4 – Age of Darkness – Final Stand
It’s hard to believe a full year has gone by since I reviewed Age of Darkness – Final Stand, a title that plays like They Are Billions, but is set on one of my favorite dark, high-fantasy medieval settings that reminds me, for some reason, of standard CRPGs of the 90s. While in my review, I was somewhat critical of it, the fact that I can still remember a lot of the campaign missions and their plot means that maybe the game’s campaign truly was a memorable experience for me, in the most literal sense possible.
Players take command of several greater-than-life hero units and are then tasked with building up their town, gathering resources, building up a military, and, of course, constructing the most overly complicated and redundant defensive structures one can, to hold the line against the Nightmares, ghoulish like mobs that come from “the veil”, thousands at a time. I highly recommend Age of Darkness – Final Stand because of its story-driven and voice-acted campaign. The missions are also varied, and the whole thing will keep you busy for around 40 hours, which was how long it took me to beat it.
3 – Cataclismo
I know how you guys love Cataclismo, and I do too, so it’s finally showing up on a list, and I don’t think there’s a better one for it. Often described as a fantasy version of Stronghold, I would argue that Cataclismo’s brick-by-brick building system with physics is infinitely more advanced than any other game on this list. As some of the last survivors of the titular Cataclismo, which nearly wiped out humanity, players must fend off its Horrors. This is all fine and dandy, but it’s just an excuse to play around with its building system, where players can quite literally build their fortresses one piece of stone and wood at a time. Laborious? Yes. Fun? Yes.
2 – They Are Billions
They Are Billions has earned the top spot on my 10 best real-time strategy games for turtling list, but it’s staying at number 2 this time around, because I want to spotlight another amazing title at number 1. Still, They Are Billions is very much one of the best games ever made- Players take the role as the mayor of a town, in a post-apocalyptic Steampunk world consumed by a zombie plague, and they’re tasked with building, expanding, and defending their colonies against the unrelenting zombie hordes that always loom just outside of their walls.
The campaign is massive, featuring nearly 50 missions that will last you as long as some RPGs do, and that’s assuming you manage to win all of the missions on your first go-around, which probably won’t happen. These missions also have a high degree of variety, and are not just different variations of the same gameplay loop of building a town, expanding, and defending. The modular wall-building also allows for a lot of player expression and imagination, and you bet you’re going to be needing it, because They Are Billions has a unique mechanic that once a single zombie enters one of your buildings, they’ll infect everyone inside, and in a very populated area, that’s going to quickly get out of hand, so tactical mastery and perfect defense emplacement is absolute essential for victory. I never get tired of recommending They Are Billions, and if you haven’t played it, I highly recommend you do.
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