Sacred Fire: A Role Playing Game
Where to start?
I do not write many recommendations (almost never), but this game deserves one.
Please ignore all and any negative rating, because this is a game in it’s early days.
ABOUT THE GAME:
This game is one of a kind. As a gamer that focus on RPG genre I would say this is an untold gem.
The creator of the game created a wonderful world, with an exciting story line, interesting characters, and what most amazing are the real world and life choices you have to make.
Unlike other games which focus on loot, leveling up, etc.. THIS game focus on the spirituality and morality of one’s very soul. You are faced with choices that sometimes leave you breathless as there is no good choice. Other times, you will make a choice and the way things unfold will surprise you in disbelief.
– Real player with 59.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Narrative Games.
TL;DR - Clunky UI and Easily manipulated dialog/combat check system. Too many statistics that have no discernible impact on game-play. Good story telling and choices actually matter.
So far I’ve played this game a bit, I’ve gotten through the content for the first act relatively quickly. Take your time with the choices you make and think carefully about them as they WILL affect the rest of your play-through. Some choices completely change what story elements you see and will entirely remove various story branches. You character does not have plot armor, you can and will die if you make stupid choices.
– Real player with 6.7 hrs in game
Operation: VICUS
There is only you, the chosen one who rules over the village. You have to find out what the strange notes are about, where do they come from and what do they want to tell you? Besides, with your actions you will strengthen or weaken your relationship with your inhabitants. Make tough decisions that will haunt you longer than you might think. Expand your village to accommodate more inhabitants and explore new things in the laboratory, be it weapons, buildings and much more. However, you’ll have to stay alert, because you’ll be haunted by insidious beasts that would love to destroy your village. So you must train your troops and lead them into battle!
Build your village
With the help of your mines, the ores extracted from there will be processed by your blacksmith and in combination with the wood of the forester, great things can be built, such as new habitable houses, attractions for the inhabitants or yet barracks and defensive guns. With the help of your laboratory you can improve your buildings and make them more robust or you can have new, better buildings researched, which you can then use in your village!
Satisfaction
If you want to work your way forward, it is of great importance to take care of your villagers. You need to monitor their happiness, either the overall happiness of your village or the happiness of the individual citizens. If the villagers are in a bad mood, you need to get to the bottom of it and, if necessary, fix the problems that cause it using the Satisfaction menu or the information provided by the individual citizens. But if you neglect their feelings, you have to expect deterioration in your production and further problems!
Day management
The daily schedule of the villagers is determined by you alone. You can determine the schedule of each citizen: You can make them work longer hours to boost your production, give them more free time or alternatively let them decide what they want to do. However, you must never forget that your actions affect the mood of each citizen, and their moods add up to determine the satisfaction level of your village. So make sure that the inhabitants have nothing to complain about!
Low Poly Artstyle
Dive into the world of the unique Low Poly Artstyle and experience relaxed atmospheres in the morning or mysterious mood in the evening. The interplay between the cartoon-like animations and the beautiful low poly look creates beautiful moments. The music, reminiscent of No Mans Sky in places, creates a great ambience with its style that always fits the situation.
Combat and defense
Upgrade your town with barracks and guns to defend against the invaders! Upgrade your barracks to get better and stronger troops. Decide which strategy you want to follow, fight with weaker but more troops or less but stronger? And better to finish everything in close combat or to finish the enemy from a distance? Or both? You decide and lead your warriors into battle and decide still in battle which targets your troops should attack and how many of your soldiers should pursue this target!
Story
Find out what the strange notes are all about! Make tough decisions and try to understand what this village is all about!
Read More: Best Historical Building Games.
NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén
I love the game. It is very refreshing to find a game in a new world and based on a new-old mythology and set up. This is not a medieval fantasy or your generic story. This is about real events, with some changes in order to improve gameplay and storytelling but in such a way that is interesting. Of course, because it is in early access it has a lot to improve and tweak but I recommend to give it a chance and help the developer to develop…
Now, gameplay wise you have a party and you need to explore the (huge) map to finish missions. There are towns with markets where buy supplies and hire party members. At least for now and for me, the game can be hard. But there is a lot to learn that scratch that final part.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Open World Games.
I’ll update my review as needed, but so far…
The game has huge potential. There are a few bugs, but it just released in early access, so give it a minute. Other than the bugs, I really like some of the game concepts.
The map is pretty big. I’m in day 35 or so and have only explored maybe 1/3 of it. Combat can be optimized, but it’s still pretty rewarding to watch 40 dudes just melt to your warband.
