...and there I finished the main campaign. Whew, my fingers hurt after this marathon session and it's hard not to feel a bit overwhelmed and exhausted. Despite its relatively small maps, just keeping up with the game's relentless pace is constantly a challenge (building bases and fighting enemies at the same time is not easy, especially not if you're not accustomed to using hotkeys in order to save a few precious seconds). I found the first five missions to be very tough and expected things to get even more insane after that, but the difficulty thankfully seemed to decrease temporarily just long enough that I could catch my breath before the three last missions (which were appropriately intense).
My overall assessment of Battle of the Sands is that this a neat little RTS which may look old-fashioned but actually feels very modern in the way it pushes back against unnecessarily convoluted mechanics, focuses the challenge on a few core concepts and ramps up the pace compared with traditional realtime strategy games. Whereas Knights of the Chalice was primarily a nice throwback to earlier design approaches in its genre, BotS comes off as more structurally bold and experimental. It may not exactly be the kind of game a lot of us want and expect from Heroic Fantasy Games, but nimble strategy players and fans of puzzle games alike should find much to like here. Oh, and it goes without saying that anyone who played a lot of Dune 2, Dune 2000 or even Emperor: Battle for Dune back in the day will appreciate BotS for its nostalgic pleasures as well...
Well done! You finished Red Army with around 30 seconds left. Thanks for posting the videos. It's fun to watch. I'm also planning to post a set of videos.
There are some cool additional challenges in the stand-alone maps. Also, try to beat the map 'Survive' without attacking the AI early. I've found that it becomes very, very difficult.
Thank you for the review too!
'Say there is a chunk of meat. Pirates will have a banquet and eat it! But heroes will share it with other people. I want all the meat!!' - Luffy in One Piece
Cool! Well done and welcome to the forums, Prismatic Maelstrom!
'Say there is a chunk of meat. Pirates will have a banquet and eat it! But heroes will share it with other people. I want all the meat!!' - Luffy in One Piece