Stormgate is a confusing proposition. It's an RTS run by ex-Blizzard developers that's almost nothing like StarCraft, but not quite. It's a free-to-play game, but it has a business model that makes you feel like you're getting a harder deal than if you just dropped thirty notes outright. It's currently in Early Access, but it's been in a gravity-defying sort of Super Early Access (you have to pay to get into it) for a few weeks now.
It all made me feel very tired and I miss the days when you would go into a shop and buy a boxed game for a certain amount of money and the whole game was in the box and you would go home and install it on your computer and play it until your mother said “Richard!” (only my mother calls me Richard) “put that computer down and go outside and get some exercise! Do you want to die at 35?” Well, I'm 36 now, mother. Almost 37. So who's laughing with palpitations now?
Ahem. But the most confusing thing about Stormgate is that there’s a potentially interesting strategy game here. Unfortunately, it puts its most boring foot forward, with three intriguing factions buried beneath a shell of focus-test-approved mediocrity and a campaign that doesn’t show you anything good before asking you to pull out your wallet.
The basic premise of Stormgate is this: imagine StarCraft falling in love with WarCraft and together they spawned an army of baby demons spewing forth… actually, don't imagine that. A stylish and polished RTS that's governed by the rule of three, can be played with three different factions, and can be played three different ways.
Unfortunately, the first path is currently the worst path. Stormgate's main theme is a single-player campaign consisting of six missions that put you in control of the Vanguard, Stormgate's technologically advanced human faction, as they fight a war against the Infernals, Stormgate's demon faction. Its story revolves around a headstrong female soldier named Amara, whose father was present during the first Infernal invasion, as she attempts to rally the Vanguard against the machinations of an Infernal named Maloc.
The narrative is unmistakably Blizzard in its approach, from the flashy opening scene with expensive-looking CG animation to the cursed sword Amara acquires early in the story that definitely doesn't corrupt her in any way. The problem is, none of it is particularly engaging. Amara has all the charisma of a Star Wars prequel Jedi, while the demons are all pantomime villains from Clive Barker's amateur drama troupe. It's worth noting that developer Frost Giant has stated that some of the voice acting and animation are temporary, but I'm not sure fresh voice talent will change the fact that Amara is a terrible companion.
This bland packaging includes some passable but run-of-the-mill RTS missions. The freely accessible prologue includes a character-focused mission that requires you to complete a level with a limited number of units, and two missions that involve building a base to conquer one or more enemy bases. This is all nice, but nothing I haven't seen in thousands of RTSs before.
Also, everything I love about Stormgate right now has one big “but”. Base building, for example, is fluid and satisfying, with nice animations for assembling structures. Once they're built, though, I find it difficult to visually parse different buildings, meaning I tend to forget which structure is which. Combat is flashy but lacks weight, especially when larger units are fighting it out. I like the quick menu that lets you issue construction and recruitment orders, but I don't understand why selecting units and confirming orders aren't universally bound to both mouse buttons. Left-click should ALWAYS select units, Frost Giant, right-click should ALWAYS issue an order, even if you're deploying a special ability or confirming the construction of a building. Anything else is heresy. I've spoken.
By the third mission, when you have to build and defend a base against three demon bases, I was starting to get the hang of Stormgate, but I hadn't yet fully enjoyed it. This was the point where Stormgate said “okay, you've had enough for free, mate, you've got time to spend some money”. The remaining three campaign missions cost nine pounds to play. That might have been tempting if the previous three missions had been wildly entertaining. But they weren't, so I didn't.
Instead, I jumped into the game's solo multiplayer and skirmish mode to take a look at the other two factions. It's here that I discovered Stormgate at its most interesting. While the Vanguard is a bit dull, the other two factions, the Infernals and Celestials, are anything but.
Of the two, the Infernals are my favorite. Frost Giant has put a lot of thought into making them feel downright evil. For starters, they don’t build structures; they sacrifice flesh to literally drag them out of hell. Every building you “build” eventually opens up a huge crack in the ground for your structure to rise from. Likewise, you don’t really “collect” units. Each unit type automatically builds a charge over time. Once a single charge is full, you can instantly summon that unit onto the battlefield. This means you can assemble armies really quickly and launch them at enemies for a nasty surprise.
Playing as Infernals brings back fond memories of being a scary little jerk to fantasy heroes in Dungeon Keeper, a feeling that's amplified by the creative demon types. Even your base demon, the Brute, has a nasty trick where he can sacrifice himself to split into two smaller, AI-controlled demons.
The remaining faction, the Celestials, are less interesting than the Infernals, but arguably more interesting because of how weird they are. Imagine a group of Lord of the Rings elves getting really into their new age crystal nonsense and then starting building planes, and you have a vague idea of what the Celestials are like. Worker units are true blue prisms that drain energy from resource fields, while buildings are constructed via biblical angelic units that transform into a selected structure on command. They are slower to build than the Infernals, with a heavy emphasis on air units. But if you can get those air units off the ground, the Celestials are very hard to resist unless you are adequately prepared.
I should emphasize that this is a very, very basic introduction to these factions. While most units have special abilities that can be activated by command, both Infernals and Celestials can be triggered faction-wide by accumulating a special, tertiary resource. In the case of Infernals, they accumulate ritual power by killing enemies, while Celestials gather energy by placing certain types of buildings. The maps also contain a wide variety of control points that provide bonuses that encourage you to build satellite bases next to your main headquarters.
In short, there’s a ton of strategic nuance to how these factions are constructed, which makes it an even bigger shame that Stormgate’s mechanical diversity is overshadowed by the game’s painfully post-Overwatch art style. I’ve never liked this semi-stylized approach to art design to begin with, and I’m even less thrilled about it now that it’s been adopted by every developer who makes a big-budget multiplayer game that wants me to care about its characters but doesn’t actually provide any narrative foundation. Still, I really don’t think this would work in a strategy game about evil aliens tearing apart reality to grab humanity by the lungs. I want Stormgate to be grittier, somber, weightier, more punchy, not delivered with all the seriousness of a Saturday morning cartoon.
At the moment, Stormgate is a potentially good game that leaves a bad first impression. Six missions, only three of which are free to play, make for neither a good campaign nor a good deal, and the game’s most interesting factions are hidden in the multiplayer mode, where you have to learn a lot on the fly to get the most out of it. All that being said, I don’t think anyone should underestimate it. Behind the dull art style lies a tactically chewable strategy game. If you’re a fan of the genre and have friends like you, you can have a lot of fun in the 1v1 multiplayer mode; I should emphasize that it also costs nothing to try.