Developer: Global Dodo Entertainment D.O.O.
Publisher: Wiregames D.O.O.
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Primordials of Amyrion – Preview
MOBA games have been quite popular since Dota came to life. Originally a mod for Warcraft III, later a standalone game in the form of Dota 2, games such as this became very popular. Sadly for Dota, it was League of Legends that decided to make a standalone game first, stealing some of the aforementioned title’s thunder. Later, games such as SMITE also spawned on the internet in a multi-platform fashion, building further upon the tried-and-true formula of the titans in the MOBA genre. This time we take a (short) look at Primordials of Amyrion, a similar title that focuses more on macro-management, rather than individual control of single champions, heroes or gods. The game is played in a 1 vs 1 format, and we were quite curious to see what this new title would bring to the (oversaturated) genre.
We’ll first mention that this game is very much in Early Access at the moment, which is noticeable when watching the dodgy character animations, the weird corpse pop-ups, shoddy building quality, and overall ‘wooden’ feeling of everything. If properly ironed out, this game can look quite pretty and decent, but at the moment, it feels like we went back around 15 years with the presentation of Primordials of Amyrion.
There is a bit of lore and information to be read on the official website, but the barebones construction of the actual game presents you with absolutely nothing. It’s somewhat the principle of looking up the information yourself if you actually want to dive deeper into the game’s fantasy setting.
We were lucky enough to receive multiple copies of the game, allowing us to play against different people. The actual gameplay was somewhat disappointing. Sure you can make combinations, different troop deployments, but more than often you’re just watching your screen, occasionally pressing a few buttons, and that’s about it. This is currently a very boring experience and the tutorial doesn’t cover anything to actually teach you how the game works. There are many different combinations to try out, but in its current shape and form, the game doesn’t really motivate you to come back after a few matches.
The game offers different ways of victory, namely you just destroying your opponent or an ‘influence victory’. We received the latter quite a few times, and this doesn’t really make any sense. The influence victory can be gained by destroying a lot of your enemy’s troops, by choosing certain characters that spread more influence. This is basically a good strategy for those who want to drag out the fight, spread influence because of influence-boosting characters/troops, and win in a dickish kind of way. The game never explains how this works or why this actually happens. This is quite a stupid addition to the gameplay, as it adds zero value to the actual experience. It’s quite strange to win a match, with no towers left, while not even scratching the surface of your opponent’s towers.
Conclusion
While Primordials of Amyrion gets a few basic principles right, at the moment is a bit of a mess, in terms of how the game works, how it looks, and how it plays. At this point in time, we cannot deem this a pleasurable experience, and while tactics are important, it’s basically a principle of rock-paper-scissors, depending on what combo your opponent picks. Sure, you can learn a lot by heart on what counters what, but even that will take many sessions, with a nearly non-existing player base. Could be good in the future, a bit of a clusterfuck right now.
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