In my review of Siege Survival: Gloria Victis, I am talking about the details of the game in which we swim in the depths of desperation.
Pros
+ Very pleasant story presentation
+ He's always on the bumps
+ Visual design and interface are sweet
Cons
- Progress is so painful and slow
- The shortage of resources is more than necessary
- It can repeat in the long run
We will discuss the pros and cons of this independent game with you in my content. Developed by Black Eye Games and Fish Tank Studio, the game is published by Ravenscourt and will be released the day after you read this review. What about Siege Survival, a kind of "castle management" game with role-playing elements? Let's take a look together.
Trying to make a difference with its story and narration
While spending a day in your quiet city, the people of Islam attacked at the harvest season, slaughtered the nation, pierced your defenses and terrorized. The beginning of the story begins like this, and the rest continues with you surviving in a castle surrounded by enemies while providing resources for the last defenders. Although it basically looks like a "base management" game, there are many parameters to control and an enemy element that constantly threatens you. However, the game has different gameplay mechanics for day and night.
System requirements
MINIMUM:
Operating System: Windows 7 Sp. 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon II X4 with at least 2,7 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GT 740, Radeon HD 7750 - at least 1GB GPU memory
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 10 GB available space
SUGGESTED:
Operating System: Windows 7 Sp. 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5 or AMD Phenom II X4 with at least 3.2 GHz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 960, Radeon HD 7970 - at least 2GB GPU memory
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 10 GB available space
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis has used an original technique in storytelling, which is very obviously cared for. I really liked this style of storytelling, which we can call a visual novel style. During the transitions in the game, there are visuals related to the subject on the left side of a page that is opened to you during the transitions in the game, and the story is told on the right and you are presented with choices if you need to. Although it is a difficult way to get the story to the player and feel it literally, the game manages to tell you its story and impress you with this story. As you already feel desperate with insufficient resources and a constant threat of enemies, these storytelling sequences push you further into the corner. The way you feel the effects of the elections the moment you make them is the way the game clearly says "Be smart, or I'll get your mind".
You feel the atmosphere of war and famine to the fullest
In the game that we started from scratch in a castle, our main goal is to provide basic living supplies to the people who live in the castle and whom we can control, and to raise equipment, food and clean drinking water for a handful of our soldiers who survived the massacre of the people of Israel. Although we started the game as two people in the castle in the first place, we can take with us the different characters we encounter while going on the night raids in the following period. Of course, we need to be careful while doing this, as every person entering the castle adds another plate to the table. In addition, when we meet these people during the night raids, we can choose between taking them to the castle or leaving them to die outside by the Ismiris.
All the people we take into the castle have their own characteristics and parameters to be followed. These come across as fatigue, hunger, thirst, illness, injuries and morale, which you can see in survival games. Believe me, every person who comes to the castle brings these parameters with them, so it becomes very difficult to control after a while. The game forces you to leave the people you encounter in its brutal world to die, rob or use them as bait.
There are production points and improvements inside the castle that we can place to support the bastion outside. Simply put, if your base came out of an enemy attack losing equipment, you will need a repair shop to repair broken or damaged items. If the soldiers are injured, you will have to set up another bench to produce medicine for them. While doing all this, you will use the resources at hand, and the improvements of all of them are also made using resources. While your resources are so scarce, which one you prioritize directly affects the course of the castle and sometimes you stay in such a place that you can do nothing but watch what is happening. If the aim of the game is to show the player sitting in front of the computer helplessness and being cornered, I can say that he has succeeded.
The nights are ours
While you are dealing with the castle's affairs during the day, there is a counter in the game that shows you how much time is left until the night. Things change a little more when this meter marks the coming of the night. There is a screen where you decide what the characters in your team will do, and here you can say to some of your characters, "You lie on the floor, you lie in bed" or "You explore enemy lines". Of course, you send some of your characters to plunder the city to provide resources for your castle. Here, the different characteristics of the characters make themselves felt more here. While some characters fight better, they can get less items in their backpack, and others can search around faster and carry more items. The game is up to you on which character you want to date. Of course, if you want, you also have the option of not going to rain that night. However, you are also responsible for what will happen the next day. If you've played This War of Mine, you can adopt the nightfall mechanic without feeling too alien. I can say that it is beautifully handled and always keeps you on your toes when going out at night.
