Confronting the past

The story of Age of Darkness begins with one of the three factions, if I may say so, that the game makes available for the player to choose from. The first one we are introduced to is called "The Order", but there are two others, "The Rebellion" and "The Volatists". 

At the beginning of the campaign you play with some characters from "The Order", very important to the game's plot, who are going to a giant supposedly magical crystal, which is completely surrounded by demonic creatures, and you, as the player, must guide these characters safely to it, paying attention to details of the environment and the characters' lines to better understand the story and what is happening.



However, when you reach the objective in question and the wizard, who is apparently the leader of that incursion, manages to interact with the crystal, the wizard starts communicating with him and ends up saying that the crystal requires some rather insane things to make things better, such as the sacrifice of supposed witches. With this, some of the characters start to find all that strange, including Edwin Everald, who is one of the protagonists and heroes of the faction. 

But even after several events that put in doubt his devotion to his faction, he decides to submit to it and accept the irregularities and contradictions that its leaders are committing, even if it goes against his values. Then a Time Skip occurs in the story, and you find the hero already old, with some scars, guiding a new apprentice and trying to teach her the values of The Order, and from there the story runs to the subsequent events, explaining the emergence of the other two factions and their histories. 



The way the story is told and the way the gameplay develops so that it is well told is very similar to the way Blizzard uses in their titles are RTS, where the dialogue scenes of the characters are presented with a rendering of the characters in the game itself at a different angle, but they also use at times, scenes with narration and art about what is happening, as if it were a kind of comic book, but with each scene individually. 

These are details that, as much as they have been used in other games of the genre, add a lot to the narrative, because they were very well executed, especially the art in the game, which has an absurd quality and a level of detailing out of the ordinary. 

The Dangers of the Night 

Age of Darkness is a strategy RTS, but not a conventional one like the games of the Starcraft, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empires franchises, where you must build your base, fortify it and create armies to destroy the enemy base, in the game you also build a base and strengthen your army, only the game works as a tower defense, your enemy is not a base, but hordes of enemies that come from time to time and you must only protect yourself. 

It is a very interesting mechanic, the game has a hero system similar to the Warcraft saga, where you have this prominent character, who is stronger than the conventional troops and progresses in level as you face enemies, learn new skills, and get stronger. 

The game also has a night and day mechanic, where during the day you can explore the map around your base more easily, because during the day the enemies are weaker and appear in smaller numbers, which is good for getting resources that appear on the map and raise the level of your hero in a safer way, and at night the monsters are more hostile, stronger and attack the base more often. 

The previous mechanism is also very relevant to another mechanic, probably the most challenging of the game, is that every certain amount of nights spent, at some point will come to a very large wave of monsters attacking your base, it is at this time when the player faces his greatest difficulty, because the first wave happens after the 3rd night and is easy to face, but from the second wave that happens after the 4th-night things change and it is very challenging to defeat all enemies without the base. 



The gameplay is very involving, the way the soundtrack changes depending on the moment, the map lighting, the behavior of enemies, and the timer for the next wave contribute a lot to generating apprehension in the player and the constant doubt in the head of "Do I have enough army and defenses for this wave?" because once your main structure is destroyed, you lose the whole run that may have taken hours to get to that point and have to start all over again. 

The way the game somehow also forces the player to explore is very interesting, because there are crucial resources that you can only get by exploring the map with your army and facing enemies, besides the fact that if you don't face enemies, your hero will be low level, without skills, and will not be able to properly face the huge hordes that will come.



Afraid of the dark? 

The developer risked a lot in some mechanics and the game proposal, it could be another RTS with a medieval theme, but good thing it wasn't, because the game itself is excellent, one of the best I've played recently, certainly a surprise more than pleasant, because it is very visible the intentionality with every detail of the game. 

Details such as the difficulty, which is very high even in the lower levels, but that marries well with the proposal of the game, which is very punitive when you make mistakes or are too slow, which ends up creating a challenge, a desire to overcome, similar to what the player experiences in SoulsLike games, where after spending anger and suffering against an enemy, once you overcome it there is immense happiness and satisfaction. 

The combination of RTS with Tower Defense is excellent too, I don't remember having seen any similar game in this sense, and it is something that combined a lot, as a player of the genre for a long time, I always preferred to defend the attacks of my enemies than to attack them, and the game offers me the experience of constant defense, which I believe is one of the most fun points of conventional RTS. 



The graphics of the game does not leave anything to be desired, although not the highest point of the game, because at times the characters are a little polygonal, they are very beautiful, the smoke of the game for example, is something very beautiful and organic, it can pass the impression of something vile, coming from something evil and that completes that whole scenario of a cursed land and the monsters that come out of it. 

Another important point is the game's audio, not only the sound effects, which are able to adapt and match very well to each situation but also the game's voiceover, which is sensational and matches the characters, managing to transmit well the personality of each one. 



Therefore, I believe that Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a great game, manages to innovate in a very old genre and that much has been done, and has a gameplay that captivates the player to want to try several times even after a failure due to the challenging difficulty and the impeccable setting, especially considering that the game is still in Early Access, so we can expect new content and repair some details that may be problems in the future. 

For this review, Age of Darkness: Final Stand was played on PC via Steam. 

We thank Team17 for providing the game access key in advance, making this review possible.