Iron Marines Review | Simple does not mean simplistic
A colorful graphic style may bring one to believe that a game is aimed to a casual audience with no appeal to more veteran players, that a simple game is one without any kind of depth or interesting mechanics, but that's not true.
Simple does not mean simplistic and Iron Marines demonstrates this.
Aesthetics
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The first of the three worlds in the game |
Iron Marines uses a lot of very colorful 2D sprites, despite being highly saturated, they have been drawn well enough that everything has a distinct silhouette that helps avoid confusion in the midst of battle.
Animations are nice, although some walking upward ones can look a bit jarring since most of the units don't have a back facing sprite when walking, which is odd since they have back facing sprites when they are shooting.
Voice acting is good with heroes sometimes shouting something funny either when selected or using an ability, every unit and hero has a distinct and recognizable voice that gives them character.
Sound design is also well done, reaching a satisfying middle ground between clarity and atmosphere.
Soundtrack on the other hand is uninteresting and doesn't stick out, it won't hurt your ears, but if you want to listen to something interesting you're better off putting your own custom playlist.
Summarizing, the game has very pretty images, but falls flat on the music department.
Game Mechanics
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The ability to swap unit type on the field allows for exciting choices. |
Like other more complex real time strategy games, the goal of this title is to balance resource gathering, base building and commanding of your units into a fast and precise tactic to defeat your enemy, lest you get overwhelmed and lose.
There are 9 unit types in total divided in 3 main categories: soldiers, mechs and aliens, all of them have 3 subtypes with each one of them having their one utility, for instance: 2 subtypes for the soldiers are marines and snipers.
The marines are good all-rounders with a standard attack and decent armor, while the snipers can dish a lot of damage from a distance, but lack armor and need to be kept far away from the fight least they die in an instant.
Despite the fairly small unit cap, the game compensates this by letting any unit being able to swap from one subtype to the other, as such if you find yourself in a situation where you may need another unit, you only need to click on it and select the subtype you want as long as they belong to the same category.
In addition, a unit can regenerate its own health as long as it doesn't take damage for a little time, all of this is true for the mechs and the aliens too.
There is also a turret with a limited life-span that deals damage on deployment, useful when you want a distraction while your army retreats.
Even if the roster is small, it manages to be engaging thanks to the fact
that every unit has a specific purpose on the field and, if you don't
like a unit you received at the start of the mission, it's always
possible to swap it.
There are 14 Heroes in the game and each one has 2 unique special abilities, however, I ended up using constantly only 4 of them.
This is due to the power creep: the heroes that you unlock at a point are much weaker than one you may have used until now since the heroes level up and therefore have become stronger, in addition the fact that you may have become used to a certain hero and learned how to use it properly doesn't bring you to pick a new one unless they are significantly stronger. Heroes require a lot of micromanaging to be efficient, but when used right, they can turn the tide of a battle to your favor.
Apart from commanding units you can also build bases on some location, don't expect a lot of base-building since there are only 2 types: towers(with 3 subtypes) and refineries of various fixed sizes. The refineries gather ether-watt, the resource needed to train troops and build the towers on some predetermined locations. Not much to say, there are some upgrades you can buy for each building and they too regenerate after a some time as long as they don't take any damage.
If you're a person that enjoys building vast bases in more standard real time strategy games, you are not going to like this.
Beyond the temporary "on the field" currency used for training units and building structures, there are 2 persistent currencies that are gained after beating a level: gold and platinum coins.
With gold coins, you can buy consumable powers usable during a mission, these powers range from basic ones that cause damage to others that give you more ether-watt.
You don't really need them, but if you're struggling, you can use them.
Platinum coins are used to buy permanent upgrades on the research tab that can affect either units or buildings, these coins can be refunded if you want to try different buffs, keep in mind it will reset ALL the buffs, so you will have to reassign them all.
Even if you lose a mission, you still get a small amount of gold and platinum coins.
There are 42 missions divided in 21 mandatory and 21 optional(called Spec Ops), plus 6 challenges.
Playing on hard, it took me around 13 hours to beat all of them.
In short, while it may not seem like it, the game actually has some very interesting mechanics.
Narrative
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Most of the story is displayed with comic-style cutscenes |
There is not much narrative in the game.
You are greeted with a cutscene at the start and at the end of any world which gives some information and that's it.
The description you read when selecting a mission helps to give context for the objectives, but not much else.
There are a few instances where a character or two may have a dialogue bubble, but these are few and far between and mostly used for some comedic writing rather than character expression.
If you're a person that enjoys being immersed in a world with characters, twists and lore, you will not enjoy this game.
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