The art of getting out of the shoe – “AI War 2” review

Looking at the screenshots and knowing the genre assignment of AI War 2, we can expect another classic RTS full of space battles – this was certainly the case in my case. Nevertheless, this impression wears off quite quickly, because the title puts emphasis on slightly different gameplay elements than competing productions, and reduces the complexity of some mechanics in favor of developing or refreshing others.

From the authors’ point of view, this is undoubtedly a good move, giving the game a unique character, as well as reducing the contribution of creators and users to those areas of the game that were considered less important. As a player, I also began to appreciate some of the solutions used here, but unfortunately it was not without stumbling and grinding my teeth.

How equal to equal? No thanks!

The main feature that distinguishes AI War 2 from the crowd is its asymmetry. Although something has been taken from a typical 4X here, the dynamics of the scenarios turns out to be completely different. We are not dealing with a standard arms race between several rivals, each starting in their corner of the map with comparable resources and capabilities, then trying to capture as much territory as possible and gather as many troops as possible.

The new production of Arcen Games is a story about humanity awakened with a hand in the potty – we start out on a “boo”, with residual goods at our disposal, which, however, cannot be said about our opponents. Bad artificial intelligence won the war a long time ago, it conquered everything worth conquering. So there is no time to calmly stockpile, gradually seize neutral territories, and only take the first skirmishes when we are ready. Whatever we want to get, we have to tear it away from others – from the very beginning, we will be forced to take over planets, steal technology, and hack enemy systems. But how exactly are we supposed to do this when we are so significantly weaker?

This is just a minor glitch, it’s not worth worrying about!

As already mentioned, the forces of the malevolent machines have long won; they are not particularly interested in further expansion and scrupulous searching for survivors of organic beings in the recesses of the universe. Rather, they are interested in maintaining the status quo, and thus – the vast majority of their moves will be of a reaction to our actions, not the other way around. At first, the digital enemy does not consider us a threat at all, so he does not pay much attention to the first attacks or sabotage actions – he responds to them sluggishly, does not organize attacks on our territory. Nevertheless, this situation changes over time, because the game constantly adds AIP points, which reflect the level of irritation of the enemy with our moves. The higher the AIP, the more the AI ​​worries about the actions of the human race, and the more it will try to fight us. This will translate not only into the ferocity of the attacks – the enraged enemy will produce more ships, strengthen their own territory,

Reducing AIP after we get older is difficult and is only intended to minimize waste and create opportunities to catch your breath for a moment. The scenarios will not provide us with enough options to reduce it so that we can keep the degree of threat relatively constant. Each captured planet or destroyed enemy installation will be paid for with increased aggression of the machines. In order to be successful, we must plan our moves carefully – our goal is not to conquer the entire map, but to occupy the opponent’s home planet and turn off the so-called AI Overlord, i.e. artificial intelligence controlling enemy units. Of course, it is up to us how we achieve this. We can try to irritate the opponent as little as possible in order to calmly collect a strike unit that is only strong enough to to defeat the main planet’s defenders and then smuggle it silently to its destination. We can fight openly (but take over only the most important planets) and try to create a safe corridor to the enemy base. We can also kick with the horse and conquer everything as it goes – but this strategy seems to be by far the worst, and in many scenarios it will lead to our failure, because it will bring us a counterattack that we cannot fight off before we even take our expansion to a key planet.

I have no idea what I’m doing …

As AI War 2 puts some elements of the typical RTS gameplay on its head, it is not difficult to get lost in the first hours of the game. In my opinion, the tutorial itself leaves a lot to be desired. Although it seems quite elaborate and explains the basics of the game enough for us to start the right scenario and not get immediately lashed, many issues will still be unclear to us – and unfortunately, with the developers’ willingness to break certain patterns, we cannot rely on intuition and experience here with other titles.

For example: I managed to get to the middle of the first “serious” map without understanding how ships are produced and how the maximum number of units that can be created is actually raised. At this point, it is also worth mentioning that the new work of Arcen Games decides to present battles in a macro scale. We won’t be directing individual ships or fighter squadrons here, using the active abilities of our units… nothing like that. We are in command of the entire fleet, that is, the transport ship that functions as the mother ship, and all the rest of the smaller ships assigned to it, the number of which gradually goes into hundreds and then thousands. In such conditions, of course, we cannot personally lead the entire group – the skirmishes are not overly tactical.

Now, however, we can return to my problem with creating new ships. As I said, AI War 2“Saves” on some mechanics, greatly simplifying them. As it would be very tedious to manually produce this number of units, it is done automatically. The ships that subordinate to our transporters are self-replenishing as long as we have resources for it, and there is a factory or a special type of ship nearby that can serve as a mobile factory. However, increasing the size of our forces through their purchase or building mode is … completely impossible. Thus, when playing for the first time, I occupied other planets, having no idea on what basis my lost troops complement each other or what I can do to increase their maximum number and combat utility. Only after reviewing a few columns in the guide available from the main menu, I read it,

Nobody said it would be easy!

I had at least a few puzzles of this type with this title, and many of them had to be solved either by careful observation and reading interface messages, or by visiting the aforementioned guide. Generally speaking, it is not a particularly accessible game – it takes time to learn quite specific rules (even if we have already dealt with other strategic productions), and the fairly high level of difficulty will not allow us to combine the method of trial and error without stress. .

However, I am not saying that it is bad. Getting caught up in these somewhat confusing rules and practicing the cosmic conquests brings a lot of satisfaction, and the whole thing can be really addictive with time. This is the charm of AI War 2 – not everyone will like it. On the other hand, for many it can be a breath of fresh air nowadays, when many games are really simple – both to use and in terms of the level of difficulty.

Finally, it is also worth saying a few words about the graphics and sound. The views here are quite average – sometimes we’ll be happy to hang our eyes on some interesting looking planet or an impressive ship, but nothing will make our slippers fall from the impression. However, music deserves a distinction. The soundtrack mixes ambient tracks, quite standard for titles from the space sci-fi, with interesting melodies inspired by classical music, in which we can hear a piano and even a violin. It is undoubtedly an interesting mix, and the quality of the tracks themselves is at a high level – many of them will be a buzzing noise for some time after shutting down the computer.