Age of Darkness: Final Stand Review

Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a dark fantasy survival RTS that can feel like a roguelike because it offers quite a challenge out of the gate. It’s also just entered early access so this game is bound to evolve and change over time and so may this review. While the game is challenging, you’ll quickly fall into line after getting the hang of things and taking a good look at the tutorial that’s neatly nestled in the pause menu. I don’t have many complaints at all, and it is very polished and I love the direction it’s working towards.

I think the theme and graphics create such a great composition coupled with an already very well done soundtrack. The ticking at night really adds anxiety to the dangers that are looming in the dark. It is imperative that you protect your buildings and they are your area of vision in the night, if you lose your Keep its game over. Some of the lines of site to ground you can build on are difficult to see and you can unknowingly leave gaps in your walls, minor annoyance.

I found the gameplay to be pretty engaging and challenging, you are always racing against a clock and even if you think you have made waves of progress you are probably still behind with the impending waves ahead. It has a great roguelike feel because you are bound to die quite a few times, hopefully with a new idea to build an army to overcome the ever lingering waves of nightmares that seek to decimate you and your village, it gets wild.

Some things I wish were different was maybe a slower growth in how intense the game gets, the hordes are massive on normal. It’s difficult to get the resources at first to scale your base up, especially with the RNG of random maps and resources. There isn’t a tutorial to speak of but looking in the pause menu you can figure out pretty much all you need to know. I like this game a lot already and there seems to be some cool variety in things you can discover. Difficult, but an amazing start in EA.