The night raids are based on secrecy, and by walking around, you collect the supplies the camp needs as much as your backpack inventory allows. The game does not compare you to any enemy in the first few lootings, but as you discover new regions, you can come across patrols around. While these can be hiding at certain points, you also have the option to fight if you want to risk your character and the loot on it. Nevertheless, my humble advice is to hide from the people of Ismiri as much as possible. I fought, I got my share. I killed one of the Ismian guards and the next day the patrols increased many times over, I could not loot or anything. The next morning they attacked the castle, and I could not equip the soldiers. I started rolling down hill overnight, you can tell. This shows that the game actually changes its general structure with your decisions and underlines that you pay attention to your every move. The developer did a good job on this.
Speaking of the ready-made day and night cycle, I should also mention this. Siege Survival: There is no registration option left at the player's preference at Gloria Victis, and you have to be on the morning of that night to register the game. If you finish the day and exit the game before starting the next day, your progress on that day will be lost. This is also quite annoying.
Interface, graphics and visual design are good
The user interface in the game directly affects the game experience, so I should mention here. Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is a player-friendly production in terms of both the color panel adopted by the game and the simple and understandable interface. You can understand what the game wants from you and you can quickly start working on how to do it. The current situation in your castle immediately appears on the interface and you can see some things before it is too late.
However, I should also mention that there is Turkish language support in the game. The translations are quite good and it makes the narration even more impressive, especially in the story part. Although it is an independent production, I must say that I appreciate the developer for working for the Turkish language and being presented to the players.
Technically it works like a clock
As I mentioned before, although it is an independent production, Siege Survival: Gloria Victis is technically a game that works like a clock. I did not encounter any problems even when I pushed the limits and said "If only there is a bug here" and I did my best to make the game crash. Considering that the games of the big game companies - which is not fair to compare - are full of errors, we can say that Siege Survival got a passing grade in this sense. This part won't have any effect on the scoring, because that's what it should be but I wanted you to know anyway.
Siege Survival: The Salts of Gloria Victis
Although the game in general creates a "not bad" atmosphere for me, in some places I am so bored and overwhelmed that I cannot describe it. Yes, we are stuck in a castle surrounded by enemies on all sides and we are experiencing a shortage of resources. I can accept that. But some unpleasant things, like it takes the player so hard for a shovel and that paddle disappears after a single use, is really overwhelming. In our pen, where resources come with a spoon and go with a bucket, the game is no longer a game with the abundance of parameters we have to deal with. After a while, you cannot stand the people in the castle to be hungry and your base constantly demanding food and water from you. Especially if they are injured and sick, you are in great trouble.
You feel that you are progressing as you produce new resources, benches, and items, but sometimes this is so slow that you cannot get rid of the feeling that you have been counting for a long time. The unpleasant restriction is that you can only send one person to night loot. The slower your progress, the more pain you have in this process. Of course, I could not expect such a game to be easy, but the depression it brought me into resulted in my sessions always being short. I, who usually play such games for 3-4 hours in a single sitting, could not perform this performance for Siege Survival: Gloria Victis. In the long run, gameplay falls on a lot of repetitions until you feel progress, which can be annoying.
Long story short
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis has been a quite seamless and original game with storytelling compared to an independent production. Although it gets a passing grade in this sense with its visual quality, comprehensibility of the interface and Turkish language support, it is not a game for everyone with its structure and very slow progress. If you love this genre and love to find yourself in brain-burning calculations, you might be given a shot. But if fast-paced games appeal to you more than others, think more about this game and research gameplay videos if possible. This is all I have to tell you about Siege Survival: Gloria Victis, hope to see you again in another review, stay with love and play.
