Iron Harvest

amazon Iron Harvest reviews

Iron Harvest: Starting with Half-Life and DOOM, but later the Call of Duty and Battlefield series of games make perfect use of the development of modern 3D graphics technology and new generations of gaming consoles, can first-person shooter (FPS) game genre gradually “ousted” the real-time strategy game genre to occupy the dominant position in the gaming industry, especially on the PC system.

As a result, many once-popular strategy games with many highly-rated sequels from the late 90s like Homeworld, Starcraft, or Red Alert ended without a return date. So for small studios, Without too much experience like King Art Games, developing a real-time strategy game with a set standard of “blockbuster” like Iron Harvest is a reckless gamble.

But in the trial version (demo) launched in June 2020, this game has given fans of the strategy game genre a strong impression, with many attractive and extremely attractive elements desirable.

Suppose most of the “splendid” large studios have a development team of up to thousands of attendees with a network of software content development relationships spanning many parts of the world. In that case, King Art Games is a rather small game studio based in Germany with a game development team at its peak of just… 65 people.

However, the small-scale studio and “hands-on” of young game designer Maximilian Kiese, who just graduated in 2017, can do with Iron Harvest. Especially in The single-player part of the game offers gamers stories that span both breadth and depth in a post-war “dieselpunk” world setting.

Unlike many small-scale indie game studios that often use still images in cutscenes to save money, right from the start of the single-player game. You will come across many pre-rendered video clips elaborately built and edited in a cinematic style.

That is an extremely impressive point when these videos can express more meaning than using scripted cutscenes with inherently hard character models and lacks subtle expressions.

Since then, the pre-rendered movies that interjected during gameplay created seamless connections to the plot that ordinary “cheap” methods can hardly express, such as gestures, attitudes. The very small level of little Anna Kos in the early game cutscenes clearly shows her strong personality since childhood but is still very feminine like any other normal girl.

That further depicts the sharp contrast of the girl’s change due to the upheavals of the times, and also just a victim of the war, a young girl who loves a peaceful life must hold a gun and become a victim of war, become the heroine of the resistance of the Polonia.

It can be said that it is also thanks to these elaborately choreographed cutscenes that the experience of Iron Harvest’s plot is almost encapsulated in two words “perfect.”

Also, from the extremely smooth narration, the gameplay is gradually “spread” in front of gamers in a very natural way. Even new players of this genre can easily grasp it. The way to control and fight is somewhat complicated in the game series.

You’ll start with a very natural tutorial, spend Anna’s childhood days playing with the boys with snowballs, following her older brother learning deer hunting to learn how to use the skill. Making the most of it, taking advantage of the terrain and, most importantly, the game’s interface.

Then, following the first game screen, the “main dish” of the game is also gradually spread in the adult footsteps of our heroine against the invaders, linking the rebel forces through each battle fight to save the father and the whole nation from the hands of the enemy.

Despite clinging to many historical facts, the game design team built a Dieselpunk-colored world through four major campaigns of factions based on the game’s content. Scythe board, thereby bringing an extremely realistic detail to the gaming world full of cultural elements, political and economic backgrounds distinct from the depth of titles in the world “blockbuster.”

Thanks to the contexts and storylines built specifically for each faction. Unlike the Age of Empires or Stronghold series, which tend to “universalize” the military units, except for some special units to minimize the difficulty of building gameplay. Iron Harvest faction has unique combat units with different strengths, resource usage, and army-building philosophies.

For example, the Polonia faction possesses a mobile infantry force, powerful artillery. In contrast, the RusViet faction is more inclined to use giant Mech-type fighting machines with high melee ability or the Saxony faction possessing powerful weapons. The Mech has super thick armor but is extremely slow.

This mechanism is similar to once-popular strategy games like Starcraft and Warcraft, which bring excitement to a strategy game when players have more options in strategy. At the same time, it makes it more difficult for the designer to find a good balance for all factions to prevent a faction from becoming too strong or too weak to affect the game’s overall experience.

In this respect, due to learning from the Company of Heroes series gameplay, Iron Harvest also achieved a relatively balanced level at the time of launch but still needed a lot of updates to refine the parameters related to the game procedures to meet the requirements of gamers.

Returning to the way the game screen is built, the more you move on to the following levels, the more fierce the battles become when the tasks are much more difficult, requiring players to put all their minds to “control the army” to be able to complete the mission.

