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Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars - Star bores

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Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars - Star bores

"CLANS! IN! SPAAAAAACE!" is what the description and screenshots on the App Store scream before you've even downloaded Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars.

And that's fine with me, because I like sci-fi, I like strategy management games, and I like downloading games from the App Store.

But whenever I'm assigned a Clash of Clans-esque title to play, I'm reminded of how crowded the genre is now.

Sure you occasionally get a Rival Kingdoms, DomiNations, Boom Beach, or a Tiny Realms that pushes the scope of mobile strategy forward.

Or you might get a Dawn of Steel, Samurai Siege, Siegefall, or Plunder Pirates offering pretty visuals plus a few added niceties within a standard formula.

But a lot of the time you get the uninspired or simply opportunist also-rans, like Age of Empires: Castle Siege, Hero Sky: Epic Guild Wars, Empires & Allies, Dawn of Steel, Raids of Glory, and I'm sure a bunch of others whose names escape me.

Which camp does Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars fall in to? Let's find out.

First impressions

The opening moments of Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars are spectacular.

The game opens with an animated intro that must have cost the development team a bunch of money to make.

It's all huge space-faring warships firing lasers at other hulking dreadnoughts, then massive explosions punctuating the score, before two epic mechsuit-wearing heroes leap at one another, ready to strike.

As a big fan of mecha and animation, and as someone who likes to see thoughtful design going into the way robotic technology is shown in media, it's a little bit amazing, and I found myself re-watching it immediately after it finished. You can watch it here.

But as soon as you're done with the intro, you begin to see the game for what it really is, and from what I've played so far, what is is not great.

Immediately you note that the translation is supremely shoddy. It's not the only example, but at one point your tiresomely busty female assistant warns that opposing forces are making their way towards your HQ, and drops this gem -

"Oops, enemies are approaching. Let' s build a defensive 'Fort'".

Note the tonal dissonance of the word "oops" in relation to the event that is happening. Note the unnecessary space in "let's". Note the quotation marks around "Fort" that hint that this fort may not be a fort, but a "fort".

This only compounds the issues the tutorial elements have. The game whizzes you through lots of aspects of the game quickly, simultaneously failing to provide enough information about how to play, while overloading you with actions to remember.

I'll get onto the subtleties of play in the next instalment of this review, but all I've seen so far is a vanilla take on the traditional formula of buildings to upgrade and enemies to stomp.

Not a good start then.

Day 3: A list

I've been sticking with the crushingly banal Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars over the weekend, and the game has revealed more of its slapdash construction.

Let me list off a bunch of the sloppy faults, using one gameplay vignette as an example. The list might be lazy in its construction, but it does at least mirror the half-arsed approach to design in the game it's referring to.

  • You have to train troops and then load them into carriers. That's two actions that could have been condensed into one.
  • Each button press seems to stop you from making an input for half a second, meaning that any action that takes multiple presses, like selecting multiple units, takes an inordinate amount of time.
  • Short loads punctuate almost every action you make, further slowing the pace.
  • And when loading up your troops for battle it isn't immediately clear how much space each unit type takes up, often meaning you have to rethink your troop strategy.

All the above combines to make preparing to enter battle laborious, and once you do get onto the battlefield it's a tedious and confusing experience.

You place units on one side of a map, then begin attacking a base, whether that base be another human player's or the AI. Destroy the Headquarters, and you win. There's little other tactical nuance here.

Most units will move on their own, but you also have a hero unit which can be directed. They have special abilities, but I can't for the life of me work out why sometimes I can activate them, and sometimes I can't.

What's also confusing is why my hero constantly seems to get taken out quickly by low level fortifications and units, especially this early on in the game.

At least I'm being constantly rewarded throughout Galaxy Conquest II - almost every other build action seems to complete a Mission, and give me a load of currency.

But unfortunately, right now, there's not a high enough amount of currency the game can bribe me with to convince me that I'm having a good time.

Day 7: I want to go home

When I wanted to upgrade my Headquarters recently, Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars said that I wasn't allowed until I reached a specific level with my Commander.

This meant taking part in lots of low-tier battles where the person with the bigger army won, grinding for experience until I hit the required level.

I then began the upgrade.

I then got told I had to wait 7 hours.

I then deleted the game from my device, and tried to forget that it ever existed in the first place.

Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars does almost everything it does either badly, or in such a mediocre way as to be completely forgettable.

Launching the game takes you to the title screen which asks which server you'd like to play on. This impedes you getting to the actual game, rather than being useful.

If you try to upgrade a building but do not have the required level at your Headquarters - for example, level 5 - then a piece of red text appears that simply reads "Headquarter5", hoping you understand what that might mean.

The presentation is laughably basic. A flash game from 5 years ago would think it was ugly.

The UI is cluttered to the point of annoyance, stopping you getting to what you want, and obscuring large parts of the screen.

The audio is low rent, and is presented at a poor quality, so it sounds like the effects were recorded in a bin.

Which, coincidentally, is where the rest of the game can sod off to.

In the bin. Get into the bin. Any bin. Just get into it.

Still though... good intro video.

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Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars - Star bores

Badly put together, boring to play, and wholly derivative, you have played a dozen strategy management games that are twenty times more accomplished than Galaxy Conquest II: Space Wars
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.