Champions of Anteria

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Champions of Anteria. The visuals are beautiful, and it’s easy to see why someone high up at Ubisoft might have wanted to save the work their artists did. The game is a unique blend of genres that I haven’t seen attempted anywhere else, and it gets more right than it does wrong. I don’t think it’s necessarily for everyone, but there’s a free demo available if you’d like to try it out and see if it’s something you’d enjoy.

Packaged together, Champions of Anteria is neither awful nor the next best thing in RTS. Instead, it is a worthwhile title that makes a pretty successful experiment into some new RTS elements that I wouldn't mind seeing in other titles. And although the moment-to-moment gameplay may be underwhelming to RTS fans, I'm willing to overlook janky control issues when the developer takes worthwhile risks.

Nonetheless, those after a light bite of RTS/RPG gameplay with a positive attitude will find a lot of fun with Champions of Anteria. It is unlikely to blow any players away, and fans of The Settlers will find little to keep them occupied, but there’s a nice little game here. Without expecting too much, Champions of Anteria delivers a decent injection of fantasy humor into the market.

Champions of Anteria is full of unrealized potential that has been hamstringed by the need to over-micromanage.

Champions of Anteria has some undeniably neat ideas, and I’ll always be more accepting of a game that fails trying something new. The combination of Action RPG and Village Building works well, and the Elements system may be pinched from Divinity: Original Sin but adds a deep strategic slant to both Action and Building and makes both sides far more compelling. Unfortunately while the Building side is simple but fun the Action side is deeply flawed. The controls aren’t precise and sometimes...