Fort Triumph [Early Access Review]: X-COM strategy & RPG mashup

Fort Triumph

Fort Triumph takes the familiar concept of X-COM — a tactical plow-based strategy series — and rolls in some fantasy part-playing elements. It'due south similar to what Ubisoft and Nintendo did with Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle merely on PC and in a humorous fantasy setting.

Now bachelor on Steam as an Early Access release, I took Fort Triumph for a spin.

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My plow, your turn

Much like Ubisoft and Nintendo'southward turn-based game on Switch, Fort Triumph is a championship I was anticipating but rather reserved since it'due south pretty easy to make the X-COM formula fail horribly. I was pleasantly surprised for a second time around. From the first, y'all're presented with a fantasy principal menu with big text and elements and vivid colors.

And that'south connected throughout the game. The surroundings looks sharp and fantastical, characters are unique and the UI gets the task done. For a game that pulled in only shy of $lxxx,000 on Kickstarter and has only just hitting public (but early on) release, information technology'due south very polished.

Fort Triumph

There are different maps and biomes that are used, including interior locations, caves, and more to continue information technology all feeling fresh as you lot progress through the single-player campaign. Interestingly, the engine randomly generates the map on launch, meaning you can restart a mission and have a different level layout.

Animations are crisp and fluid and the photographic camera pans effectually every bit y'all'd expect in such a game. The rather big world is begging to exist explored besides, assuasive you to visit places, raid bases, uncover secrets, and triumph to victory — and maybe relieve the earth in the process.

Strategic brilliance

Fort Triumph

Your squad of heroes all have their own abilities, some are melee and others are range-focused. Getting a grip on the party and making use of skills is 1 thing only taking full reward of strengths and countering weaknesses takes some fourth dimension to principal.

Detected enemies are displayed on the right-manus-side, while your team is located on the left, showcasing health, available action points, and a bar representing progress made to the next character level. Actual RPG elements are rather basic here. In that location's a story that you have your trusty adventurers on, but information technology would be overnice to see more features fleshed out similar character and party cosmos (or at to the lowest degree being able to cull names and whatnot, as of correct now it's all randomized).

The environment itself tin can be interacted with in great depth. Buildings can exist destroyed, crates tin can be kicked into enemies and even objects toppled to span gaps. Not merely do you have the option to win at besting enemies in combat, merely also sneaky and creative ways of avoiding sure encounters. And when you do want to fight, you'll have to contend with encompass, range and accuracy to calculate hit chance and harm.

Fort Triumph

Interestingly, there are some solid implemented mechanics, including faction relations (leading to dynamic quests), hit up the tavern for quests, and more. The political party can consist of the ranger, mage, savage, and paladin though you can choose which classes you lot wish to take out. Depending on chosen skills and abilities when leveling up, it's downwards to yous to class the most effective party.

Gameplay-wise, it's a lot of fun and the mechanics piece of work together well. For an early release, it has bags of potential. There are some crazy moments, some funny ones too — a goblin shot an pointer towards one of my characters, only hit the bedrock she was using for cover and shot the rock off-screen.

Room for improvement

Fort Triumph

I'm not a fan of the settings console, which doesn't actually contain much in terms of configuration at all. In that location's no choice for borderless window style, nor are there any fine-tuning controls for altering graphics quality (aside from choosing from a pre-determined drop-downwards menu). This is something that can be addressed in future updates.

You're also tasked with using the keyboard to really take advantage of manipulating the camera, but this is a feature I'd prefer to see also tied to the mouse (the wheel push could be assigned to camera rotation, for example). Once more, this is downwards to the lackluster settings panel, which doesn't offer any way of changing upwardly keybindings.

It'southward even so early days, but what CookieByte Entertainment has managed to release on PC is impressive and I'm excited to see what the team adds to the game every bit development continues. Fort Triumph is now bachelor for purchase on Steam as an Early Access title.

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