Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General First impressions no.2

As expected, the single player story mode is superior to the multiplayer campaign mode that was in the beta.

The raven phase is really fun, and made me laugh on occasions.

The battles are also quite good.

Now the problems:
-The strategy map seems to be a very minor part compared to the battles and the raven phase, but it's not too bad.

-only 3 chapters? The story feels somewhat short, playing through only once, and left me wanting more, now i know that it has replayability, but more chapters would've been nice. Here's hoping they will add more to the story in dlcs or expansions.

-The multiplayer campaign still feels shallow and empty, the same old spam units and send them in. In my opinion, even the custom campaign is superior although true that fully implementing all of the features as it is into multiplayer is not a good idea, however, a simplified version of them, for example a pop-up window for decisions and such at the beginning of every turn would be nice.

-The story mode is a bit too easy, even on hard.

-generals only seem to advance their skills from how you interact with them, they dont seem to get any experience from battles, which is a bit weird of a solution imo.

-Where is the giant mechanical moving fortress that was mentioned in the newspaper within the game?

-Your enemies don't have any character development at all. Why aren't your siblings talking to you or even taunt you, there isn't even a cutscene at their deaths that would add some more immersion, they're your siblings afterall. Also the "boss battle" at the end was a bit disappointing as well. Your enemies have no personality whatsoever.

-Units have too many usable skills, that the ai can use simultaeniously, while you cant, but for you to be good, you also have to use such skills, but can't because you don't have 10 mouses and hands, please add an autocast feature.

-Trooper's spoils of war skill is op.

-Would've been nice to see actual fortresses in campaign when fighting in the enemy's capital instead of plunking down a building named imperial city and just start with defenses.

-croud control effects last too long


To sum it up:
The cutscenes, story and the raven phase were extremely well done, so much so, that the other features seem a bit lackluster in comparision, and feels very incomplete at times. To me, it seems, that they spent a bit too much time on character development(which is not necessarily a bad thing and the raven phase is the best part of the game atm), and not enough time on the other parts of the game.

Seeing as how this was Larian's very first rts that implemented 4x elements, this was rather good, but the game still needs a lot of work on some of the features of it. And i do think that the release of this game was a bit too early(they could've spent some more time in fleshing out some aspects, or adding stuff like actual boss battles).

Having just beaten it I completely agree. The ending was very disappointing.

Boss Battles and some dialogue between you and your siblings would've been nice.

Also the lack of a recap on the choices you had made throughout the game was disappointing as well.

Basically made me feel none of my choices mattered, I could've been an evil SOB who always chose whatever choices gave me the most profit instead of helped the most people and it wouldn't matter because the ending is the same no matter what. The only differences being in like 1 click of dialogue that each faction says at the end.

The game feels kind of incomplete. Let's hope that more content is coming.

agreed. After playing Divinity II the story felt very undeveloped.

I'll add my own impressions here (repost from RPGwatch).

I am nearing the end of the first "chapter" (apparently there are three, each with its own strategic campaign map). My impressions so far: I am having fun. I definitely has that "oh just one more round, just one more RTS battle, just one more conversation…" addictiveness that keeps me up way past bedtime. The different elements (political decision making, strategy map, RTS battles) play nicely into each other, and switching between them keeps the game varied and interesting. Production values are at least good throughout, excellent with regards to music and voice acting. Here are some thoughts on the three gamepaly elements:

RPG element: I am actually not sure it should be called that. It's only an RPG-like conversation system that is used to make political decisions, that yield consequences in gameplay terms (changes to your gold income, popularity (which affects recruit availability I think, luck (which affects outcome of outoresolve battles, I assume, or gives you cards). But it's not really a roleplaying element beyond that. I had hoped for something more like the Normandy in ME, where you could walk around, interact with various crew, run into ongoing conversations, etc. But it is more a beautifully dressed up conversation menu. I'll repeat what I said elsewhere, writing and voice acting are among the best I have seen, and some of the conversations with the ambassadors are great political comedy. The only other RPG element is that you can upgrade your dragon, but that is more like upgrading a unit, not like upgrading a RPG avatar. What I was dissapointed in is that your enemy remains faceless. I would have expected occasional reports about what the enemy is doing, maybe emissaries or threatening letters from them. But beyond the introductory background story, the enemy is just the differently colored countries on the strategic map. The game needs better villains. Maybe something will come up in the later chapters, we'll see.

The strategy layer: It's basically risk, and that is still fun. It's relatively simple, simpler than the strategic layer I remember from Medival Total War, e.g. but it's still fun. The strategic cards (intersting e.g. sabotage cards that stop enemy units from moving, etc.) add just enough "surprise" to keep things interesting. What I found a bit problematic is that I never had money to use my generals for auto resolving battles (spending it all on units or buildings), and they didn't seem to have that big an effect on the chances of success either. That created a feeling that the generals, that are so prominent as conversation partners on the Raven actually have no big role in the game itself.

