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Rising Warriors review - Boring name, nice game

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iOS
| Rising Warriors
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Rising Warriors review - Boring name, nice game
|
iOS
| Rising Warriors

At this point, new free to play build and battlers - even those 'with a twist' - are unlikely to set anyone's heart racing.

For Rising Warriors, a new IP from Vietnamese developer Roti Studios, the best chance of overcoming this growing apathy lies in its simplicity.

Rising Warriors

Usually, it can take a while to get going in these kinds of games. The immaculate and well guarded fortresses of high level Clash of Clans players are all well and good, but the immediate reality is little more than a Town Hall straddled by some flimsy brickwork.

But in Rising Warriors, your base - somewhat grandiosely called a 'city' - is all on a 2D plane. When you want to add a new building, it plops neatly into an allocated building site. No time wasted dragging stuff around, no fuss.

It looks lovely, too, all vivid colours and storybook crenellations. The little citizens exude a great deal of character as they mooch around with their massive heads and dumpy legs, despite their artist cruelly neglecting to add eyes.

In short, it feels like a nice place to be - and a much easier maintenance job than most other mobile strategy games.

Out of your hands

But as much as it would be nice to just chill out with the cute eyeless townsfolk, establishing a liberal enclave based on pacifism and mutual respect, engaging in combat is essential.

At this point, it should be clear that Rising Warriors isn't a game for hardcore strategy fans. And indeed, its combat system is streamlined to the extent that many would fail to see the strategy in it at all.

You can use mana to pick off opposing units before the battle's formally begun, using spells such as lightning and meteor.

But after that, your control is wrested away for the meat of the battle.

What it nails, though, is the feeling of a real face-off. Again benefiting from the 2D perspective, you and your opponent's armies clash head-on.

Putting on a show

Pikemen are on the frontline, charging at one another with their jabby sticks. Behind them lurk the ranged units, Gunners and Sharpshooters, with lance-wielding Knights on horseback.

After a bit of levelling up, you can recruit variants of each of these four types - Shamans and Centaurs, for example - for up to 80 vs. 80 battles.

Battles remain a tense affair despite a lack of control, as both sides whittle each other down over a series of rounds until one lies fully defeated.

There's also a particularly cool split-screen effect as the two armies steel themselves for the next head-on clash, which adds a nice sense of comic-esque drama.

Inviting and homely back at the base, but somehow tense, violent, and impactful in combat, it's a game that handles both sides of the build and battle coin with aplomb.

Rising Warriors review - Boring name, nice game

Rising Warriors is a pleasantly surprising light strategy package that deserves better than its horrendously generic title
Score
Matt Suckley
Matt Suckley
Achingly contrarian. Proud owner of an N-Gage and a PSP Go. Matt spends most of his time writing about indie games of which you've never heard. Like that one, yes. Matt is an English student, and largely terrible at games. Go figure.