I really want to play Black
Myth: Wukong since I’m quite familiar with lore of Monkey King/Journey to
The West. However, I don’t think my laptop is strong enough to play the game and
also my wallet to buy it. So, what else the developer named Game Science,
made? A free-to-play RTS game with name Art of War: Red Tides (2016).
Sure. I will give it a try.
A game title with a character looking at the player is fairly unsettling to me. He looks cool and mean. Until I notice his armor has specific bulge for his nipples and I laugh at it. I mean seriously. Why someone design body armor with detail on the wearer’s nipple? It’s so unnecessary. Before I login with steam account. Let’s watch the opening cinematic, shall we?
The movie starts with usual tradition men with gun versus small vicious creatures. Like -you know- what you usually see at Starship Trooper, Aliens, or Starcraft. Some of those creatures manage to get close to those soldiers. But the man response with downward smash rifle’s stock. The move kind of unconventional and slow. If I were him, I would just kick them instead. But what do I know, I have never been a soldier in science fiction setting.
Suddenly a huge rock lion emerges and kill those 3 soldiers. But don’t worry, some cool guy with motorbike and sawed-off shotgun, is here to deal with the monster. The monster can’t hit him because of his speedy bike.
However, the guy doesn’t do much. Instead, carpet bombing finish off the rock lion. The guy just distracts the monster with his speediness. Lame. Still looking cool though. I can’t help myself not to address this guy as Jim Raynor from Starcraft. I’m not the only one, right? Anyway, after this Not Jim Raynor smokes some cigar. He rides forward until he gradually vanishes as if Thanos’ finger snap affects this cool guy. Leaving the motorbike drops and explodes. Thus, the cinematic ends.
Now, the star of the opening screen becomes this red rhino guy and the opening screen becomes bit more unsettling than before. Not as scary as title screen in Kuon though. Without further ado, let’s hit the “Login with steam” option.
The main menu is looking spiffy and at all but it’s complex. Not total chaos. The menu is well arranged but there are so many of options! I mean I know this much that the red dots need my attention. But which one that crucial to my playthrough? As I pick Casual Match, the menu reveals more options: Quick Play, Versus AI, etc. I can get through this even though my brain is not smarter than Space Ork’s.
So, there’s daily task. Ok.
I think I need to recap about the control. It has been weeks I did test run on this game. It seems the control is more or less common shortcut key for Real Time Strategy Game. No worry.
Apparently, Command Academy is the tutorial levels. I believe there’s another tutorial after this first one, I swear. I wish I could replay it for you, dear reader. But it can’t be helped. Let’s hit his one.
This tutorial introduces us with Paviser unit which is tanker unit with ability to reflect damage to his attacker. I have been Tank role for thousands matches in Mobile Legends so I feel sympathy to this shield guy. I count on you, fellow tanker.
History fact: Pavise shield usually worn by medieval French crossbowmen to protect themselves while reloading their crossbow. I’m not sure whether Pavise used by someone else specifically by infantry or not.
There’s small button on the left of training quantity bar, which lead to this upgrade menu. Each unit has their own upgrade benefit. It is interesting but one thing that really bothers me is: how do I get this Tech Point that can be used to upgrade units? Ironically, the tutorial doesn’t inform me on that. It just wants me to upgrade this Paviser and I shall do that.
1 Paviser can defeat 10 riflemen because he can reflect all damage that he received. Heavy_goodjob02.wav
By finishing this tutorial level, I’m rewarded with some coins and Paviser unit himself.
Next tutorial is about the importance of detector unit. Invisible units can’t be attacked however the detector unit itself can’t attack at all so combat unit still required to battle the invisible units. In this tutorial, I have given marauder which is described as defensive unit. It’s tanky unit but it can unleash missile if it fights enemy mechanical unit so it’s not so defensive in my opinion.
Next tutorial is about Terran’s anti air unit called sentinel which is probably equivalent to Terran Goliath in Starcraft. The unit can combat ground unit but it’s better to fight air unit.
