Developer: Arcen Games
Publisher: Arcen Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
AI War 2 – Preview
Space strategic sims come in many shapes and sizes. Games like Homeworld Deserts of Kharak with its classic RTS style gameplay, to 4X grand strategies like Thea, and, for today’s article: AI War 2. Early access always gives the opportunity to let players share their opinion on a title. Any new gameplay elements included in the game, general balance when it comes to the weapons and boosts, and to let their voices be heard regarding the story if one is present. Processes like this can make great games if the devs really want to listen to their community, which luckily seems to be the case here. The Steam news feed for this title is filled with updates and good communication from the devs to the community, and updates get rolled out twice a month.
AI War 2 is the sequel to the niche hit AI War. With some more time behind them, the devs have a great opportunity to innovate, change, and scrap elements that did not work in the first title. The story remains largely unchanged, but why fix what isn’t broken, right? The humans have still lost the fight against strong artificial intelligence, and it is up to the small band of surviving humans to push back and fight the AI. Most, if not all of the major gameplay elements are back from its predecessor, which was extremely well received as we mentioned earlier. Keeping major elements that worked will hopefully give the team the time to come up with a couple of new elements for the game that could really give the prior game a run for its money.
Relaxing with this game is hard sometimes. You need to really think about what you are doing when you send your scouts to enemy controlled systems, as they will notice you and start attacking, but if you’re fast enough you can send scouts to empty systems where they can remain cloaked giving you the upper hand on the enemy AI in the information department. And you’re going to need it, because the enemy can be ruthless, even with only the two resources to look out for. Having only the population cap to worry about, and energy to slowly ramp up, you need to have good control over your units without making it too difficult to get resources, as we found in other games from older times such as age of empires.
And speaking of old games: With a game that is now almost a decade old, improvements usually come along with the new games. Looking at the graphics makes this the most notable. A new interface, and old ships in a new coating do make this really feel like a new game. The colors of the units have gone down a little, but that is no problem as you don’t really see it because you’re too zoomed out anyway. The planets still look vivid and colorful, and the icons are still individually distinguishable from each other, not impacting your performance when you’re fighting a war with an enemy AI and need quick access to your units or buildings. And what a war you’ll be fighting, going from the tutorial to an actual game feels a little daunting at first, going from only 3 planets immediately to a couple dozen and from one enemy faction to a handful. AI War 2 can really fill a niche for strategy games longer than half an hour, but shorter than a week like games of Total War or Civ can last. However the amount of options you have, building your own games is as expansive as some of the games we mentioned in this article.
Conclusion
AI War 2 has all the pieces in place to come up with a cool innovation in the grand 4X genre. Despite solid base in its big brother AI War, and the fan backing to do something great, we do understand that that idea does still have to strike, and we really hope it does for Arcen Games. Even if it is an experimental system they want to implement, we hope we’ll get -something- that builds from its base to make the game a little interesting. The way the growth of the game seems to take, it does give us hope for the future, and even if that doesn’t come, the graphical and systems updates do already make the game worth it over AI war. we just hope to see the small four man team take the concept and really run with it, and we certainly hope that the title will see even more success than its namesake.
AI War 2 - Preview,
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