Developer: Tower Five
Publisher: Tower Five, Microïds
Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, PC, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: PS5
Lornsword Winter Chronicle (PS5) – Review
Building bases and staging big fights against your opponents has always been loads of fun in strategy games, but in most of them, you were just the one controlling everything behind the scenes. In Lornsword Winter Chronicle, you’ll actually be joining the battle as well! The game was first released in 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, but now, it’s time for the game to shine on the next-gen consoles as well.
Story
In Lornsword Winter Chronicle, you’ll be playing as Corun Lan Ka, a simple warrior guarding a blockade. The first part of the story shows Corun leaving his guard duty by getting a promotion to become captain, and he will have to lead some mercenaries into battle. As he shows his talents on the battlefield, his rank increases further and further, but sadly, war makes people crazy and Corun soon finds himself part of a ritual. Due to the ritual, he becomes an immortal-like being and climbs up to the rank of general of the Lorn Empire. Eventually, you’ll find yourself moving to Olgorac where your family is kept safe, while you’ll be taking on missions to win the war for the Lorn Empire. The story progresses as you complete missions, and you’ll learn more about the world, your enemies, and their motives. Lornsword Winter Chronicle has quite an interesting story that will certainly keep you entertained until the end.
Graphics
Lornsword Winter Chronicle is played from a top-down view which makes everything look pretty simple from a distance, but when you look closely, there’s a huge amount of detail that you’ll easily miss from a distance. Each faction has its own unique style that is represented in both its structures and units. You’ll be fighting in different environments which all look great. You’ll also see some harmless wildlife roaming around that perfectly fits the region. All characters are portrayed in a unique non-animated mosaic-anime art style that sometimes makes you look at someone twice before you really understand what you’re seeing. The game has one minor issue when teaming up with an ally of the same faction, as it can be hard to distinguish your own units from your ally’s as they have the same color palette. Of course, a good general should know where his army is.
Sound
The sound in this game is done very well. The game’s story is fully voiced, and the voice acting is done very well. The music fits the genre perfectly with war horns, drums, and more. The music also perfectly intensifies as battles are fought and get tenser. You’ll hear soldiers crying out when in battle, and the destruction of buildings sounds very satisfying.
Gameplay
Lornsword Winter Chronicle is a story-driven action strategy game where you take the role of Corun Lan Ka, a warrior in service of the Lorn Empire. As a general of the Lorn Empire, you’ll lead your army in many battles with strategic combat similar to other RTS games, but this game does it a bit differently. Aside of building and managing your army as the general, you’ll also be moving around and battling alongside your soldiers to lead them to victory.
The first sequence functions as a tutorial and teaches you the basic controls of the game. While you go through this tutorial, you’ll learn to Blink, which allows you to skip short distances, use a teleport ability that sends you back to base, and summon elemental allies to temporarily gain an advantage while attacking or defending. Aside from his magical powers, Corun can deal a good amount of damage with his trusty Lornsword. The controls are quite easy to master and do feel like they’re intended to play with a controller. The game also features a drop-in co-op mode which lets someone join your game without interruption with one press of a button. The screen will be split in two, and resources will be shared. It proved to be very fun to play with a friend, and slightly easier because of the extra helping hand.
There are two resources in this game: money, and food. Money is used for building structures and purchasing upgrades, while food represents your maximum building capacity. On each battlefield, there are farms and mines you can take over. Mines produce money over time and farms provide extra food, which means you can build more structures. You can also upgrade your farms and mines to produce a small quantity of the other resource to make them multifunctional. Keep them well protected for maximum profit.
Your army is generated by keeps, camps, and temples. These structures create melee, ranged, and magic units, each having its own strengths and weaknesses. Each building has a flag that represents the way your troops will act when they are spawned. A red flag sets the building to create groups of five called ‘hands’ that will start following the closest path when a hand is complete. A black flag will hold the units in place to guard and attack all incoming threats. Removing the flag entirely will cause each unit to start following the nearest path when they come out of the building, causing a constant flow of warriors marching to the enemy. Besides the unit-generating structures, you can also build guard towers that will defend your base. It’s up to you to divide your food over these different structures.
When there are units standing at their structures or when they roam around, you can recruit them to your group to fight alongside you. When units are moving, they will walk rather slowly, but when they follow you and you start to run, they will follow at the same speed. When you gather a group of units and release them from your command just a little outside of your camp, they will follow the nearest route to the enemy and start following it at their own pace. While they’re on their way, you can gather new units and run to this group to add to their numbers. When you have multiple buildings generating units, you can quickly form a huge army that can easily wipe out the enemy.
Depending on the situation in each mission, you’ll have some upgrades available for each type of building. These upgrades can make buildings produce stronger units, give units better equipment, increase the speed warriors are spawned, and more. It’s up to you to choose whether you want to upgrade your existing buildings or build more structures first because money is produced over time.
At the start of each mission, your resources are scarce, and you need to build up wealth to be able to build structures and upgrade them. This means you may seem to be losing at first, but when you manage to buy some upgrades, the course of battle can change. Even a slightly different approach can tip over the favor in battle. In other missions, however, time is of the essence, and you need to act as quickly as you can. It all depends on the kind of mission you’re doing and the diversity in missions keeps boredom at bay.
Conclusion
Lornsword Winter Chronicle is a remarkably interesting strategy game that combines strategically building your base and army, while also joining your troops in battle. Your presence will mean the difference in many battles with Corun’s sword skills and magic abilities. Lornsword Winter Chronicle is a fantastic addition to the roster of strategy games, and is sure to entertain many people, including those new to the genre. This game tends to keep you playing for hours on end, without you even noticing, because it keeps challenging you. If you’re into strategy games or haven’t even played a strategy game before, this is a great game with a well-written story and solid gameplay that will keep you entertained for a long time.
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