Next tutorial is….OH MY GOD! Flamethrower units! They’re so me. I know that they’re more or less Terran’s firebat in Starcraft but this one looks more similar to Pyro from Team Fortress 2. These guys are my special boys. So, these flamer boys are excellent at killing biologic units and unleash their fire in conical shape area.
Next tutorial teaches me to relocate my army by replacing beloved flamethrower with riflemen because the flamer can’t hit air unit. This tutorial makes me sad. I know the flamer can’t do nothing to fight that bird but those riflemen are lame. I mean, from 4 only 2 of them survives against just 1 ordinary (alien) bird! Pyro_jeers01.wav
Then, I hit the tactician trials. Apparently, it’s challenge mode with AI opponent but yield good reward if succeed. Opponent also has preset army. I breath heavily as soon as I see Heavy Flamethrower unit that the opponent has.
So, I hit the first tactician trial and I accidentally pick Atlac faction which -let’s be honest-it’s bootleg Protoss faction. They’re blue, alien, and weird. Definitely Protoss of this game. I’m not familiar yet with these units. I read the unit’s description one by one. Unaware that the setup timer on the right corner reaches 0 and I can only assemble a mish mash of army then immediately lose the battle.
After some more defeat…
Turns out the trial is not that hard. The game gives me abundance of resource to build my army. Even my hastily made army can overcome this trial. I wasn’t sure what my units do. All I do is put their amount high and that’s it.
With that mindless tactic, I achieve victory. Also, I get some spoils of war: 100 coins and a blueprint of the motorcycle guy! Engineer_mvm_loot_godlike03.wav
I hit quick play this time and I get a match. The thing is: is my opponent real person or and AI? Can I say hello or something? Their name is simply Enemy Commander 1 that may be AI opponent but they have name under their profile picture. So, I’m not sure. So, in this waiting screen, you can make the battle preparation which I barely have it at this moment. Or you can trash talk your opponent if you want.
So, here’s the standard match. Both of you and your opponent has a base and 3 turrets with varied strength. The stronger turret is located nearest of your base. And then there are these green eggs. The instructor lady informs me that I should destroy them for more resource. I like to do that but my army is more interested with killing the opposite army. It goes without saying that the main objective is to destroy enemy base.
Immediately, this gameplay reminds me of Battle Boom back when I still have it in my phone. Currently, it’s delisted in Google Play Store. It’s still on Steam however you have to buy it to play it. Even back in the day when I had it on my phone for free, I felt ripped off. The gameplay is imbalance and terrible. You can get softlocked if you play all the cards (which includes: troop, building, and active skill) since the deck doesn’t circle its cards unlike Clash Royale. Thus, many of my opponent resort to use deck majorly consists of spawner buildings. I don’t recommend Battle Boom even though many troop units are interesting. Sorry if I get sidetracked. But you can consider this bonus review from me.
Dead enemies drop gold coins and I can use them to summon the bomber biplanes from the opening cutscene! The gold coin is not used to train your army. Here’s how the army training works. Initially, each side have same set amount of soul essence. See that green icon on top left corner? That’s the number of soul essence you have. Destroying the green eggs can increase said soul essence so you get advantage army over your opponent if you manage to destroy those eggs. I think soul essence increases periodically over time. The army slot also increases too. You don’t need to worry about clicking units to train them. Army will be periodically trained by each wave. All you have to do is: manage their composition on each wave.
My army suddenly get pushed
back for some reason. The game gives me hint to train detector unit so I assume
my opponent begin to deploy invisible units that secretly kill my troops.
Anyway, check out that dragon that fighting for me. I obtain his favor by
destroying big egg. Apparently, alien dragon has imprinting behavior. So,
whoever hatch destroy the egg, the dragon will recognize them as parent
and fight for them to death.
Now we can see those invisible units, we can continue our rampage to victory. The detected units will be in semi-transparent shade as you can see them in the most back of opponent’s army. The detector units have low cost of soul essence and they can’t attack. Nonetheless, they’re quite mandatory to train when enemy starts using invisible units.
