Ancestors Legacy

Carve a bloody path through the Middle Ages in Ancestors Legacy! A blend of some of the best RTS games in the last decade with a medieval spin that puts classic triple-A strategy back on the map and offers a must play experience for the fans of the genre.

As recent as last console generation, an RTS on console – with the exception of Halo Wars – was pretty much guaranteed to be a nightmarish experience. There are just too many systems and too many things to monitor to be able to successfully transfer the genre to a controller. Fast forward a few more years and now it’s commonplace to find not just functional console RTS games but damn good ones. Enter Ancestors Legacy, a title released on Steam in 2018, but always with the intent of hitting consoles.

More often than not, Ancestors Legacy showed me a good time watching my berserkers, Teutonic knights, and Slavic tribesmen hack their way through forests, marshes, and the occasional open field. The weakness in the core infantry combat, which tilts a bit too much away from quick, tactical thinking and into correctly guessing how the enemy line will be arranged, was the main issue that kept me from really coming to love it. Historical inaccuracies aside, though, it scratched my itch for a traditional RTS in a way that will probably keep me coming back.

If you really, really have to play an RTS on console then you could do a lot worse than Ancestors Legacy. Well thought out controls, appealing visuals, and a solid multiplayer make for a reliable RTS experience. You might never feel compelled to reach the conclusion of the samey single-player campaign but you will delight in just having one more go at flanking your pal's Teutonic Knights with your Hurscarl Warriors.

The new units, setting, and the story makes for a nice little package that feels fairly priced. If you liked Ancestors Legacy and just wanted a reason to go back to the title, then Saladin’s Conquest is about as good a reason as any. There’s nothing wrong with what’s on show here, however, despite the new things mentioned it does have a “more of the same” feeling to it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and no one is expected to reinvent the wheel each time - especially if it’s...

Ancestors Legacy is a real-time strategy game that has recently come to console. StarCraft has very much set the standard for the genre so it will be interesting to see how Ancestors Legacy compares.

Ancestors Legacy on Nintendo Switch is a port of the original RTS first launched on PC. How does the RTS experience stack up on the small, mobile console?