next. This was most likely the major flaw we encountered, as players are practically forced to leave the game to check in again later, which would be pretty comprehensible at later stages but pretty much surprised us that early in the game.
We ultimately took our time to have a look at the rest of the features and discovered a number of Achievements players may earn, which range from combat achievements and building achievements to generally exploring and taking advantage of the other features as much as possible and being rewarded for it. Players are also able to create their own Tribes, essentially guilds, which allow them to compete with other Tribes for positions in the ranking list.
They are moreover able to engage in PvP with one another by attacking each other’s settlements; at the current stage, however, we assume that it’s impossible to take over another player’s starting city. For players may own more than one settlement, we guess they are able to take control of those acquired later though (certainly former barbarian settlements). As usual, newbies are provided with a certain protection which prevents them from being attacked by others, unless they decide to attack another one first: If it’s not the case of the latter, they are given a 5-day immunity before being thrown to the wolves.
Check out our first look gameplay commentary video. And feel free to activate the INFO button below in order to find out more about Tribal Wars 2.
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