Suddenly a bigger dragon fly on battlefield. The tutorial lady says I have to destroy this dragon for abundant reward. I like to but -once again- my army ignore the dragon and go for enemy’s army. As long as I achieve victory, I don’t mind though.
My other active skill is airborne which send troop reinforcement on the point that I designated. As I deploy the reinforcement, I ignore the hint about critical threat which probably important.
Cm_soldier_gamewon_04.mp3. However, we’re doing just fine. We manage to surround enemy’s base and they can do nothing. I have to complaint about enemy’s base has too much hitpoint though. It takes quite long time to destroy it even though we’re totally dominate the battlefield.
The MVP of this match is the shield tank unit. Good for him. Engineer_goodjob03.wav
I get level up from that victory and I unlock some rewards. Engineer_mvm_loot_rare04.wav
Of course, as most of Free-to-play game there will be lootbox reward too. For now, it’s just 20 coins but I’m fine with that.
From the previous level up, I obtained a rune which is customization element that I can stick to my army setup. This “Ground Attack” rune will increase the strength of my ground units so I set it into this rune setup. From the looks of this page, I can get more rune slot as I level up. The rune itself can be upgraded if I get enough copy of it. I can also disassemble it if I want to, probably to get more resource.
Now I test the newly unlocked thunder hierophants in the Command Academy. They’re pretty strong ranged unit with powerful area of effect. What I find funny is the basic Atlac infantry: blade slave. She’s probably based on Protoss Zealot but work differently as she can dash toward her target presumably as solid countermeasure against ranged unit like Terran rifleman. I reckon her dash is pretty useful even not toward the ranged unit because it shortens her travel to the target which can minimalize her risk of taking damage. She’s not exactly tanky frontline unit but not bad melee unit.
Next tutorial is about the guy with strange detailed armor from the title screen. He’s called infiltrator which is more or less Terran Ghost from Starcraft. He’s invisible sniper unit. However, these dragons can see our infiltrators just fine and proceed to attack them. What happen to the rule of “You need detector unit to spot invisible enemies”? Can these dragons detect invisible unit? Sounds rubbish!
After dozens of failure attempt, the instructor lady takes pity on me and tells me the exact army composition to win. I thought because this tutorial is about the infiltrator, I should put more of him in composition than the marauders. Having more of the tanky robots than the invisible snipers, seems deviating from the point of the tutorial. But that’s just my opinion as the complete beginner of this game. However, I don’t just outright copy the composition. I put 5 infiltrators and the rest are marauders, instead. We win in the end, anyway.
On next match, I employ the infiltrators and they’re doing fairly well. I said that the base has too much hitpoints and here’s the proof. Look how my massive army surround the enemy base but still need dozens of seconds to destroy it completely.
As I gain experience points from the previous match, the game reminds me of rewards if I achieve next level. More units to unlock, means more fun.
I hit another session in Command Academy. This time is about Atlac’s basic flying unit which cheap yet weak. Although those small dragon riders can eradicate battlecruisers there just fine. I just notice that, enemy has catapult/mangonel/onager units. Why there’s medieval catapult machine in space warfare???
I feel like to see my army setup and I find out that each unit that I have unlocked, has variants! For example. The standard flamethrower can be set into heavy flamethrower which has bigger health but has lower attack power. Heavy flamethrower is meant to be tank unit that can also support allies by decreasing his target’s defense power. Pretty awesome. However, I need more blueprint to research this tanky burner boy. I can use coins or gems to buy the blueprints. Or I can get them from lootbox or seasonal chest or whatever.
Then I check the detail about the dragon. It doesn’t seem able to detect invisible unit according to this info screen. So, I assume the game is cheating back then! It doesn’t want me to win the tutorial by simply using invisible units. I mean. If I won that way, the tutorial teaches nothing. But any kind of cheating is unacceptable.
