Developer Daedalic describes his new game A Year of Rain as the Warcraft alternative from Germany. An assertion that awaits a lot and makes Warcraft fans sit up and take notice. The look and the game mechanics speak for it at least once. Whether this announcement is true? We played a few rounds of testing with the early-access version of the German Strategy Hope.
The Hamburg development studio Daedalic stands for the highest quality. Almost unassailable, they are considered record breakers at the German Computer Game Prize. The Deponia series, Harvey's New Eyes, or The Pillars of the Earth – Daedalic has been rife with the adventure genre so far. The real-time strategy game AYOR (handy name for a shortcut) is new genre territory for the hamburger and represents their biggest project so far (at least until 2021 the Lord of the Rings action adventure Gollum appears).
New game, well-known mechanics
At first glance, Daedalic does everything right with his latest project. In early access we had access to the first of three campaigns and an on-line co-op mode. From the first moment, A Year of Rain is a strong reminder of the WarCraft 3 role model. Anyone who has played this or any of the other classic strategy games will find their way immediately.
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The campaign takes place in a medieval world and tells the story of the aristocratic house Rupah, which is in search of sources of the raw material Anorium. At the beginning you are in the role of leader Jaidee Rupah and his companions on a peace mission and you should unite the peoples of the elves, dwarves and humans to jointly search for the magic substance.
The first missions are still in a desert setting, before the group of heroes goes to the frosty lands to tap into more Anorium sources. With each mission, you gain access to new units and meet other heroes. These in turn form your most exciting and important units as they gain new equipment and gain in level and power with battles won. It is always motivating to level the heroes to the maximum during the missions, to equip them optimally with the help of objects or to use their abilities to win the mission.
As usual with other genre reps, the campaign serves as a wonderfully entertaining introduction to game mechanics. And it has some innovative moments to offer. For example, you begin the second mission in the role of a fortunate and nameless spearman who has to survive separated from his group in the cold desert of the South. Moments like these skillfully loosen up the missions and continue entertaining the story. We are curious to see what the developers have come up with for the final version.
Known and yet new
Right in the first campaign, it is refreshing to see that Daedalic has not taken the European Middle Ages as a source of inspiration. The heroes, the setting and the environments rather represent a mix of Orient and Northern Europe. The characters are sympathetic and narrative profound. Daedalic makes full use of his experiences from the adventure genre and knows how to tell an exciting story in an interesting world in skilfully staged cutscenes. Above all, the initially snooty-looking Prince Rupah is excellently written.
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There is hardly anything to say about the game mechanics: You only need two resources for building bases and troops: wood and the magical anorium. With this, your workers build buildings in which you in turn make units. Other buildings serve to improve your troops. The entire system is very simple, easy to understand, and great fun once you've played it.
In designing the factions, Daedalic show less innovation, but rely on the proven of the obvious sources of inspiration. The House Rupah is an amalgamation of elves, humans, and dwarves, reminiscent of the Warcraft alliance, while the Wild Banner represents a race of lizards, gnolls, dryads, and other creatures, and forms the counterpart to the Horde. The Undead of the Restless Regiment explain themselves. The look of A Year of Rain in its Comichaftigkeit reminiscent of the role model Warcraft or League of Legends.
Fine co-op action
In the previously playable version we could only dock three maps in co-op mode with up to four parties. Again, this is a very special feeling that players of Warcraft 3 and its imitators know. It was a lot of fun working with my friend to clean up the maps of Creeps, develop new mines and set up tactics to destroy the bases of the enemies. Again, the heroes are your most important unit, as they are very powerful and have up to four attacks. Which hero you choose is important for your style of play, especially in co-op mode.
At the beginning of a match, you also choose which role your hero should play: "Tank", "Damage" or "Support"? This means that your hero receives bonuses on their respective abilities. For example, a Paladin can either heal better, take more damage or deal more damage. For the black magician, the support role would be useless because she has no healing abilities. In this case, the role of damage would be optimal.
If you combine the skills of your heroes and their roles in the team optimally, then you have it easier in the battles. Our most popular combination in House Rupah was the Black Magician in Roll damage and the Paladin in the Roll tank. While the Paladin acted as a tank and healed injured units, the Black Mage dealt great damage and helped out with his summoned Fire creature. These combination possibilities make the game wonderfully fun.
As part of the multiplayer mode, we were also able to sniff the other factions and their heroes, which were not yet playable as a story campaign in the Early Access version. The hero types were beautifully designed differently, and it will be exciting to see how the different factions get along. Only minor deficiencies disturbed the otherwise good flow of the game: Heroes and units occasionally got stuck in some places, there are no tools for a better overview and control.
The operation of the units is also unnecessarily cumbersome in some places. For example, if you have a group of knights and you want to use their Special Rush ability, you must select each knight individually and activate the ability. A collective attack with this ability is currently not possible. In hectic battles this circumstance can be annoying. These smaller bugs will definitely be fixed by the developers until the final release.