Game Reviews

Autumn Dynasty Warlords

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Autumn Dynasty Warlords

Despite the fact that its scope is wider than Autumn Dynasty's, Autumn Dynasty Warlords feels more like a mobile game. It gives you a map to conquer in any way you see fit, but it cuts your dynastic destiny into easily nibbled chunks.

You can hack at it for hours still, wrapping yourself in its menus and micro-management, but you're never more than a handful of minutes away from a checkpoint, and the battles you fight are cut up into manageable chunks of troop movement, walkovers, and sharp strikes of violence.

Time for action

You begin the game with one chunk of territory, a bunch of troops, and a lieutenant. This horse-bound character completes missions for you, settling the minds of your populace, and spreading the seeds of dissent in neighbouring territories.

Building new fortifications for your provincial capital, training up your troops, and staging invasions are all part and parcel of your month to month existence in feudal China.

Once you've completed a mission, exhausted all of your troops, and set some building and training projects, you tap a button to end the turn and start all over again.

New months bring new events and opportunities. You might have to find a spy in one of your cities, or collect taxes from grumpy farmers.

Wrapped around this sim is the paintbrush-dabbing violence that fans of the first game will remember fondly. It's still as slick as it ever was, and managing your units through a battle is a real pleasure.

You can add decrees to help your troops in battle by granting specific boosts, and one of your officers will accompany them too, adding its own skills and expertise.

If you paint it, they will charge

Autumn Dynasty Warlords answers a lot of the problems of the first game, expanding and contracting at the same time to create a massive RTS that doesn't feel daunting unless you let it.

This is a game that always gives you something to do, from upping the morale of downhearted villagers to sneaking into a foe's stronghold to steal some gold.

Occasionally it can feel like the game's taking care of some interesting stuff behind the scenes without much input from you, but all in all Autumn Dynasty Warlords is a worthy, wider sequel.

Autumn Dynasty Warlords

A deep 4X RTS that's always giving you more to do, Autumn Dynasty Warlords is a fine addition to the series
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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.