I picked up Dominion 3 about 24 hours ago and have onomnomed it since (yes, straight. I do that.). I saw the recommendation for 4 on my Steam but kinda baulked at the price considering the PD style of art (#3 still put me back a fair bit). I'm struggling to see what other people see in it. Its not really that different from Centurion Defender of Rome back which was released back in theI picked up Dominion 3 about 24 hours ago and have onomnomed it since (yes, straight. I do that.). I saw the recommendation for 4 on my Steam but kinda baulked at the price considering the PD style of art (#3 still put me back a fair bit). I'm struggling to see what other people see in it. Its not really that different from Centurion Defender of Rome back which was released back in the 1990's. The sound and the gfx are on par, if not worse and its the same principle: give vague instructions to an AI and watch it totally screw it up when the fight happens (I just rage quitted from the last chance I gave that game).
It's an interesting concept and the implementation in Dominations is reasonably complex (lots of spell and potential unit combos, like TONS) however the instruction is almost as limited as it was back in Centurion. You can just about instruct your hero to do a couple of things in sequence. In the game I just quit from my sequence was: long range fire spell *2 => fly into their ranged troops and kill them with your fire AOE. Worked out fine for a few fights but then my hero appeared in the middle of my own troops burning them all to death. Why are the spells and the tech paths complex but the tactics, the actual part that is the core of the game so incredibly simple?
Attack/Hold and Attack/Retreat/ etc. You can then specify if you want to attack a particular type of unit or maybe just the one at the back, however you can't elegantly sweep your army from right to left nor pull of a sweet pincer movement (which you could in Centurion). Considering this game sells itself on the principle that it has complex combat, considering the fact it sacrifices the gfx, the sound, EVERYTHING for it I'm disappointed that the tactics are so incredibly bare. The spells and abilities are just fluff. So all we have is a lot of fluff. The fluff is cool. I just wish I could program the commands for them where I'm not terrified everytime I look at a fight result to see if my hero died because he didn't understand them.
Forget the "civ like" stuff, that part isn't fun either. It suffers from "ring around the rosie" syndrome where if one troop sneaks past your defense you'll be stuck chasing it for a good twelve turns before you can corner it while it burns down all your temples. So you're left desperately trying to block off the landscape to avoid this which then just leads to a sort of dull stalemate.
There are limited strategic decisions to make outside of your magic and god build. I could maybe tolerate half of these problems if it wasn't for the user interface from hell. I'm sitting here getting RSI from having to constantly click on units to purchase them individually. The interface is directly from the early 90's, its awful, there is _no_ excuse for this. Don't try to bribe the mercenaries in this game too highly or you'll lose your mind (its an arrow, that increments by one that you have to click for each increment), especially when you then accidentally hit "reset" because your brain assumes its "done" because "reset" happens to be exactly where the "done" button should be ("done" is exit).
I just can't believe that this is the third iteration of the game. I found out recently the first iteration was about ten years ago. What exactly have they been doing in the past ten years aside from travelling back twenty years to take game design lessons from people in the nineties?!? The premise of this game is incredibly entertaining but this implementation is just **** This is genuinely their third go? The opening screen teases you with a 3d landscape that they can't be bothered to port onto the map screen.
When I was a kid in the old smoke filled arcades I once saw an older gent try to play the game "time traveller". It was this really bad game that was sold on a hologram gimmick. I watched him struggle with the controls as a "baddie" shot him in the back in each one of his lives and he pathetically shot in the wrong direction. The old western style gent that narrated the game offers the same advice each time: "remember, turn before you shoot!". The third time this happened was too much, he shouted back at the screen: "I AM F**KING TURNING". He then looked at me and my brother and said: "Kids, don't play this game its SH*T". Today, I get to pass this advice on to you. Don't buy this game.… Expand
Dominions 3: The AwakeningYour Score0 out of 10User Score
