Iron Tides Preview

Conquer the seas for blood and glory! This strategy game with RPG elements that rightfully succeeded on KickStarter. As brutal and merciless as the vikings on your crew, this Early Access game has a bright future.

Iron Tides Preview

Intro

Hi, my name is Ben and I'm a save scummer.  It all started with catching the legendaries in Pokemon.  It just felt so good to be able to fix any of my dumb mistakes.  Life is so wild and unpredictable, it's nice to be able to pretend for a second that my actions won't have permanent consequences.  I continued on doing it in games such as Mount and Blade and Xcom:  Enemy Unknown.  Especially in the latter, where the permadeath of a squad member could really cripple you for the rest of the game.  

So when I started playing the early access of Iron Tides by Crash Wave Games Inc., it threw me a bit the first time I lost a beloved viking to a pirate's blade and he was gone forever.  Oh this game may look like "Baby's First Strategy game" at first with it's colorful graphics and simple interface, Iron Tides is not for anyone who isn't willing or able to carefully plan a move.  It's absolutely merciless and I would heartily recommend it to any strategy fans out there.  I'd say as far as difficulty goes it's just a bit easier than XCOM.  I do have a few gripes, such as the character progression and how you're at the mercy of the random number generator even more so than normal, but I'm willing to overlook it for quite honestly everything else.

Iron Tides is currently available on Steam Early Access for $14.99.

Iron Tides Preview, The story is told a lot like a Dungeons and Dragons session in the best way.

Story

The backstory of the game is in that picture I put above:  In the Age of Heroes, there is the noble King Sigurd, who has survived a godly cataclysm.  He goes on a voyage and doesn't come back, so your crew has to brave hostile seas to find him.  Things are changing, and you have to find out how and why.  It's early access and the story is, as of now, unfinished, but I am legitimately excited to see what happens to the story later.  Does it have anything to do with the pirates having gunpowder in an age of vikings?  Perhaps the gods will visit their wrath upon me for occasionally killing one of Odin's boars when I was running low on food?  There are also lots of little side bits in ruins and shipwrecks that provide you with choices that help build the setting, such as leaving an offering to a sacred boar for glory or slaughtering it for food.  However, the story is a lot of "tell don't show."  If you want a huge, cinematic game with every expression plastered on the character's face, maybe look elsewhere.  All of the story is told in text, which doesn't bother me at all but I can see if it may turn someone off.

Iron Tides Preview, Geez it's either take some gold or possibly incur the wrath of Odin.  Hard choice.

Gameplay

I showed a friend this game and he said it reminded him of Fire Emblem, but seeing as I haven't played any Fire Emblem games my frame of reference is XCOM:  Enemy Unknown.  It's a turn-based strategy with elements of roguelikes and role-playing games.  Generally the interface was very easy to navigate and the whole game could easily be played with just a mouse.  

Quest selection

There are both main missions, which advance the story, and side missions, which you can use to grind out levels on a new party after your last one died.  The side missions are eternally rotating but they all play roughly the same.  You either have to explore so many of a thing or destroy so many of a thing.  They would be monotonous were it not for the variety of maps and how different each combat went.  Still, it is early access so I can't complain too much about the lack of content, I just hope they add more later.

Iron Tides Preview, And Corvus did die.  Oh, did he die.

The open sea

As you venture about in your longboat in the missions, you need to manage one very important resource:  stamina.  This is how long your crew can go between eating and getting combat ready (AKA sloshed on mead).  If you run out, your crew begins losing health and perhaps dying.  Yes, I do know this from experience.  Rest in peace, crew #2.  You're eating in Asgard now.  You are also the only moving thing on the map, everything else is static.  It would have been cool and terrifying if I were chased down by a hostile ship, but maybe that would have made the game too brutal.  

Iron Tides Preview, Also the scenery rises up a la Bastion.

Glorious battle!

