So I started playing this this week and… I’m not really enjoying the campaign and the overall gameplay I’m still suspect of, but I keep returning to it. I think it’s a mix of pig-headedness, the feeling that I’m not ‘getting it’, the Qt3 tournament compelling me to get better, and being able to fit a few games in per session. Granted, almost every time I rage quit out with the same kinds of criticism but… I keep firing it up again.
I feel like every level has been designed to be as thoroughly annoying as possible, from unfair proc. gen. maps to warrens spawning everywhere with the AI controlling split units while you can only ever move them around in blobs. Most levels seem to have some sort of twist that almost always screws you over the first time you play then you just have to try and work out the rhythm of play to overcome it, provided the proc. gen. levels are kind to you.
The ‘real-time strategy distilled’ tagline is amusing because it’s been distilled so much that, like I said above, you have to blob your units around the map. You can move your whole army around together or you can give orders to all units of a certain type. It’s all or nothing. This is super simple but to my surprise I’ve found that it increases micro-management if you want to do anything other than mass blob things to death. There’s a lot of juggling involved.
There was one campaign level where you had to deal with waves of winged demons coming from behind and from in front. To kill the winged demons you needed long range shooters but they were very expensive and even if you bought two you could only move them around together rather than leaving one at the back and taking one up front. The only way to do it was to keep marching them back and forth until you’d amassed enough units to steamroll the final gristmill.
The comparisons to Sacrifice are on point but I do prefer this. While Tooth and Tail is a very blobby and messy RTS, it’s still easier to control than Sacrifice which I found incredibly frustrating. I prefer Sacrifice’s art direction though, as pretty and Tooth and Tail is!