Doug

Doug

Doug

I also found that building your economy is critical to winning the game. I started placing three economy structures every time I conquered an Orion, and in every turn after that until I had built a substantial economy.

Another mistake I made was focusing too much on one when element. You should try to build your structures on several different elements. In several games, I focused on one element at a time, only to find that when I went into battle, heavily fortified in that element, I was quickly and soundly defeated. It is important to go into battle with a well rounded deck, so that you can play cards from different elements.

Doug

BTW, another tip: Without mass-producing additional cards, it’s almost impossible to beat the game in normal / hard levels, unlike in the easy level, where you don’t need at all to produce additional cards at all in order to win the game. It’s also very important that you try to allocate as many Power points as possible - having as many cards as possible is, IMHO, much more important in winning a game than the two other factors. For example, as can also be seen in my screenshots, my final stats was 9/8/11/17; that is, I’ve put extreme emphasis on the Power stat (and also actively used all the resulting 40 cards).

While I do not disagree with anything you said, I really did not feel the enemy advanced the game at all. I played over 200 game days while testing this game. In that time, the enemy typically would carve out a small area for itself and rarely strayed from that territory or became a significant threat to my territories.

In the theory of the game, everything you indicated is true, however, in practice, I never experienced the enemy taking any such aggressive moves.

That is why I said that the enemy did not significantly advance the game. I never felt that the enemy was significantly involved in the game. Perhaps if the enemy took additional actions such as developing his own economy and building structures, then I could understand his presence better (which also goes back to my suggestion about capturing structures when you conquer an Orion).

Doug

Furthermore, there’s a very nice way of completing the game. In Normal / Hard levels, it’s highly possible the enemy has much lower stats than the neutral orions (or the orions conquered by the enemy). While it may be next to impossible to beat thee orions when the enemy’s balloon isn’t in there, if you attack these orions when the enemy’s balloon is just there, the game will default to the enemy’s (much lower) stats, and not those of the current Orion. This way, it’s much easier to conquer a given Orion. You just have to wait until his balloon arrives at the Orion you’d like to conquer.

This trick really helps in conquering orions that otherwise couldn’t be conquered because of the huge difference in the stats of the player and the conquered Orion.

I still feel, however, that unless there is a plan to add two player campaign mode, that having the enemy in this mode really did not seem to advance gameplay at all.

Doug

If you defeat the enemy before you conquer all orions, you can end the game (and receive the trophy as can be seen at http://www.winmobiletech.com/kuvat/OrionsUnlockedItem.jpg ). Then, the game will display a yes/no question about continuing as can be seen at http://www.winmobiletech.com/kuvat/OrionsDefeatEnemyLord.jpg . You can safely answer No in this case.

Great in-depth review, I think one need to play the game in order to get a good feeling of how it actually works and how gameplay is, but your review didn’t leave any other questions!
As not being very interested in econimic aspects of a game I agree that being able to turn off that aspect would be great, and even make it ‘three games in one’.
It’s not really the kind of game that I’d play, but when you think of it as 2 games in one, with various ways to play it (good/evil, easy/difficult, small/large map) it could be very well worth the money.