That is also a very different point in the screen structure of Iron Harvest when the main tasks are designed with an almost impossible difficulty to complete.

That forces the player to constantly complete side quests to find “assistance” for themselves in the process of conquering the screen, instead of these side quests to earn “medals” that are almost absent any effect on the main mission as in the original Company of Heroes series.

where can you get a Iron Harvest online

Iron Harvest Complete Edition for Xbox Series X: Buy it now

Iron Harvest Complete Edition (PS5): Buy it now

Iron Harvest: Standard – Windows 10 [Digital Code]: Buy it now

Iron Harvest Complete Edition (BOX UK): Buy it now

This design makes the game experience rich and attractive.

If you’re starting to get a bit “tired” of following the storyline spanning four different factions, you can try your hand at the mission with some challenging levels, and even Some of the levels are true “mortifications.”

This approach is being applied in many recent games, such as the game Orcs Must Die! 3, making hard fans of the real-time strategy game genre have extremely positive experiences after a long time of “game hunger” like today.

Iron Harvest’s visuals are meticulously cared for, “standard” for modern AAA games with models ranging from soldiers to giant Mechs polished with high detail, enough to “launch” on large 4K screens.

Although the Unity Engine is somewhat versatile, not too specialized for the strategy game genre, the design team at King Art Games very skillfully exploits the maximum power of this engine to bring to the users. Play a most intense war feeling with a lot of attention to even the smallest details.

For example, Anna Kos’s sniper rounds with explosive shells can “pierce” many targets simultaneously, but these powerful shots completely lose their effect if there is an obstacle. Or the phase with mortar shells from Mech can knock up affected troops in the area and destroy the terrain and surrounding items with impressive destructive power.

Besides, troops’ commotion when attacked, such as fear of finding shelter or “aggressively” rushing into the arrows and bullets to “skewer” the enemy behind the obstacles, creates a more real sense of war than real ever.

The refinement in graphics also helps increase the battles’ fierceness and vitality, thereby bringing gamers more excitement than the way two military units aggressively rush to slash each other. If you run out of blood, it’s just like the way traditional strategy games use.

The musical side of Iron Harvest once again sublimates the player’s emotions when it is always “music” at the right time and in the right place with musical melodies, in harmony with the cinematic language to create a strong source of inspiration, contributing to “sublimation” emotions for players.

That is extremely understandable when the music is assigned to two main artists, including Adam Skorupa. One of the talented composers responsible for composing music for many successful titles on the market, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Green Hell, and Benny Oschmann, have also shown their talents through the games Dark Mirror or Shadows: Awakening.

In short, if only for the single-player part, it’s hard to believe that Iron Harvest came from the hands of a small studio with limited game development resources and the hands of a “newbie” game designer when the game was released. This game possesses many attractive plots, gameplay, image, and sound elements.

Despite creating a “flashy” single-player game, Iron Harvest still presents many problems that were not fully improved until almost a year after its release.

That partly shows the exhaustion of a small studio like King Art Games before a large project with many ambitions.

First of all, the faction system in the multiplayer is still not stable and balanced when each faction has its characteristics with its military system, philosophy, and weapons.

For example, the RusViet faction will dominate in 1vs.1 duel with quick attacks in the first 10 minutes of the game that can bring you back to the “restoration city” in just a few “rush.” Meanwhile, the Polonia faction that is strong in harassing and sniping enemy forces from afar only exerts its strength in the mid-game with a dominant advantage in 2vs.2 maps when there are teammates to support the main support face.

That happens mainly due to the core conflict of the game design philosophy with the gameplay that the game “borrows ideas” from the Company of Heroes series.

If you have ever played this series of games, you will see that the units between the factions have almost the same features. The only difference is that a few stats show stats and extra features.

That’s why when put into a completely new context with factions with completely different features; the game creates a certain “skewed” level that makes the gameplay in the multiplayer part extremely difficult to equal; despite dozens of updates correcting in-game parameters, the imbalance is still there.

In addition, Iron Harvest also encounters a lot of annoying bugs that exist despite having undergone updates for a long time.

For example, some cutscenes built on the game engine suddenly lose their sound, gamers have to reload the game screen to proceed with the game normally.

Or extremely basic pathfinding mistakes with strategy games can cause a unit of soldiers to run into the wall and get stuck there suddenly.

These small problems cause a lot of discomfort for players, especially when the game developer has had a lot of time to fix them during the past year.