Impire

 PC
Metascore
45

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 28 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 28
  3. Negative: 13 out of 28
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Jun 10, 2013
    80
    A charming strategy, with pleasant gameplay, some original ideas and humorous wackiness. A must have for old friends of Dungeon Keeper. [April 2013]
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User Reviews

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User Score
5.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 148 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 47 out of 148
  2. Mixed: 40 out of 148
  3. Negative: 61 out of 148
  1. Taziar
    Feb 16, 2013
    5
    I have actually played the game and and after seeing the delusional reviews here, I felt compelled to chime in. (8.3? Really?) TheI have actually played the game and and after seeing the delusional reviews here, I felt compelled to chime in. (8.3? Really?) The atmosphere in the game is fine, and the humor, while a bit simple, is also fine. The real problem is the game-play. It isn't fun. In fact, it can be rather tedious. Basically the game consists of 5 parts. Building your dungeon, defending your dungeon from heroes, adventuring, raiding, and maintenance. No, it is not as exciting as it sounds.

    Building your dungeon is basically rotating and dropping a pre-sized room next to a corridor. Layout is unimportant because you generally teleport your units everywhere. Other than perhaps a cluster of kitchen's as you will spend a fair bit of time feeding your minions. It is generally unsatisfying and happens at a fairly slow pace. It feels more like the base building in a RTS, you do it just to get the buildings deployed to unlock functionality, not because you are actually designing a base.

    Defending your dungeon, now here is one of the tedious parts. Every couple of minutes, 2-4 (depending on stage of the game) ladders will randomly appear scattered within your dungeon. If you don't destroy them, a group of heroes will come out of one of them roughly twenty seconds later. You can setup patrols to destroy the ladders, but you rarely bother, because if you do, the heroes will simply come in through the dungeon entrance and attack your base anyway. So you teleport your squads back and attack the ladders and then teleport them to the entrance to attack the heroes. Then you send your minions to feed, and teleport them back to where they were before you were attacked.

    Adventuring is wandering around a too-dark area doing simple quests with mediocre combat. It is the best part of the game, and you can't enjoy it because you have to stop and teleport your minions back every couple of minutes to deal with the heroes. Or feed your minions.

    Raiding. Basically, you switch to a world map with a couple dozen locations on the map. There are 3 different types, each gives a different resource, and sometimes quest specific locations as well. But all you do is right click on one and select a single squad to send. Your squad leaves the dungeon, and comes back a minute later and you get resources, and possibly lose units. That is it. The quest ones are basically the same, just with a quest update thrown in. There is no real interactivity. It adds a little something to the game, but nothing to write home about.

    Maintenance. Ugh. You have to send your minions to feed. Often. When you lose a unit, you have to go through a couple of screens to create a replacement, send him to training to level two, go to a squad menu, add him to a squad, purchase upgrades for each unit separately (basically armor/weapons lvl 1-3, no real customization) and then send the squad for feeding. You can have replacements on hand, but still have to do all the same micromanagement.

    The UI has issues and needs to be streamlined, and there is too much micromanagement. Like you can tell an imp to repair a building, and he will, then just sit there. You have to wait until the repair is complete to then manually request an Imp go to work in said building. The same with ladders. Unless you set squads on patrol mode (which you generally don't want as they will wander off) when you teleport a squad next to an invading ladder, you have to manually select the squad you just sent, and manually tell him to destroy the ladder he is basically standing on top of. When you have to destroy 4 ladders, it is teleport, select, target ladder, repeat. 4 times. Every couple of minutes.

    Beyond the tedium, there is no real tactical depth and combat is kinda boring. Squads (which consist of 4 units) get bonuses depending on unit composition and level, but only with 4 different units. So, for example, if one of your bonuses is extra healing and you replace a DPS unit with a second healer, you lose the healing bonus. Odd logic. So the game encourages you to throw together squads from random groups of units. And combat is basically swarming the enemy with all your squads. There is no strategic reason not to, as you can instantly teleport your squads to wherever you want them. (albeit one at a time, as the UI has no streamlining) There are also reports of a few bugs, though I have not personally encountered any. To be fair, the developers have been active on Steam forums and I suspect the bugs will actually be fixed rather quickly. They have also promised to address some of of the other game issues, like the UI and constant need to feed your minions. With a couple of patches, they could get the game to a 6-7 rating, which is respectable for a $20 game in a genre with few other options. But as of right now, playing the game is a chore.    … Full Review »
  2. Rugz
    Feb 17, 2013
    1
    A mix between Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, with none of the features that made them games classic.

    So many things need to be said about    A mix between Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, with none of the features that made them games classic.

    So many things need to be said about this game. Firstly, the core idea of the game and its humour are interesting, but really fail to entertain. Textures are fairly tacky, and the voice acting is fairly bad, but that isn't what makes this game awful. The core mechanics seem to defy the genre of the game. Room placement is static and unchangable, you only choose where to place them, which would still matter if enemy heroes came from set directions or were predictable in any way, or at very least, you'd need to create an efficient interlinking of rooms in order to have your minions perform well. This is not the case with Impire, units can be teleported anywhere at will (you rely on this pretty much 100% of the time) and to make matters worse, ladders spawn semi-randomly into your dungeon, which heroes use to get into your dungeon if not taken out. This renders any and all strategy in relation to base building completely pointless, given the heroes ability to get where-ever they like, and your ability to teleport. After removing the strategy and simulation aspect of any reasonable game of this kind, they feel it necessary to fill the game with nonsensical amounts of impractical micromanagement. The squad screen (the primary way you will group and control your units) is completely separate from your unit creation menu, so if your squad has suffered casualties, you must look at the squad menu, memorise what unit has died so that you can replace it, close that menu, change to the spawn menu, wait for the unit to spawn, then back to the squad menu and drag it into place. On the topic of the units, it is incredibly imbalanced. The scout for instance, relies on range to do average-high damage, but you'll find more often the enemy will run past your other units and kill him straight away. On top of that, he isn't created with the same type of resource most other units are created (mushrooms, which are generated via the mushroom room, a non-buildable room that produces mushrooms at a slow rate) which makes his death a useless waste of resource.

    The tutorial does not inform you of anything important, and is a drag to go through as you watch your workers do meaningless tasks until the game decides to move the tutorial on, and on top of that, the guardian at the end of the level is very difficult, and you are not told in any way how to defeat him. The controls of the squads make it extremely difficult to issue precise commands, often your units will just disregard them anyway. And finally to leave that bitter taste in your mouth, the game will crash often, with stages lasting a rather long time depending on whether or not you do the side quests (which seem to have no real reward) so you make it through an hour and a half of this tedious game only to have it crash on you and force you to start from the beginning. No thanks. Do not buy this    … Full Review »
  3. Zardoz998
    Feb 20, 2013
    3
    Complete rubbish. Nice graphics and voice acting, but that's all. Stupid campaign that's just a linear tutorial, no option to avoid it, noComplete rubbish. Nice graphics and voice acting, but that's all. Stupid campaign that's just a linear tutorial, no option to avoid it, no sandbox mode. Unless you're a complete moron you'll be bored silly within minutes. A cut-down version of Dungeon Keeper. Very buggy and crashes often. Stupid over-powered boss fights as a substitute for mission design.… Full Review »
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