Do you remember when Thrall led the Horde to Kalimdor? Or when Kerrigan became the Queen of Blades? Nostalgic moments are special. Even though Stormgate is a new game, moments from the glory days of Blizzard strategy games keep popping up. Nevertheless, the self-proclaimed hope of real-time strategy often fails exactly where Starcraft and Warcraft once excelled.
Stormgate is not set in another universe, but on our Earth in the not-too-distant future. Almost all countries have joined forces to research alien artifacts that are meant to ensure the survival of humanity. In the year 2124, however, a mad scientist opens portals to another world. And hellish beasts belonging to the so-called infernal swarm stream through these portals. Humanity has nothing to counter this demonic invasion, which is why civilization collapses and the remaining people have to fight for their survival.
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Intensive world-building was carried out for Stormgate, and topics such as climate change, species extinction and social inequality were even addressed. However, you don’t notice much of this in the game itself. You can only read the detailed background story in a codex or browse an e-novella on the developer’s website that tells the story of the mad scientist.
The Stormgate campaign that has been released so far, however, follows relatively well-trodden paths. You accompany Amara Nassar, commander of the human resistance troops, on her search for an artifact that is supposed to change the course of the war against the infernal swarm. The story is told in CGI cutscenes and in-game cutscenes, but these are not gripping. Characters mostly just stand around and say that they have to do something urgent. The actual danger rarely comes across and is further counteracted by the sometimes grotesque character design, which fluctuates between a wooden doll look and a plastic figure look. Often the characters’ mouths don’t even move, which reinforces the doll-like appearance. In addition, the sound in cutscenes and radio messages is poorly mixed. Some sentences are much too quiet and can hardly be understood, while others make you wince because of the high volume.
Source: PC Games This is particularly unfortunate because the game features a cast of good voice actors. Blizzard legend Chris Metzen voices the villain and never fails to provide nostalgic shivers. Metzen also helped with the game’s backstory before being poached by Blizzard for the new World of Warcraft expansions. It’s disappointing that so little has been made of the game’s extensive lore so far.
Poor returns for campaign fans
At the start of Early Access, there are six campaign missions available on the human side, the first three of which you can play for free. Over time, sequels to the campaign will be released, which you will then have to buy individually. The missions are very varied: in one, you have to infiltrate and take over an enemy base with special units, and then use your new outpost to build an army that will destroy the enemy. In another mission, you defend a base against waves of enemies until a timer runs out, and you have to constantly adapt your tactics to new enemies. Character missions, in which you play individual heroes, also provide variety.
The developers could have designed a few more missions, however, as all six levels that are playable so far can be completed in a good three hours. That’s assuming the connection to the servers remains stable, as you are not allowed to play the campaign offline. During the high demand at launch and the associated server problems, we were kicked out of games several times and had to restart the respective mission. In the human campaign, you play exclusively on the side of the human resistance against the infernal swarm. You won’t see the third faction, the heavenly armada, here. That will most likely change as development progresses, but at the start of Early Access the scope of the campaign is small.
All good factions are three
The three extremely different factions in Stormgate are one of the absolute highlights of the game. If you have finished the campaign and start a skirmish match on the side of the Celestial Armada, you basically have to learn the entire game from scratch.
The Celestial Armada is an ancient, technologically advanced civilization of enlightened beings who travel the universe in huge flying citadels. They search for worlds rich in a substance called Animus in order to explore the secrets of creation and protect the galaxy from catastrophic threats. They are led by enigmatic beings, the Sovereigns, who wage an endless war against the infernal swarm. If you now see parallels to the Protoss from Starcraft, you are right. But the feel of the game is quite different from what you know from the clear original.
Source: PC Games Players start with a flying structure called a bow ship, which moves freely across the map from the start, so you can build anywhere. You also get a morph core that can transform into any other building. The Armada does not use workers to build buildings – instead, the Celestials materialize structures from orbit wherever they have defined a so-called cascade field. As a Celestial player, you can basically spread out across the entire battlefield and centralize unit production.
While the other two factions have to pay attention to their supply limit in order to build new units, the Celestials do not have to worry about this. However, they should keep an eye on their energy levels. A surplus of electricity gives advantages and strengthens their army, too little energy limits abilities and even slows down production.
