Re-Legion – Review
Follow Genre: Real-Time Strategy, Action
Developer: Ice Code Games
Publisher: 1C Entertainment
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Re-Legion – Review

Site Score
6.6
Good: Great concept, Cool setting, Good soundtrack
Bad: Units are very hard to manage, AI is not very intelligent
User Score
8.0
(3 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 8.0/10 (3 votes cast)

Re-Legion has you playing the leader of a cult in a beautiful cyberpunk cityscape. You try to give the lives of the downtrodden grey masses some meaning, by introducing them to religion and free them from the oppression of the big corporations. However, fighting against the corporate armies and other violent cults will cost a great many lives. Re-Legion is an RTS-game where you can convert citizens to gain units. This game has been developed by Ice Code Games, and was published by 1C Entertainment.

Story

In this game you’ll play the story of a prophet, determined to fight against the mind-controlling reign of the corporations, and to give meaning to the lives of the citizens again. This man named Elion wasn’t always a prophet, but his vision and charisma led him to adapt to this role, together with the encouragement of his friends. This prophet which you play leads a successful rebellion against the militant corporations, but at what cost..?

The story is being told though cutscenes and conversation during the missions. The story fits well into the setting, and there are many moral problems which will be addressed. Because, yes.. starting a cult with devoted followers who give their lives for the cause, can be kind of questionable. However, nobody really seems to question what you do, except for yourself. It would be nice if there was a bit more depth to the moral conflict, with the important NPCs taking different stances. The concept of the game is brilliant, though, and the cyberpunk setting is perfect for it!

Graphics

The graphics are fitting to the cyberpunk setting: generally dark cityscapes, with lots of neon lighting. You have a top-down view of the area you’ll be exploring, and you can turn the camera around the scene, and zoom in. The models of the people aren’t very detailed, but everything around you looks absolutely beautiful! The city is very well designed, with lots of beautiful objects and nice details. However, it’d be better if the gender of the units wasn’t solely determined by specialization (very cliché: healers are women, melee units are men).

The UI is clean and insightful. You always have a mini-map in view, where you can see all your units move around. You’ll be able to zoom in on the map if you move your cursor towards it. Your objectives and resources are clearly visible at the top of the screen. At the bottom right you’ll be able to see your army of followers, each type of follower represented by a separate icon. Selecting a type of follower will show their skills.

Sound

The soundtrack is dark electronic music, fitting to the cyberpunk atmosphere. The game is completely narrated, during the cutscenes, but also during conversations in the game. The units all have voiced lines as well, each type of unit has unique lines, and some have quite funny ones.

Gameplay

Re-Legion is a real-time strategy game in a cyberpunk setting. You’ll need to convert people to gain new units, and teach them to be effective soldiers for your cause. The protagonist and a few other NPCs are the strongest units of your army, but the game will be over as soon as one of your friends dies. If the protagonist himself dies, you can be resurrected at your home base.

You’ll need to make many choices to determine the direction you’d like to go with your religion, and your followers. There will be many tough moral decisions to make, all for the greater good. Your religion takes shape by choosing dogmas, which are basically upgrades for all your followers. You can purchase these dogmas with the faith you’ve gathered. Your decisions will affect which abilities are available for your units.

To gain resources and to get more followers, you’ll need to capture buildings within the city. Your main resources are money (credits), faith, and the number of followers you can have. You’ll gain money by hacking crypto-banks: you’ll need to place several hackers to farm the building and keep it under your control. You can gain faith by capturing temples, where you’ll need to place your own worshipers. You’ll be able to increase your maximum number of followers by converting city quadrants, which you do by capturing the central statue in that quadrant. However, you can lose all these structures as well, if you don’t station units there to protect it. Capturing different buildings like gun shops will make more unit upgrades and specializations available.

Faith is important to keep your units fighting for your cause. If your units are low in faith, they are easily converted by the enemy, even in mid-combat. The opposite is also true: you’ll be able to convert enemy units in combat, and recruit them to your legion. Once recruited, a unit can be upgraded to a certain specialization. Upgrading costs money (credits), and just a little bit of time. Once specialized, you can also buy special abilities for your troops. You’ll have access to melee troops, ranged units, healers, stealthy assassins, and preachers who can convert other citizens.

The game features only a single player campaign, so far, with nine missions. The first missions are pretty easy to complete, but the later missions will be considerably harder. You’ll need to keep an eye on many places on the map at all times: be sure to replenish your forces as you will lose a lot in combat, train them and send them to the right locations, protect your home base, and several other objectives scattered around on the map. It’s necessary to save often, because you can lose in instant if one of the important storyline NPCs gets shot down in combat.

You don’t have to do all the converting yourself: you can send out preachers to convince the populace to follow your cause. Or even better: post preachers next to a subway exit, where new people seem to amass and wait around. Newly converted citizens will transform into an unspecialized unit, which you can later train as a certain class. When they are converted, the units will automatically gather at your home base. They will walk there by themselves, and if you keep an eye on them, you’ll quickly notice they do so one by one, while walking in a line… and are effortlessly shot down by more powerful enemy units. It’s pretty handy that your units gather at home base, but keeping an eye on them at all times when they are walking towards it, gets quite bothersome. Unit pathfinding in general isn’t brilliant, and you’ll notice units getting stuck every now and then. The solution is to direct them more closely, and only let them walk short distances at once. However, this does mean even more micro management of units, and clicking all over the map to keep an eye on everything. Making things worse, units didn’t always seem to fulfill what you intended them to do, like attacking: sometimes they just seemed to ignore the enemy, while they were shooting at your followers. The game also seemed to use a fair bit of RAM, so combat got pretty choppy at times.

Conclusion

The concept of Re-Legion is absolutely awesome, because converting citizens for a cult, instead of just ‘building’ them for an army, is really cool. The cyberpunk setting fits brilliantly with this concept as well, and the story behind it completes the whole premise. However, storytelling does fall a bit short as it could have had a lot more depth when multiple characters would question your motives and try to influence you. The music is cool and fits the setting well. The graphics of the city you navigate through look great and are fitting for the cyberpunk theme. However, the units themselves don’t look very detailed, but this is most likely to boost performance. The worst part of the game is that the units are very hard to manage, and that the AI isn’t the best. If this is fixed in a future patch, and possibly even a multiplayer mode is added, this game could become very popular.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 8.0/10 (3 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
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Re-Legion - Review, 8.0 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Anmaja


I'm a LARP writer, freelance teacher and everlasting PhD student, and an avid gamer. Nowadays I game mostly on PC, but I love my retro playstation 1 & 2 as well :) I like watching anime, movies and series, and read books & comics whenever I have time!

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