➤ Ancestors Legacy: the review 🎮

We confess that after Hatred and IS Defense we didn't expect much from Ancestors Legacy, the new title of Destructive Creations. Instead we were forced to change our minds and, despite some problems, it is impossible not to admit that this is an excellent strategy in real time. Especially in lean times like these, it will surely delight fans of the genre. In a sense, the signature of Destructive Creations is not lacking, given that it is particularly bloody and brutal both in terms of graphics and in terms of difficulty, but fortunately Ancestors Legacy also has many other qualities to unleash.

Game content

As soon as the game is started, you have to choose whether to play online or one of the single player campaigns present. Currently there are six of these, with two more coming soon. The goal of the developers is to have two for each of the four factions, all well characterized: Vikings, Anglo Saxons, Germans and Slavs. Each campaign consists of five missions: considering that each mission can last even more than an hour, it is not difficult to calculate that already now, to finish them all, you have to play for well over twenty hours. The calculation is approximate but takes into account the fact that the tutorial campaign, that is the first of the Vikings, is slightly shorter than the others, as are the first missions of each campaign. The other single player mode offered is that Skirmish, which is identical to every other skirmish mode seen in other RTSs, with players having to fight to grab the map's resources and destroy the bases of the opponents obviously aiming to do the same.

If desired, it is also possible to fight for the accumulation of points, awarded by conquering and maintaining the various bases (in this case the villages). If we want the skirmish mode it also gives a taste of what Ancestors Legacy is online, nothing more, nothing less, with of course the human players adding a lot to the fun. However it is evident that the focus of the product is in the single player, where the best insights lie and where you can truly experience all game systems.

Historical campaigns

The campaigns we mentioned above are all based on real historical events, obviously re-read to be adapted to the game. The setting is exquisitely medieval, with the various missions all set around the year one thousand (let's say from the end of 900 AD, up to 1200 AD). Interestingly, the developers have also chosen to reproduce battles that are not really famous, however they make better than the pitched ones the sense of what a war between tribes or very small factions in the Middle Ages meant. Of course, don't expect real history lessons, but at least here in addition to seeing very large armies fighting in the open field, you will find that often at the time the "battles" were more like raids by small groups of marauders, with the aggressors who, moreover, tried to act with a certain circumspection before acting.

Each campaign is introduced by hand-drawn narrative inserts that present the historical scenario, inserts that also support the various missions, in order to contextualize them properly. In terms of gameplay Ancestors Legacy is a cross between a classic real-time strategy to the Command & Conquer and a more tactical to the Company of Heroes. Each mission has its objectives, which in order to be achieved require the various functions to be exploited from time to time. Thus, for example, in some missions it is necessary to conquer and develop one or more villages to train troops and form an army (for a maximum of ten units); in others it is necessary to move cautiously around the map, perhaps exploiting the other grass to hide and trying to free captured troops to then take them into battle; in still others it is necessary to cross very dangerous areas with a handful of men, to then defend themselves from the constant assaults of the enemies by perhaps developing a village. In short, the variety is there and, although some situations tend to repeat themselves during the campaigns, the sense of repetition is very low.

Combat

After all, a lot of variety required some sacrifices in some aspects of the game, such as in the construction of villages, where the system chooses the positioning of the buildings and where the development of technologies for the various units are quite limited.

The actual combat is much more accurate which, although based on the classic "rock, paper and scissor" system, offers several interesting tactical ideas. For example, it must be considered that melee units cannot be disengaged after engagement, while archers and crossbowmen are more versatile and can be made to move at any time. The retreat button must also be taken into consideration, which allows troops to flee to a safe area or to the nearest base in case things are going badly. In this way it is possible to heal the wounded and, in the case of having a barracks, to reinforce the ranks. In addition to the regular troops (spearmen, warriors, knights, archers and so on), there are also special troops, the heroes, the latter usually the historical characters protagonists of the campaign. Heroes are particularly powerful troops, unique to having a single energy bar, but not invincible (don't expect to be able to pass a level relying on them alone). They have activatable special abilities capable of affecting the entire army:

for example, they can instill courage in the troops, or they can increase their aggressiveness, or they can terrorize the opposing units by forcing them to flee momentarily and more. In general, the Ancestors Legacy gameplay requires you to be particularly active, because artificial intelligence is among the most aggressive seen in the genre: in some maps the attacks continue unabated and leave very little time to take countermeasures. The resources, which are limited and sometimes difficult to find, make it even more difficult. In short, food, wood and iron are found in scarce quantities, often just those needed to achieve the given objectives, and must be managed carefully. In particular, food must never be lacking, on pain of the moral collapse of the army with subsequent defections. All this translates into a really high challenge, even selecting the medium difficulty level (there are three of them), which will test newbies in particular.

Brutal but not too smart

That said, it must be said that Ancestors Legacy is not a defect-free product. in the meantime the aforementioned artificial intelligence is indeed aggressive, but also very obtuse and limits itself to attacking with its head down without making big tactical evaluations.

So it is not difficult to make it end up inside our traps or to make it flow into the various funnels of which the maps are often scattered (bridges, gates and so on), where obviously it ends up losing the advantages given by the numerical superiority or the initial deployment. The problems of artificial intelligence are also clearly visible in the allies (when the missions foresee them), who are unlikely to be able to offer the necessary support, obviously beyond the battles in which they act according to predetermined patterns. Another limitation of the game is the lack of real news. Destructive Creations did its job well, but it didn't introduce strong elements that set it apart from the competition, brutality aside. Nothing too dramatic, given that in 2018 we were very few to consider the originality of a video game as a merit. From a technical point of view Ancestors Legacy stands out above all for the bloody animations, which make the fights particularly tasty, above all thanks to the possibility of entering the action with the camera (otherwise fixed), following the individual units. Unreal Engine 4 has been well used although, blood aside, nothing really stands out.

The best element is probably the fire that flares up from buildings when they are attacked by troops, a fire linked to the mechanic of conquest that requires you to burn the town halls of the villages to take control. For the rest, we are faced with a product that is well-finished and nothing more, that is, that does not stand out for its style or richness of details.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Intel Core i7-4770 processor
16 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 video card
Windows 10 operating system

Minimum requirements

Sistema operativo Windows 7 (Service Pack 1), Windows 8.1 e Windows 10 - (64-bit solo).
Processore 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5-750 o 3.2 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 955
4 GB of RAM
Scheda video NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 o AMD Radeon HD5850 (1 GB VRAM)
DirectX 11
18 GB of hard disk space

Recommended Requirements

AMD Octa-Core / Intel Quad-Core 3.4 GHz processor (AMD FX X8 8350 or Intel Core i5 3570 or new architectures recommended)
8 GB of RAM
AMD / NVIDIA video card with at least 2048MB of VRAM and with support for DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5.0. AMD Radeon R9 285 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 and above recommended.

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 39,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (4)

8.0

Your vote

Ancestors Legacy adds nothing to the real-time strategy world, but given the lean in recent years, it's a title that will appeal to fans of the genre, particularly those who like single player campaigns. Brutal, bloodthirsty, but at the same time rigorous and solid in execution, he suffers only from a somewhat dull artificial intelligence, which limits some situations. In general, however, it is an excellent title, made by a developer from whom we did not expect much.