The RTS battles / Dragon action. What I dislike here is that the units from the strategic map are relatively unimportant, and the logical gap that results from producing so many units on the RTS map, that will just be gone when you go back to the strategic layer (in fact you may even loose units). To me as a more simulation-oriented gamer this feels a bit too gamey. I would have preferred a Total War like approach where what you bring into the battle is what you have. Or a Homeworld appraoch, where your mothership the Raven acts as a factory with limited potetntial. The battles themselves are fun, after I found that you can slow the speed down considerably, I did quite well. some people complain that it feels too "blobby" meaning I guess that you tend to build large clumps of units and send them against the enemy. However, the composition of the army, the timing all matter, micromanaging e.g. unit special abilities, or selecting which enemy to target with which troop (there are some rock-paper -scissor mechanics at work there), and of course adding the right support units etc. all matter, so I find this fun enough. Blasting around with the dragon is pure fun (untile the AA missiles hit you…), and can easily turn the tide. After a few battles I got the hang of it, switching between dragon form and RTS command works well. There are quite a few poorly documented hotkeys that allow you to do most stuff in dragon form, but I usually just switch back. My main complaint is actually that there seem to be too few maps, I have seen several multiple times already, and they are not different enough to really force different approaches. E.g. would be nice to have some where you have to use naval or aerial units more, or where you don't have additional resource spots, or, or, or….

So my conclusion so far: great fun game with some flaws. None of the parts by itself is particularly great, but the combination is just a ton of fun, and something you haven't seen before. There is hardly any RPG in it, but the decision making on the raven should be appealing to RPG players regardless.

I don't know if this one is among them, but I've noticed a few easter egg articles among the newspaper entries, such as the one about imps using nothing but flags to clear mines (a Minesweeper reference).

Wow. I got my butt handed to me in my first battle. I spent about 1 hour going through the tutorial, and 30 minutes or so reading through the manual before even starting the Campaign. After starting the campaign, I spent another 30 minutes getting familiar with all of the ship and the map, checking out sub screens, etc. My first turn was auto played, and my second turn was 2 battles. The first was a 48%-52% battle that was not in my favor. I auto played it and won. The second battle was pretty even. We both had 4 troops. There wasn't much enemy presence on the battlefield to start, and I went about my business as the tutorials had shown. Building troops and getting ready to head out to conquer. It was within a few minutes and they just kept coming. I was forced to defend. 20 minutes later and the AI had the whole map and a gazillion troops all over, just flooding me. I didn't feel like i had any time to go out and capture empty settlements, yet alone try and build and manage multiple settlements and troops at the same time while also trying to plan how and where to attack the enemy. It was way to fast paced for me on Normal. My brain just isn't as quick as it use to be. Unless there is a way to slow the game speed down in the realtime battles so I have time to think and execute, I'm not going to enjoy this game as much as I wanted to.
I read somewhere else in this thread about someone mentioning that when going into battle with "X" amount of troops, that should be it. That would allow more time plan and execute. I have to agree.
It kinda reminds me of "Age of Empires" without the resource gathering. When those battles got going in that game, you were just pumping out troops out of all of your barracks to rally points appropriately placed to put pressure on the enemy.
I'm going to go back and play more though, and hope that I can make it work for me.

You can slow it down using the - key (+ to speed up)and set the default speed in the options. That makes a huge difference.

The most important tips:
- build a forge immediately
- seize other building patches, especially recruitment platforms next.
- start build an army, and send it to that fortification that the enemy will attack first (but keep enough recruits to be able to dragon transform)
- try to avoid major confrontation until you can transfor and help your troops out.
- Once you have two ro three recruitment citadels, you can build a larger army. Assign a sizable queue to each forge/factory, set a gathering point, then you can spend time as a dragon, while your army gets constant reinforcements. Once you feel ready gaterh your army under your dragon and head out to conquer.

Served me well through the first battles.

Or, research armor first, spam in about 2-4 of them, and wipe all of the enemies in 15 turns(constantly reinforcing your armours with more armour) and get an achievement in the process.

As i've said, using only armours and devastators, the game gets unbalanced, and you can easily overwhelm your enemy, also if you have about 60%+ chance to win, just send your starting units to the enemy base at the start of the skirmish battle and you win.

Meh, why would you give tips that unbalance the game - I wouldn't want to play that way

Btw, I only needed 12 turns, without such a strategy on normal.

Speaking about hard and btw this isn't a strategy, also i didnt need 15 turns either, just said 15 turns cause of the achievement.