Ancestors Legacy

I've spent a few hours trying to get into Ancestors Legacy recently, and by trying I mean alternating between groaning at its failings, laughing out loud and finally bemoaning what could have been a better title... if it were designed for gameplay instead of cutscenes. Here's yet another case study in wasted potential, a small-time company which seemed incapable of deciding what game is was developing.

Remember: this is actually a top-down game.

Its attempt at solving the RTS genre's main problem (the lack of S; button-mashing) consists of organizing units into ten maximum squads which can be replenished cheaply and quickly instead of rebuilding unit by unit, and streamlining base building. You get one main base with production facilities, and the rest are moneybags, with a preset number of fixed building spots on each map. Also, unit motion fakes a bit of inertia preventing you from "jiggling" troops around for manual hit and run tactics, as does melee engagement which can only be broken by retreating a screen away. The rest is fairly solid if limited in scope, with non-redundant upgrades for both stats and abilities/stances and balanced resource spending.

 

Too bad none of it ever gels.

The rapid squad replenishment results in a lot of inconsequential back-and-forth with no incentive to commit, the limited base building feels completely perfunctory, and units' awkward movement makes it damn near impossible to see who's hitting what or react in any way other than by retreating entirely to replenish for more confused skirmishing. That catapult above took literally minutes to navigate the roads across a tiny 1v1 map due to having to stop in order to execute even the slightest turn. All of which is probably why, four years after its release, Ancestors Legacy is selling for <$10 with zero matches showing in its multiplayer lobby. 

But wait! It has a campaign mode!

And that, in fact, seems to have killed it. While quite a few players enjoy pre-written campaigns, strategy genres in general thrive on open gameplay, and a disproportionate amount of effort here went into painting lush vignettes of war-torn medieval landscapes. Seriously, did you even realize that's a damn millstone above? Don't see that every day. The visual crew obviously modeled their little hearts out, judging by the well-proportioned and lovingly detailed buildings and soldiers, or their many, many idle animations hefting their weapons, striking poses, looking around, drilling at the barracks while being recruited, coughing and spitting and so forth. Buuuuut... the writing and audio backing up those graphics falls so far short that I'm ready to scrap my playthrough with the tutorial. I doubt the dialogue sounds good even in Polish, given how indecisively the English version wavers between roaring tribal warrior cliches and anachronistic colloquialism.

 

"There! you are. come. with. us. We needj - your help."

"Affirmative!"

Wait, "affirmative" - ?!? Am I listening to a viking from the year 800 or that robot from Lost in Space? Factor in every line being delivered as though painstakingly sounded out SYL-a-ble by syl-A-BLE via teleprompter by some guy who doesn't even know what he's reading, and I was ready to call it quits even before my hero started bragging he's "ratty as always!" The game went as far as to include a jitterbugging over-the-shoulder camera when zooming in on a squad... except it's still a top-down RTS, so the only ones putting that functionality to use are no-name bloggers looking for an illustration the better to bash you with for FORGETTING YOU'RE A TOP-DOWN RTS!

Look, as far as I'm converned, scripted campaigns are for RPGs, and wasted on strategy genres. But I'm willing to accept that waste of money in, say, Planetfall or the like. I can forgive their idiotic writing and cheesy notions of drama, so long as the freeform strategy aspect holds up on its own. Ancestors Legacy paid so little attention to its core appeal that in the worst late-'90s fashion its AI resigns itself to constantly sending the same squad to attack the same base until you build up your army to flatten it.

The End.

Because with that you've even killed skirmish mode, your last hope for relevance. Your product is now 80% off but you've given everyone 100% cause to skip it.