The story of “Exorder” begins with how the crown of Cerulean is passed after the King’s death, leaving one of his heirs to rule. In accordance with the kingdom’s tradition, Beyla and Tristan must battle for the right to reign over the kingdom. While the prince focused on his vanity and popularity, the princess trained in the art of war, armed with her battle axe and wits. However, even after obtaining the crown Beyla will come to the realization that keeping Cerulean at peace will be unforgiving.
“Exorder” is a turn-based strategy that follows Queen Beyla where she must fend off the Federation of Clans’ declaration of war based on false accusations, though it doesn’t take much imagination to see what’s truly happening. You’ll soon find that the difficulty of the game matches the arcs of the story, where everything is hard because Cerulean is struggling against the Federation and needs help from their neighbor Vermilion.
The units are useful in their own right from being able to conquer or neutralize buildings to special abilities only used by certain classes. Even similar unit classes have different stats and abilities to separate each other. You get a few units to start off with but you’ll need coins in order to recruit more. Most of the money for your budget will come from property income, which with houses will gradually generate more, but you can make some petty cash by beating an enemy unit down.
However, even if you get the money rolling in you can’t buy a bunch of units and charge in. In most cases strategy will require some puzzle solving along with “traditional” tactical thinking. Aside from using the units’ overall stats you’ll need to use their special abilities to move around the map, deal with obstacles in your way (such as unit obstruction), and cutting off the enemy’s resources and spawn points.
Knowing the units you gain and face in the game will also help you exploit their weakness, a much-needed edge in “Exorder”. However, if that’s not enough for you, then I’m glad to inform you that the developers have added a multiple save slot system you can use during mission, complete with file name editing (like the good old PC days).
The campaign data is separate from these save files so you can save, load, and delete without worrying about losing your progress. For some reason, though, you can only delete saves on the main menu, but you can still overwrite one if needed.
Outside of single player, you can enter local and online multiplayer matches. So you can either search for another player at random or create a room. The number of players is limited to the maps, but they’ve recently added four player supported maps. In other words, that invites for some really hectic turns now that you have to deal with the human element on a larger scale.
The human character models have the sort of design similar to Warcraft, where characters have a toonish figure and bulky armor. As for the beast characters, the Federation of Clans/mercenary units, they are more animalistic in form while retraining some tribal attire.
The two species are also different in skills and weaponry as well, with humans using advance fantasy weapons and naturally developed skills while the Clans are more primitive with some taking the arcane arts onto the battlefield.
The battlefields themselves are some nice fabled-esque maps that are bright and clean, considering that all units disappear in a puff of smoke when defeated. The buildings around the map are simple cartoon designs that match with the characters, with the forts being the more impressive of the structures since they have colored coded banners and bonfires blazing atop of them.
The intro fires up with some Celtic war music while a neat little cartoon plays. Rest of the soundtrack is some soft background music with some fanfare for unit recruiting and mission endings. The unit recruitment sound cue plays for all sides, so your aggravation may fall between hearing it often and knowing the enemy has recruited new soldiers to the front lines.
There isn’t much in voice acting in the game. On the map, it’s all grunts and some animal-like sounds coming from the human and beast units. The only voiced dialogue found in the game is played during the missions’ prologues and epilogues, as well as the intro scene from the game’s boot up. Everything else is in text, but you can read that in your own pace.
Some people may be discouraged from the difficulty when going into the game. I have found it frustrating at times even after one turn (I should utilize saves more often). But I can appreciate the challenge, especially when the overall goal is just make sure the key hero units don’t die. The game wants you to pick your battles wisely, figure out a strategy based on particular units, and how to use these units to get around the map more effectively.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, “Exorder” is still a pretty decent (but hard) strategy game. So if you’re into strategy games, then you might want to give “Exorder” a try.
Pros:
+ Challenging strategy game that requires a bit of puzzle solving with your tactics
+ Colorful fable presentation
+ Unique Units with various skills, stats, and capabilities
Cons:
– Difficulty is high from the beginning of the game
Gameplay: 4/5
Graphics: 3.5/5
Sound/Music: 3/5
Controls: 4/5
Replay value: 3.5/5
Verdict: 3.5/5
”Exorder” is a hard strategy game that requires some critical thinking and practical use of units in your tactics. Nevertheless, the challenge can be welcoming for veteran strategists or emblemier. And after playing a bit of the single player campaign you can use some new-found experience to use in multiplayer, and maybe screw your friends in local if they haven’t played it yet.
Title: Exorder
Developer: Solid9 Studio
Format: PC
Genre: Strategy
Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Release date: 2018-03-19
Difficulty: Hard
Spent time: 4+ hours
Average grade internationally: 60.00% Gamerankings.com
PEGI/ESRB age rating: PEGI 7+/Everyone
Price: $29.99
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor
David Lucas
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @GamerFoxem
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Tags: Exorder, Indie games, PC games, PC review, Solid9 Studio, Strategy games