Recent reviews by Natintrapa

A very interesting addition to the roster. The Clan of the Kraken changes things up just enough to feel different from other clans, without feeling entirely unrelated to the game.

The good stuff about the clan:
- Fisheries. Remember those games where you explored around you and went 'ah, rats, coastal tile with only a wrecked ship...' Well, now that coastal tile is the same, except also a source of food. Any tile that has a beach on it, you can build a Fishery on, which generates the same food as normal fishing huts.
- Non-coastal penalty. To offset this pretty decent bonus, any tile that is not coastal - meaning touching the ocean, not just having a beach, so yes those cliff side tiles count as coastal - costs 50% more to settle and build on, as well as a combat penalty for fighting there. A pretty big disadvantage, I hear, but it is offset by them having a spell that completely negates that penalty for a zone - permanently. It does costs a moderate amount of Wyrd (mana) to cast, but I have yet to run into a scenario where I sat around and waiting to generate Wyrd before 'being able to' settle a tile. What I mean is, Wyrd generates fairly quickly and easily.
- The Wyrd. Their little special resource. Unlike the Dragon Clan, this actually isn't that much of a pain to manage and use, never coming around and just making me frustrated at having that one extra thing to micromanage - or at it giving me a bonus I have no need for in the moment. You get it, you have it, and you don't have to worry too much about it, but it still does some good things for you.
- The Valkyrie. This is not quite the neutral unit that walks around, defends victory locations, and such, but she never the less is a very strong unit. I have read some reviews complaining about only being able to get one of them, but let me tell you, anything else would be broken. There is a cooldown and heavy Wyrd cost to spawning one in, but when you do, you get a unit that has the same health as standard chieftains (75), more armour than almost anything else in the game (18), but a rather baseline attack (10). Still, this all adds up to a unit that can go toe-to-toe with two Dragonkin at once. The Valkyrie won't win it, but she can kill one and then run away to tell the tale. Combined with the special ability you can unlock at a Forge which just makes you go 'nope, this zone is mine', makes for a very potent unit, that outshines chieftains in some aspects. And when I say 'this zone is mine' that includes all the buildings, even towers, and you don't need to clear it of enemy forces first. The only thing the enemy gets to keep is his villagers.

The bad stuff about the clan:
- No access to Longships, so no trade victory. Not too huge a deal for me, as I almost never went it anyhow.
- 'Jack of all Trades'. Except for food generation, you have a few things here and there which boosts mostly everything - how late or early game it is, varies - resulting in a clan that isn't exactly great at any one thing, forcing you into basically a domination victory, since you can't really compete in any of the 'races'. But on the flip side, this also makes for a clan with no single clear counter, as they don't have any massive weaknesses.
- Clan of the Not-Kraken. This clan, more than any other, really does not feel like it has any relation to its namesake, which is a bit unfortunate. There is nothing about it that makes me go 'oh yeah, Kraken', and some things even have me greatly confused about how they do relate to krakens - such as the Valkyrie. Krakens aren't even all that prominent in Norse Mythology to begin with, yet there is a thing which is entirely prominent and would have been a much, much, better fit: Jörmungandr. The only reason I can see for not using it over a generic Kraken is that Clan of the Serpent is too close to Clan of the Snake?
- Raven 2.0. Remember all those games with 'no Raven Clan'? Yeah, no doubt those will be joined by 'also no Kraken Clan'. The final 'spell' the clan gets lets them summon a group of five ghost warriors into any visible enemy coastal tile. How good is this? While you can somewhat fend off Raven mercenaries with a single upgraded tower and what ever villagers are in the square, this is not true for the ghosts. They will absolutely destroy that tower and any villagers present. Probably even do nicely against a few warriors or axe throwers - haven't tested that out yet. The 'balancing' factor is that it is not nearly as spam-able as Raven's mercenaries. This needs a nerf, hands down. Yes, it is late game, yes, it cannot be spammed, but it is too strong in its current form. Or perhaps strong is not the right word, but 'annoying'. Frustrating. It is not a fun mechanic to play against, and not really all that fun to use either.



The big question is, is the Clan fun to play?
Yes, yes it is. At least to me. If you want a very focused and pre-determined playstyle, then this probably isn't for you. But if you are up for letting your game plan be determined by what happens, then yeah, go for it. I can varmly recommend it.

A very pretty game, with some interesting mechanics, and takes on the RTS genre. The various factions seem - at a glance without any real online play - pretty balanced, and offering enough variety to likely mean there is something to fit different playstyles.

However, unfortunately it fails horrendously in delivering a good RTS based control sceme, combined with some of those earlier mechanics clashing hard with those controls that are present.

- Unit hitboxes overlap constantly - more so the more zoomed out you are, so I hope you don't like a good overview - making precision selection somewhere between hard and impossible.
- Speaking of zoomed out, during winter it becomes pretty much impossible to tell how much HP anything has. That is, in terms of percentages, because nothing tells you how much they have in hard numbers.
- A number of unit outlines are practically identical (a worker carrying food vs a healer), making it a chore to try and select one over the other if you have both in the same zone.
- There is no way to set up 'formations', so most of the time your ranged units will run into a fight ahead of your melee ones, unless you micro enough to make sure the melee stay in front - and remember, selection of one unit over another is very hard due to the overlap.
- When you try and use the 'overview menu' to select a unit type, it teleports the camera to that selected unit - because odds are you didn't want to use that unit, especially workers, in the zone you were looking at. This is single click, no double.
- You can convert any units into anther other unit if the right building is near, but can't 'downgrade' a special unit into a worker, to - say - repair or build something, without running them all the way back to the nearest house (or town hall).

I get these are all pretty minor inconveniences, but they all add up into what often makes an otherwise enjoyable and pretty enjoyable game into a series of annoying and frustrating events that build up to make me really wish I'd not gotten this many hours into it so I could refund.
Big potential, but currently not worth playing.




Oh, and the AI cheats like mad - having basically infinite resources - but what else is new?