Review for A Year of Rain. PC game, the video game came out on 06/11/2019
Surely you miss the good old strategists of yesteryear. Yes, you can admit it candidly. Since we've all been orphaned by Age of Empires (which is coming back anyway) many have tried to fill that chasm in our hearts.
The last to try this Herculean test is A Year of Rain, packaged by Daedalic Entertainment. This is an RTS that according to the developers is a candidate to be a real revolution of the genre, which puts a bit of pressure on a game released on the sly and on tiptoe to not wake anyone up but judging by proclamations should be at least interesting.
The plot
If you are wondering, we must tell you that you are in good company: a real-time strategy game really needs a storyline? For Daedalic Entertainment yes, and indeed A Year of Rain starts from a simple assumption: the world of is trapped in a spiral of violence. A world where only the strongest really survive. There isn't much room for kindness but that doesn't make friendship disappear. Those who look alike stay together to survive and face difficulties. Three factions vie for dominance of a desert world and in total ruin.
Removed the necessary premise, it must be said that the campaign is not very long and the plot of the same is quite obvious, predictable and even slow. The main cause of all this are the somewhat woody animations and a dubbing that leaves something to be desired and is completely detached from the game itself. Apart from these defects, it should still be emphasized that creating a plot for a strategic one and making it credible is not an easy thing and here the commitment was still there.
Game elements
A Year of Rain looks like a lot of video games you've seen before. When starting a game in Skirmish mode we will have to choose a faction. Each faction also has several heroes to choose from. The heroes take to the battlefield and transform some game moments into… League of Legends? Yes, that's more or less the effect. Even the number of normal deployable units is not high and the absence of formations for them makes it look even more like the great success of Riot Games, or at most a Starcraft that didn't believe it enough.
Similarly, the graphic and “ideal” proximity of the building and unit models is just like that of the old Warcraft. In fact, there is little or nothing of Age of Empires and maybe it is a little bit here the big flaw of A Year of Rain: presenting itself as a real-time strategy player, which, however, has too little of a strategy to be appreciated by the hard and pure lovers of the genre.
I also lack multiplayer with only one mode (2 vs 2), which just doesn't bring it close to strategic players.
On balance it must be said that ... it rains. That is what A Year of Rain is hardly recommendable, but it must also be said that it is (fortunately) proposed to a honest price and fair for what it offers. There remains a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth for the many possibilities that the developers could have had, if only they had dared a little more. A Year of Rain has everything that in a normal strategy game would be considered superfluous and lacks the spirit that fans would like to see again.
► A Year of Rain is an RTS-Strategy-indie game developed and published by Daedalic Entertainment for PC, the video game was released on 06/11/2019