The combat is where the brunt of the game lies.  Don't be fooled by the fact that you are commanding a squad of some of the most fearsome barbarians known to man, the turn based combat requires a lot of thought.  At the beginning of each combat you choose where to place your units on the map.  That is within certain deployment areas, but it does help you tactically lay things out.  However, you only have so many places to put troops, so if you have more than the number of spots, choose wisely.  I actually kind of like that, it keeps strategy in the mix and you can't just rush in with superior numbers and win with no casualties each and every time.  On top of that, your vikings all have three fury to use in a round, which is how you can plan their actions.  Maybe you'll have your berserker use his normal attack three times, or maybe you'll do your huge unblockable attack that's typically a one-shot kill once.  Be sure to plan each move carefully though, there are no undo options and there is permadeath.  Rest in peace crew #1, you died valiantly and I should have planned better.

Iron Tides Preview, FOR THE GLORY OF THOR!

Home sweet home

Between missions you do things in the town of Norhaven.  There you can use your hacksilver to get supplies for your journey at the merchant, use your glory to get more crew at the great hall, or use both glory and hacksilver to get permanent upgrades to your ship and crew at the shipwright.  That last one is my favorite because it means that even if your crew has entirely died you aren't completely out of luck, they are still better than before.  The vikings in the great hall do all go up to higher levels as you progress through the story, but not by very much.  This does lead to a bit of grind, which I will get into in the next section.  It's a small problem, but it is a problem nonetheless.

Iron Tides Preview, You can never have enough permanent damage output!

A captain is nothing without their crew

As of now there are four different classes:  the vanguard, the valkyrie, the hunter, and the berserker.  However, each one can fit different niches.  Each character is randomly generated, so, for example, while one valkyrie can be a deadly flanker, another can double as a healer.  A vanguard could deal a lot of damage or they could be an unstoppable tank.  However, the problem I have is that you really have no control over the crew.  You had better buy your random number generator a drink or two, because if it isn't your friend you'll be stuck with a mismatched character that has a bunch of abilities that heal but skills that boost their chances of critical hits.  Each character only progresses one way, so you don't really get to choose how you build them.  You can get your crew at the hall in Norhaven, or you can also find them locked up in dungeons around the missions so after the hall has run dry, you can still fully restock.  Still, they aren't as strong as any units you've been training a while.  Because of that, you will need to grind a bit after losing an entire party, so let that grind be your motivation to make better tactical decisions.

Iron Tides Preview, If my party dies I am so screwed.

graphics and audio

The graphics are fine.  Nothing to write home about, but all of the character designs worked (though the berserkers look a bit like Mr. T.  Not a complaint, just a note.), the color palate works well, and I would describe that aesthetically it works fine.  No problems, but nothing to write home about.  

The audio of the game is wonderful.  I don't just mean with the music, which is cool for the pirate levels and epic for the mercenary levels.  Seriously, in the mercenary levels the music just sounded like a pounding war drum that absolutely worked with the viking theme.  The sound effects were awesome.  I loved the satisfying *thwack* after the berserker's thrown axe landed on an enemy, the sickening *thud* of my archers' arrows hitting their mark, and the relieving *swoosh* as my valkyries would dodge out of the way of an enemy blade.  Not all of them were perfect, but none were bad and the ones that were great were really great.

Conclusion

All in all, I really enjoyed what I got to play of Iron Tides.  It really did surprise me how unforgiving it was, but after I got over the initial surprise I found the whole experience very rewarding when I finally went to the mercenary captain's fortress and cut them down like ripe wheat.  Though the random number generator was in charge more than I would have liked and there was a bit of a grind, I am going to go right back to Iron Tides whenever I see the file being updated on Steam.  For it's price, Iron Tides is a fun slightly hardcore strategy game.  

Is there room for improvement?  Of course.  However, it is Early Access so that's normal, and I was impressed with what they did.  I had three parties, but the frustration was fleeting compared to the accomplishment I felt when I smashed Knight Master Corvus into the dirt.  I know I'm craving more of the game, and if you're a fan of strategy I think you'll be craving more too.

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