Anyway, anti-air units can target this dragon due to its height. If only it knows how to keep its head low, it can survive battle easier.
Ranked match is unlocked at level 15 so I just have match with AI here. This time, I choose Atlac faction to show you more than Terran units. I mentioned the melee unit Slave Blade. As for the basic ranged unit, we have Silver Guard that strangely armed with claw but can shoot projectiles. Medic_sf12_badmagic02.wav
Mysteriously, I get tech point and I will use it to upgrade Slave Blade. Interestingly, upon upgrade her dash will grant her armor increase temporarily so she become tankier.
Still no idea, how can I get this useful tech point. My assume is either over passing time or kill certain number of enemies.
If Terran has bombing run, Atlac has laser beam straight from the main base but it doesn't hot allied unit, thankfully. Because it has narrow area of effect, I consider this offensive skill leans on accuracy yet the damage is pretty big. The other offensive commander skill is petrification beam (with appropriate symbol of medusa’s head) which makes enemies within point of radius petrified. Petrified units can’t move nor attack but get damage reduction, probably as consolation prize.
No idea what veteran bonus that the announcement said, means. As you can see, I win the match again with small problem even though I don’t fully understand Atlac units.
On another match against AI…
I just realize that I can highlight turrets for combat information! Not only turrets, I can also highlight almost everything in the battlefield, including base and those alien eggs.
Speaking of turrets, I can use bomber planes to deal damage on them. But only for 50% damage points. I also like to point out that the area effect of bombing run is in rectangle shape which is uncommon in my opinion.
Suddenly, a tutorial points me to small bit on top of infiltrator unit which activate his special’s skill. I didn’t know that he has active skill which is a sniper shot! Though to be fair, I know thunder hierophant has one which unleashes explosive magic sphere. Perhaps because I didn’t activate infiltrator’s skill that I failed that tutorial so many times.
The MVP for this match is: The Marauders. Soldier_goodjob02.wav
Finally, I reach level 6 which unlock units such as Shuriken Panda! Shuriken and panda aren’t 2 words that can’t be combined or so I thought but here we are. I’m really curious about this Shuriken-using Panda.
Before we get to see Shuriken Panda in action, I do some test run with Bone Dragon in this session of Command Academy. It’s very powerful anti-ground flying unit. To protect Bone Dragon from enemy’s air units, I employ Bowcats which are bipedal tiger wielding bow. They’re pretty unique. They will use their bow and arrow against flying unit. This is reasonable so far. But then when there’s no enemy’s flying unit at all, they ditch their bow and proceed to claw enemy ground unit. Why they don’t use bow to shoot ground enemy? They’re doing something impractical. I think it’s about tiger man’s pride that I don’t understand at all.
For the finale, I conduct match against AI but I pick Yaoguai faction this time. Yaoguai is Chinese term for supernatural creature usually with form of animal and lifespan of thousand years. They also known as Youkai in Japan. Yaoguai are different than Zerg or any insectoid like aliens. Rather making bootleg Zerg, the developer choose to use Chinese mythical creatures as the 3rd faction. I give them credit for that creativity. Although the Yaoguai basic infantry: dire wolves, pretty much operate like Zerglings. They’re cheap and fights in huge numbers.
What I kind of confused is the description of defensive unit in this detail about Acidtooth Pangolin. I mean I can understand Pangolin as defensive unit because they have hard scale. However, I can’t understand what make this unit marked as defensive from their stats. From relatively high hitpoint, sure. But what else? They have ranged attack. I usually think defensive or tank unit don’t have ranged attack. Perhaps they’re related to turret. It’s impossible for proper combat unit like these pangolins to be stationary, so at least they’re slow moving. To be honest, I don’t observe their moving speed so I can barely confirm that they’re slow. I conclude that they’re called defensive unit because they’re slow and durable, I assume.
Finally, I get to see Shuriken Panda in action. So, he has relatively high hitpoint and cumbersome projectile attack because the shuriken will stay in the spot for duration, making him unable to attack during so. Think of him like Executioner in Clash Royale but his projectile doesn’t return to him like boomerang and instead stay on the spot which results in devastating damage rate.
