Iron Harvest

A pretty decent start to Iron Harvest's RTS journey. Lacking some much needed additional content and the campaign could be better, but there's a solid foundation here.

Iron Harvest unfortunately cannot quite replicate the amazing combat system of its greatest inspiration, the legendary Company of Heroes. But if you like your strategies in real time, you’ll surely enjoy this glorious butchery of crazy armored mechs.

Iron Harvest delivers some fun tactical gameplay, some gorgeous visuals, and some real disappointment.

While the game is certainly not perfect, for the developers’ second attempt at an RTS, Iron Harvest has a lot of potential. Once the multiplayer, competitive, and co-op features are added, Iron Harvest is sure to become a staple of the RTS genre.

Iron Harvest offers a strong, story-driven campaign split into three interwoven parts. However, its core RTS mechanics leave something to be desired, and some common RTS features are lacking or missing.

While Iron Harvest is a fun game, it still has some kinks to work out. For those on the fence, wait for a few patches before checking it out.

Iron Harvest presents a fascinating alternate reality of which I’d like to see more. The war is intense, the maps are rather pretty, and the units are an escalating maelstrom of steel and steam from which delightfully concepted war machines come into play. The battles are intense and the deployment of armaments can make one feel giddy in the rush of it as bullets and shells fly and explode. That said, some unfortunate aspects distract from the experience. The game’s increasing technology tree makes cover-based tactics a questionable proposition, the slowness can make downtime between events seem just a bit too long, and multiplayer is a bit too limited. The game is not horribly marred by these drawbacks, but best bear Wojtek can only carry the spirit of Polania so far with the baggage weighing him down.

Iron Harvest isn’t perfect, but it is an engaging journey into a new world that’s fun to explore. The factions are crazy and their units even crazier, yet the threat of death still feels very real. It’s a shame some of the functionalities of playing let the game down, and its lack of tactical options do hold it back. However, I still found myself having a great time; its mechanics aren’t perfect, but its world is a joy to get lost in.

What we’re presented with throughout the campaign and as a whole though is as they say, rough around the edges. A scrappy mech with inconsistent and sometimes unpredictable movement. Perhaps the machine of choice for a squad of Polanian fighters looking to take back a village or two from the overwhelming size of the Rusviet army but not something you’d want for a full-scale invasion.

A long time ago, when RTS games reached their peak in popularity, this game wouldn't receive this much attention. But now, Iron Harvest has a chance to become one of the best strategies in years despite copying ideas without providing anything new. Well, maybe the setting is original, but it hasn't reached its potential either.

Iron Harvest is currently only an expensive early access version. The purchase must be made with the awareness that the single player campaign is the main game mode and that we will have to wait several months for a more refined and rewarding multiplayer experience.

While not quite hitting the heights of Company of Heroes or World in Conflict, Iron Harvest is one of the best RTS games to come out within the past few years, largely indebted to Jakub Rozalski's art and the lore already built upon by Scythe. Fans of the genre who are tired of replaying the classics should definitely consider stepping into the WWI-style mechs of Iron Harvest, though consumers who aren't already interested in RTS titles won't find any compelling reason to dive in to this one, either.

Iron Harvest’s incredible presentation and scrappy, dynamic battles can’t always save it from uneven mechanical depth and arbitrary-feeling limitations. A celebration of the some classic RTS, but not an evolution of it.

The strengths of Iron Harvest are its style and its imagery.

As found in many good RTS games, the potential for mastery of Iron Harvest's mechanics is immense, but it can also be plenty of fun to turn down the difficulty, crank up the starting resources, and watch the big robots fight. Against a high-difficulty AI with a wide array of units, players will need to be clever, quick, and good at micro-managing units, taking advantage of cover and unique abilities to turn the tide. For RTS or other strategy fans, the game is definitely worth checking out, but those who find themselves primarily interested in the setting and not the focused gameplay may want to wait for a sale.

With one foot in classical RTS storytelling and the other in squad-based tactical strategy, Iron Harvest offers a take on the genre that doesn’t quite live up to Jakub Różalski’s evocative artwork. While the developers have already laid out a roadmap of updates that could potentially tighten up many issues with unit behavior and balance, the opportunity for a better future may already have passed.

An enjoyable real-time strategy game held back by a lack of polish and content.

Iron Harvest has a unique setting with some original ideas, and borrows heavily from another RTS series. But rather than improve on those elements, it oversimplifies them, and lacks the content to justify its full asking price.

Iron Harvest seemed like a promising game, even to someone not really into RTS titles like myself. In some aspects, it does deliver. The story is surprisingly good, the design and usage of the mech units is top notch, and I personally appreciate the streamlining of base and resource management (the bane of my existence in most RTS games) to focus on combat. The act of performing combat and moving troops around, though – the core of the game – is weirdly uneven. Moving units is awkward, and the pathing issues the units have make what should be simple skirmishes often risky and sometimes infuriating. KING Art did state that they plan to watch for community feedback and continue updating the game. Perhaps all of the above issues will be fixed. However, as the game is right now at launch, Iron Harvest is rough. Promising, but rough.

Iron Harvest is a typical KING Art production, intriguing and appealing at first, but having spent some time with it, you notice the shoddy workmanship and a heap of technical problems.