Arthurian legends Is prime real estate for real time strategy games. The mix of medieval swash buckling and fantasy has always lended itself well to video games. Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises is the latest to take up the Arthurian legends banner for its setting. The real time strategy in development by Animus interactive has recently launched on Steam’s early access program.

Set in the realm of Avalon, the game hosts three multiplayer modes with single player campaigns to be added post launch. Conflict mode is your classic RTS deathmatch where players must build bases, gather resources and recruit armies. Combat mode takes away the base building and resource gathering to place you straight into the fold with your army. Empire mode is a persistent multiplayer campaign that allows you to choose a faction and fight for territory for that faction.

Animus interactive have clearly taken inspiration from a lot of different RTS games. As a RTS fan, I certainly appreciate the inclusion of base building and resource gathering as it’s something that many modern RTS games leave out.

Gameplay

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Upon starting the game your asked to choose a faction to affiliate yourself with. These factions are more than just a cosmetic standard. Each faction specializes in a certain aspect of the gameplay such as cavalry units or gold income. This applies a small but useful bonus from here on in. While factions are all well and good, the major potential issue usually comes in the form of population balancing. It is likely with the faction bonuses being what they are most players will flock to the gold income and construction cost factions being that they are the better choice overall. Hopefully the developers will find a way to make the other factions more appealing in further updates.

Empire and conflict mode are the better modes in my opinion due to the fact they contain the base building and resource gathering. The games base building works well and is easy to pick up. There are over a dozen building to build once unlocked, most also have the ability to be upgraded to become stronger. Construction is done in an open way, there’s no gridlines which allows you to place everything entirely how you want. Other than resource specific buildings like mines, the game allows you to pretty much build anywhere, including placing towers on mountainous areas.

When it comes to the actual units of the game, there is not a huge variety currently which is a shame. I heavily favoured swordsmen backed up by archers, often dividing my force into two armies to attack others from two sides. The combat however is the games weakest department currently with a lack on overall formation control, unresponsive units and outright bad A.I. The game is however pre-alpha currently so I’ll hold of scathing it too much. Battles can be massive with team 3 vs 3 action not to mention the free for all options.

When you’re not razing castles to the ground, Avalon Lords features player progression that allows you to upgrade unit’s statistics such as improving swordsmen’s endurance. While it is by no means feature complete and lacks a great deal of polish, the progression of both units and building technology could potentially be an interesting feature towards higher level PVP match ups.

Performance & Requirements

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Minimum System Requirements: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel Core2Duo or equivalent. Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Intel HD3000 DirectX: Version 9.0 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 1 GB available space

Recommended System Requirements: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel Core2Duo or equivalent. Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvdia 750 or better DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 1 GB available space

There’s a good amount of graphical options for players to tinker with however with the game being in pre-alpha it is heavily unoptimized leaving the idea of a smooth experience out the window. The game is being developed using the Unity 5 engine so it could take some time to smooth out the kinks of the technical hiccups.

Release Date

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Avalon Lords has no confirmed release date. Animus Interactive have stated that the game will be release at the earliest in quarter four of 2016 or possibly in quarter one of 2017. It is entirely feasible however that the game could be pushed further back depending on the speed and quality of development.

Additional Thoughts

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Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises is rough at the moment to say the least. It doesn’t run great even on high end machines and the unresponsive unintuitive controls are problematic at best. Yet, it does contain potential to be a great RTS with the right moves in development. With some

First and foremost, the game needs more unit variety to allow the factions to be more unique other than just some passive bonuses. This in turn will add depth to the combat and add a tactical element that currently doesn’t exist. With this in place and the controls fixed, this would give the game a good shout at running against some established franchises. Ultimately the game needs a lot of work but it’s still early days for the title yet. Once a few major content updates have been put in place it’ll be much easier to see where this game may end up. It had the potential to be a great RTS by any standard but only time will tell if it can make it.

Most Anticipated Feature: A interesting story driven single player campaign could be a great asset for the game and bring in a lot of players who enjoy RTS single player campaigns. It could add that extra little something to the game that it currently lacks and really build its universe and lore.