Strormrise worst RTS EVER!

[Truthfulpietro]

I’m playing Stormrise for the Xbox 360

I played some RTS games in my lifetime, this has got to be the WORST RTS I’ve ever played. I’ll post more details later on.

[CaptainCruch]

I love Xbox 360 RTS games, I almost played them all (C&C 3, C&C: Red Alert 3, Halo Wars, Supreme Commander 1&2 were all great, the only one I didn't enjoy/finish was Warhammer: Battle March), but I always avoided Stormrise because it had such a bad press. However, I must admit the video footage of it looked kind of interesting.

[Truthfulpietro]

Okay, just got halfway through the game. The story and settings are somewhat original and the music is ok and the structure of the game is not too bad. Also you don’t run out of resources so turtle strategies aren’t going to work here. You can also customise your leader unit for different strategies in skirmish and multiplayer. However, that’s where the positives end at this point, but I intend to finish this game, because I’ve got no compunction against my own suffering!

So what’s the big problems, the first is how to interface with the game with a system called “Whip Select” you use the right thumbstick to select units and installations. All fine and dandy when you only use a few units, but when you have dozens of units on the map, selecting the right one is an absolute pain to do. All it takes is just a small amount of movement on the right thumbstick and you bounce to another unit. Not only that but the special abilities wheel is also mapped to the right thumbstick and good luck not moving to another unit while relying the secondary moves. You WILL spend a good portion of the game wrestling with the whip select system. You can mitigate the issue by forming groups with your units but it only helps a little, and you only group three units maximum.

But that’s not the half of it, I’ve played some strategy games with horrendous pathfinding, Halo Wars (which is a great game, but the pathfinding is a annoying), Carrier Command Gaia Mission was awful, vehicles can’t go over a bridge without falling over or getting trapped on rocks, etc. At least you can manually take control of them. But Stormrise? Units get stuck navigating stairs if you mix light infantry with bulky monsters, get stuck in animation loops clearly showing incomplete animations, and run to enemy units right next to them despite being long ranged units. I’ve lost count on how many units I lost due to them running towards the enemy rather then shoot them. But the enemy is no better, always sending waves of units right into your waiting troops to be slaughtered, no guarantee of no causalities on your side, but it won’t matter if you control enough installations, build refineries and upgrade them. Infinite unit production, until the limit is reached, not that you would want to micromanage reinforcements after losses, but the camera is focused on where the whip select is so if your selected unit is destroyed, the camera just bounces to another unit. You can’t set a permanent rally point, but the warp gates can send where you summoned your new units on where the reticle is located. Not exactly helpful for sending more troops your way.

It gets worse, the feedback system is crazy, I saw my own units drop dead for no clear reason and the same goes for the enemy units as it looks like my units aren’t really shooting them. Mission 7 was the worst, so far.

Like Halo Wars, you only have one save slot and despite what the game implies, there’s no automatic checkpoint system.

Multiplayer wise, you can skirmish against computer opponents. But there’s no easy way to navigate the large maps and very few maps don’t restrict what units you can deploy.

[Truthfulpietro]

Finished the story.