With the inability to play Argo, Living After War still in closed beta, and lacking the ability (not to mention the desire) to play Fantasy Earth, I turned to Savage 2 – A Tortured Soul to satisfy my fix for a good MMO RTS hybrid.
For those of you that don’t know what an RTS hybrid is it’s a type of action game where either everyone or a single person can build structures to aid and support his team or fum buck them more quickly if he feels like griefing. Imagine you’re playing Age of Empires with your friends (I’m assuming you have some cause I’m a nice guy like that) except now picture that only one of you is actually playing and everyone else is scampering around as the ‘units’ that one person would normally be pouring out of the barracks, and that’s Savage in a nutshell.
When you enter the game you have a choice of either siding with steam punk like humans or (brace yourself for this) The Horde, a combination of animalistic like creatures ranging from wolves to bats to what I assume to be trolls. The two of them are in an epic resource struggle which takes place in the lands of (again brace yourself) NewEarth. Apparently the guy at the patent office went out clubbing that night and Savage just assumed “Well if here’s not here I guess the answer is yes!”
Aside from being a MMO version of Warcraft (because everyone knows that hasn’t been done before), Savage 2 –ATS has another major issue. It sells itself under the promise of being a First Person Shooter MMO, and yet the first thing you’re told when you enter the tutorial is “Don’t rely on your ranged weapons.” Does this make any since at all? It’s like if an MMORPG tutorial said “Whatever you do, don’t complete any quests.” Ranged weaponry is frowned upon at every turn. There’s no stat that supports it, and there is only 1 item that increases your ranged damage by a rather pathetic amount. It makes me wonder why they made The Horde (cough) put such a heavy reliance on squishy casters who are better off at range but are expected to fight in melee none the less.
As far as stat points go there’s no point in leveling anything besides Strength (which ups your MELEE damage) and endurance (Which ups health regen and reduces damage by a small amount) mana regen and stamina regen will both be more than covered by the items you buy and find on the field. The DoTA style of doing things which to me sort of comes off as lazy in any other form of MMO.
Yet for all its faults and issues I can’t hate the game. The RTS Hybrid is a unique miracle of gaming which honestly I think is way too few and far too far between, and I can honestly see myself playing it for quite some time. At least until I get enough money to afford Nuclear Dawn.
Savage 2- A Tortured Soul scores 6 out of 10
Another review sponsored in part by the “We want to be Blizzard” Corporation. Thank you for your funding.