As for the active skill, the
Yaoguai faction has Mind Control that can convert enemy within a designated
radius to join my side. Another skill is Polymorph but it’s not what you
probably think from Warcraft. The magic skill doesn’t turn the enemies into
sheep or other defenseless animal but instead it turns my unit within area of
effect into either small monkey or giant monkey, which are most likely
reference to Monkey King! No idea whether turning some of my units into the
legendary monkey king is absolutely beneficial or not. I kind only assume yes
because it will be awfully ridiculous if transformed allied units become weaker
than their origin. Nonetheless, the transformed allied units along with other
not monkey-fied allied units manage to destroy enemy’s base. I think I can call
it quit even I haven’t managed to get my hand on the bootleg Jim Raynor
motorcycle units and upgrade flamethrower into heavy flamethrower.
I like the title bolden the letter “R”, “T”, and “S” in the opening scene. It’s quite nice touch.
I didn’t expect Game Science’s Art of War: Red Tides (2016) is rather good RTS game. Also, I didn’t expect my outdated laptop can run this without issue. With nice quality graphic on top of that. The gameplay is simple and with lots of customization. This probably the best F2P RTS game that I ever played. My biggest complain probably is how long the tutorial phase. I mean I get it. The super long tutorial is meant to ensure new player is very ready for the presumably soul-crushing competitive ranked match later at level 15. Besides there are quite a dozen units to learn before using them at ranked match. The other complaint is how big is the main base’s health and I think it’s unnecessary to make the base very durable. Although this problem also exists in Battle Boom. Maybe the developer should reduce the health and add 1 or 2 turrets on the base. Besides those problem, this game is quite fine. It takes the essence of combat RTS (i.e Starcraft) and make it more practical and faster while removing the resource gathering process. I'm kind of sad with the absence of resource gathering because I like that element on RTS. I’m quite impressed with how simple and easy the control regarding I have to manage big mass of units. Although as I observed that the riflemen walk to the battlefield in front of the tank or melee unit which I deem inefficient formation, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The unit function’s design is modification of Starcraft unit’s and that sounds fine to me. The different between faction’s units probably derived from Starcraft too. For example: rifleman is Starcraft’s marine but with lower fire rate and generally lamer. Dire wolf pretty similar to Zergling but with less gross design. Both Slave Blade and Protoss’ Zealot is melee unit but the former can dash while the latter is tankier. I also want to point out the difference between each detector unit which surprise myself that I can notice that. Terran’s detector unit is very basic without anything special on it. Atlac’s detector unit is also invisible itself. Lastly Yaoguai’s detector unit (called Beholder) can retreat when at low health to recuperate its health. All of those 3 detector units are flying. I’m mostly impressed with Yaoguai because they’re not Zergs and Chinese mythical animal creature instead. Plus, their Polymorph skill is reference to Monkey King. But the Chinese culture’s influence doesn’t stop there. Terran’s soldiers using armor from Dynasty era. While some of Atlac’s units resemble mythical Chinese monk or sorcerer. Commander skills are useful to turn the tide of battle into your favor. Apparently, the commander skills that I already demonstrated are not all of them. There are more as you level up! That means more customization. Great! But you are only allowed to carry 2 of them at a match. The sound is standard good. The visual is fairly superb. The presentation is quite beautiful although the main menu bit chaotic. I mean the menus are quite well arranged but they’re overwhelmingly cluttered to me. Same goes to the combat interface.
This probably strange thing to say that Art of War: Red Tides (2016) get my A-grade recommendation. Given I’m not sink to deep in this one. But I can predict that there will be lots of lootbox (from end of season, winning match, or event) to obtain more unit blueprints or other customization elements, as you expect from free-to-play game with life service time like Clash Royale that I played for 8 years. I really like that Supercell’s strategy game but it doesn’t have flamethrower unit so Red Tides win in my judgement. :)