Warparty

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Title: Warparty
Developer: Warcave
Publisher: Crazy Monkey
Website: https://www.warcave.com/warparty/
Genre: Strategy
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: 12
Release Date: 28/03/2019
Price: £19.99 – Rapid Reviews UK was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

What the Developers say

WarParty is an old school RTS where players must gather resources to unlock new buildings, units and upgrades, with the goal of destroying all their opponents’ bases. Players can also control a powerful chieftain that they can shape by selecting talents when they expand their settlement.

These talents also offer new units or bonuses that can change the way players play.

Resources are limited however and the player will need to step out of his base to gather precious resources required for more powerful units, or capture and hold shrines that slowly give them power points used to summon powerful abilities that can turn the tide of battle.

They will have to be careful however, as wild dinosaurs and other tribes roam the map.

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Warparty-1535285.html#Overview

Introduction

Warparty is an RTS – Real-time-strategy title on the Nintendo Switch’s eShop. Your goal is a straightforward one. Harvest resources, build up your defensive capabilities by building structures and troops. Then you gain ground by trying to capture shrines so you can use your Go’n arts to aid you in your battles.

Audio and Visual

A brief intro sets the scene of an epic war between 3 factions over 3 ancient stones. The intro looks like pages taken straight from a storybook, and it’s nice introduced to the world of Warparty. It helps that intro, gameplay features fully voiced actors which adds a little personality into this RTS which is appreciated.

Graphics are decent in Warparty especially little details on each of the unit types. However, some of the detail is lost when your using the default camera which is zoomed out quite far and some units like the smaller workers can be difficult to make out clearly and may become lost within your expanding settlements.

Also, I really liked the look of each of faction leaders as they all look different enough to set them apart During battles.
Also, some of animation’s for certain unit types like the dinosaurs are well done.

However, I found the HUD to be little chunky in Warparty and takes up the screen with quite ugly boxes but thankfully it doesn’t obscure the screen too much. The areas you play in have multiple little details, for example, huge skeletons dotted about, villages, flowing rivers located around each map, adding little touches like these make the maps seem alive.

The sound was decent, and again I was surprised by voice acting during the intro, gameplay segments as they add a little personality to each faction which I liked.

The music playing during gameplay has a tribal feel to it. Drums, chanting and there are also a lot of the sounds of nature such as birds tweeting and roars of the resident prehistoric predators roaming about. Overall for both sound, audio its pretty decent nothing spectacular but they do their job well enough.

Gameplay and Replayability

Gameplay in Warparty reminds me of a well-known franchise from back in the day that I played on original PlayStation which some of you might know as command & conquer.

Similarities of Warparty and C&C are built on the same foundation of rules. Harvest your resources to be able to build a building or create troops, heavy units and defend your base from the advancing force and try and conquer the map.

Warparty in a nutshell

However, Warparty does offer a bit more in terms of content which am about to talk about below.

There are a few modes to pick from when you begin the game. You can select the skirmish mode that lets you customise settings such as; resources, workers and what maps you want to play on. You can pick which faction you want to be and the level of difficulty from this menu too. You can also add extra AI enemies to challenge even hardened veterans of strategy titles.

There’s sadly no multiplayer on offer here so you’ll have make do with AI which is perfectly fine even though I found them a little too good on all difficulty settings. What I mean is they did the same strategy the whole time. They built up their base and placed many settlements around the map before attacking my base with their horde of troops completely overwhelming me, even on the easiest setting.

Now, I’m no novice with RTS games, but I found the difficulty spikes a little strange especially in the skirmish modes, campaign. It’s not impossible, but it will challenge you.

Warparty also offers a tutorial mode and a survival mode with 3 difficulty settings, and you can also reload any saved games you might have saved during other gaming sessions in the saved menu option.

One thing I found strange is the campaign mode isn’t at the top of the main menu. Its located at the bottom of the menu. Which again is a little odd as the campaign is the main game mode in Warparty and is the only mode that has chapters/missions in it. The cut scenes within this mode explain the characters reasons for fighting.

The question is, why did they decide to place it at the bottom of the menu instead of the top. Anyway, this is an excellent mode to learn what each faction can do. Talking of factions, let’s take a closer look at who they are:

Wildlander – are a fierce tribe of warriors lead by their leader Mika who believes in the harmony of nature.

Necromancy – A apprentice of the ancient Go’n art of necromancy. Char seeks the power to dominate the land with his undead army.

Vithara – The sage rejected his humanity and returned to his primal instincts to be one with nature. He commands the surrounding wildlife, turning them from enemies into allies.

Each faction has a unique set of units, buildings and upgrades and all factions have the ability to upgrade their main settlement through 3 tiers, unlocking new abilities that become available once you reach each level.

Also, you can unlock extra unit types and skills to improve existing ones with each new tier. All this information can be viewed in the helpful wiki that’s located on the main menu. It contains – leaders, units, building and other useful information. My favourite faction has to be Vithara because of his ability to tame any of the roaming dinosaurs.

Yes, Warparty contains dinosaurs which instantly makes the game 10% better. All your favourite dinos are here such as; Velociraptor, trike and even the Mighty T-Rex. Not only will you be creating troops, building structures and gather resources but you’ll also be using your Go’n arts to cause havoc on your enemies.

You’ll find strange, powerful shrines located around each map. Moving your troops over the shrine will let you capture it. This will generate power that enables you to use your unique abilities. Such as removing the fog of war that shrouds your sight during quests or firing down bolts of thunder onto your enemies.

What I’ve played I’ve enjoyed it so far, but I can’t shake the fact there is something not quite right with difficulty in the game. Even on the lowest settings, the enemies are brutal, and the game as a whole is quite challenging. Of course, its nothing game breaking but something to be aware of.

Controls

So is it easy to control your troops in battle? Well, actually, yes it is. You can move your cursor around with the left analogue stick. And by pressing, holding the A button, you can highlight your troops and move them to a new location with the Y button or attack with the X button.

The controls work pretty well and thanks to a helpful tutorial you should know the basics pretty quickly.

By highlighting a worker, you can press the ZL trigger which will bring up your building wheel. All you have to do is select a structure and press A to select it. Then you need to move the structure around on the map and place it with a tap of the A button again to build it. The worker you selected will get to work building your chosen building within a couple of seconds. Remember materials, and resources are required to build anything in Warparty. The ZR trigger brings up your power wheel which lets you use one of your Go’n arts. But these need power to use (shrines)

My time with Warparty has been an enjoyable one. I like all modes, and I love building my base up and commanding my army of dinosaurs to do my bidding. My only negative is its uneven difficulty in the campaign and skirmish modes.

It’s a shame there’s no multiplayer as I think this would be a great inclusion. But sadly it isn’t available on the Switch. Only the PC version appears to have multiplayer at the moment.

Conclusion

Campaign, skirmish, survival and 3 different factions to play as with their unique units, building and powers. There’s a lot to do here, and the controls work well.

There are few issues like no multiplayer or difficulty spikes, but if you can get over these hurdles, then there’s a decent RTS to play here. And since there are so few to play on the eShop right now, this might be your best choice.

However, I do find the price point to be at the high end of eShop. So if you’re not into these types of genres, then I’d wait for a price drop. If that doesn’t bother you then why not try this prehistoric strategy title and be prepared for a monstrous challenge.

Rapid Reviews UK Rating

You can purchase Warparty on the Nintendo eShop at the following link, https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Warparty-1535285.html