LifeisXbox’s Fort Triumph review | ‘t Is the season to be jolly Fala Lala… la… Wait, why is everyone looking at me funny? Isn’t it the season for Turn-based strategy? Because if you would look at the upcoming games and just released? You’ll find a couple of TBS (or Turn-Based Strategy) games out there that are about to release! Take for instance this one, Fort Triumph! Brought to us by CookieByte Entertainment. Here you take on the role of the Human race, in the campaign mode. Or if you’re playing skirmish? There are some fantasy races for you to choose from as well (like the Undead). Though these play practically the same. And while the Turn-Based Strategy genre can be quite daunting to get into? CookieByte Entertainment seems to have taken a different approach to it, and made it so that I, in all my expertise and time that I’ve sunk into the genre itself, found this one to be one of the easiest ones for getting into. Wondering how it is and itching to dive straight into it? Then wait no longer, fair human reader! Because this is our review of… Fort Triumph!
ℹ️ | We played Fort Triumph for 6 hours on the Xbox Series X. This game is also available on PC – Switch – Playstation
What we liked!
- Easy TBS| One of the biggest hurrahs for Fort Triumph just has to be the fact that they made a TBS this easy to step into. There isn’t much for you to worry your pretty little head about either. The movement part is self-explanatory. The combat takes you from the 2D plain into a fully 3D world, where everything is explained to you in a, for just the scope of how little there is to do during the combat phase, fairly extensive tutorial. While city building just consists out of selecting the building you want that matches your playstyle and… voila. That’s about it!
- Looks cutesy| On the visuals department, they went for a more child-friendly approach. Nothing is all that much out of the ordinary, and they really did a wonderful job on the color pallet. Everything just has that cheery vibe and I kind of dig it. Don’t go expecting realism-level graphics because then you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you want a game that has that extra visual “pop” on your screen, and honestly looking kind of cute in the maximum way you can make spiders or orcs look like? Then be sure to give this one a once-over!
- Procedurally generated things| Yes people, Fort Triumph has procedurally generated maps. Meaning that the replayability will be high. At each start of a new campaign, the map gets generated for you, together with landmarks and items for you to find during your travels. Neat! Right?
Somewhere between
- Difficulty spike| There is a quite huge difficulty spike between Easy and Normal. If you’re going from Easy, and straight into Normal, be prepared to lose quite a bit of health in your battles. I am not sure why this is like this, but for some reason, your hit RNG seems kind of all over the place on normal difficulty. While the A.I. only tends to roll with a 90%+ hit chance, you on the other hand tend to roll the dice with a fake 80%+. I saw more “missed” dialogues popping up than actual damage rolls. Resulting in, believe it or not, a Game Over in my first 20 minutes. That’s when I just decided to bite the bullet and lower the difficulty to Easy, which made it a cakewalk. In my honest opinion that really shouldn’t be allowed to happen. There is a reason why there is a Hard difficulty mode in games, for experienced players that already know the mechanics of the game while normal should be the standardized go-to difficulty.
- Limited animation| Don’t be appalled when you see your champions hopping about the place. If you’ve ever seen a robot chicken episode? Then you’ll kind of be accustomed to the animated movement. They just “hop and skip” around, making it look like there isn’t much fluidity to them. Which kinda makes the whole experience feel low budget, while it otherwise does look as if they put in some love in the creation of Fort Triumph if I look at the environments.
- Not so captivating story| I have to admit that the story didn’t pull me in whatsoever. Halfway through the first chapter, I found myself skipping the in-game dialogue more and more in favor of just playing the battles, which I kind of thought to be a loss for an otherwise pretty okay game. Fort Triumph really does try to be captivating, but for me? It just was a watered-down script that lacked the necessary oomph to get me all riled up and raring to find out what was going to happen next.
- Campaign transition losses| Be prepared for this one, guys. Do not get too attached to your squads. When you completed the campaign map, and are ready to go to the next map? You’ll get to choose 4 teammates you want to take with you and a few relics. The rest? Well… They’re gone. Kind of negating the entire “Perma-Death” option that it also offers you at the start of your new campaign. In my case, I had 2 boss-level squads. Easily crushing anything that came in their path! That is until I completed chapter 1… You can imagine my surprise when I got prompted to choose 4 champions and to abandon the rest of them, and to only take a select few relics. What is the point of collecting and growing your team members then? Ugh…
What we disliked
- Nothing really| While it’s not the perfect game, it’s not the worst game either. It has its shortcomings, but then again? I’m a huge TBS fan and I do like a challenge (Here’s looking at my previous 200+ hours on X-com). It’s an excellent game for anyone out there that has no experience in this genre and wants a fun little stab at it.
How long to beat the story | 12 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 20+ hours
Similar with | King’s Bounty I, Heroes of Might and Magic
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