Excited to see what the coming months bring.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Aenaon
Very nice game, a bit small but this is not a problem since lots of updates are coming. I do recommend it, it is great for VR and very well made. Looking forward for more.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Hammerheart
Great start to an early access game! The combat is fluid and exciting, and your tactical decisions make all the difference. I especially appreciate the research and effort into providing a historically accurate experience, all around (finally, Vikings done right!). The devs are very responsive to feedback, and have already implemented a couple of suggestions I had. The amount of content is pretty meager at the moment, but that is expected as the game is still very early in development, AFAIK.
– Real player with 95.4 hrs in game
Quality game. Developer has clearly paid a lot of attention and passion to it. A good thing to support, a developer who has put in a lot of time and effort into bringing about something like this. It is about as historically accurate as it can be, and the developer, Bennett, is reaching out to reenactors out in Europe for advice over the era. He seems rather knowledgeable on the subject, and I highly recommend that this game be purchased.
As it is still in development, I would like to include that it also has more room to grow even better. Will update this as the game updates.
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation
I like the use of a strategy game as a complex social metaphor that this presents. Even though I couldn’t complete any game of it due to crashes, trying to fathom the mind of the author was worth the price of admission.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Rectifying Zion
Rectifying Zion is based on historical events from around 450BC, Israel. In a time when the city of Jerusalem was being rebuilt and its people were returning after a period of exile.
As player you will be faced with moral challenges and need to make choices that will ultimately direct the outcome of the game as you try to rebuild the city.
Rectifying Zion is an open world role playing game that allows the player to roam around a large open world based on Israel, including Jerusalem and the temple, as well as other smaller cities, villages and farms.
Blocks!: Hammer of the Scots
Looks great. Could be great .
However there are a some serious bugs that make the game not really playable. At least , not faithful to the board game.
The card that makes a noble switch sides , should be decided on a die roll. I have seen that card come up four times, and it was successful each time. Could happen, but there is no dice rolled in the graphics makes me thing otherwise.
The main attack force and the reserves is the biggest problem, that is just chosen randomly by the computer.
Naval movement only allowed me to move one unit. And then asked me if i was sure , when i pressed NEXT. So the game at some level know i was allowed to move anther unit , but would not let me.
– Real player with 64.3 hrs in game
The game requires some serious polish.
Besides a weak AI (more or less acceptable), coding is sometimes faulty.
The game hangs randomly due a fatal bug during wintering phase that turns it totally unplayable with either Scots or Brits. From time to time the cards drawing enters in a wierd loop.
Also noticed that picking destinations at the end of the turn are some times ignored, like Wallace unable to move to the forest, or nobles unable to pick specific castle.
There are some other improvable usability annoyances.
– Real player with 55.3 hrs in game
Ancient Worlds: Egypt
This is a well done game like the old Pharaoh and Zeus type games. It is still being worked on but fun to play and mess around with!
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Looks like a nice easy to learn game. Thought it might be a smoother version of those ‘Impressions’ games. But it’s not. !!
The tutorial is impossible. You need to prevent disease spread with an apothecary……..But it’s missing !!…So all your buildings collapse every minute. You rebuild them and they collapse again… Totally ridiculous.
A HUGE thumbs down from me. Waste of money.
If it gets fixed i may review again. For now….Avoid at all costs.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Battle Grounds III
This might be particularly long but… Who cares.
Cons:
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Poor graphics by today’s standards
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Mic spam (sometimes)
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Physics aren’t amazing
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Community can be cancerous - like most online games to be fair.
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Servers aren’t so populated (they are populated currently due to its Steam release but I can’t see it staying like this -
would like to be proven wrong in some aspects
Pros:
- Community can be fantastic - events such as sieges, line battles and clan/regiment matches can be great when organised properly
– Real player with 1122.5 hrs in game
I spawned in the game, everyone i see in front of me is wearing redcoat uniforms, this must be the British army, they all proceed to make a straight line with each other, one of the redcoats is at the front of the line, using his strong voice to order the redcoats to move out and follow him in a neat line formation.
We continue to move over some hills and in the distance we can see a group of 20 silhoutes standing still, all of a sudden we hear a blasting sound and one by one redcoats are falling in front of me, our commander orders the line to stop and face the silhoutes, and orders our line “Make ready…. Take Aim….. FIREEEE” and just like that we shoot off a incredible volley that is deafining, smoke all over the front of us. and again in the distance the silhoutes are coming closer, we see they are wearing blue uniforms, its the American continental army! they are charging straight toward us with their bayonets attached, our commander orders us to fire another volley, and we see the americans are dropping like flies, but continue onwards anyway.
– Real player with 1031.7 hrs in game