I know that I said I was gonna retire. One day I'll maybe even keep that promise. In the meantime, I've played another game about building cool flying ships that go pew pew, or BOOM if you're doing it wrong. However, unlike Highfleet (for which I've also written a review that you can read NOW for FREE as usual), you can additionally build ships that drive on dry *** land and ones that don't even move at all, like some sort of tower or something.
The game I'm talking about is, of course, Airships: Conquer The Skies, released and developed all the way back in 2015 by my homeboy Dave Stark (we've never met). While superficially similar to Highfleet, it is in fact an entirely different thing. While 'fleet was an intricate futuristic airship navigator simulator, 'ships is best described as a 4X in which you build your own units. This does sound very cool, and it is, but there are several things that hold Davo's digital teenage son back from being the outright indie classic that it probably could have been.
I'm not joining your discord, David.
My Time Is Limited, Tell Me What's Going On This Instant!
Rude, but here goes: Airships is set on some sort of steampunk/dieselpunk version of Earth that Lord Stark has created a bit of lore for, but about which I can't be brought to care much. The game explains little by itself and I'm not reading up on any of it. Anyway, this version of Earth contains a substance called "suspendium" that is used to suspend (HAH) ships in the air, allowing them to float in the conquerable skies instead of being confined to Neptune's gated community we mortals arrogantly call the ocean. Curiously, regular waterships are entirely absent. Must be an oversight.
There seems to be a big war going on for who's going to be the next president or whatever, and so you take the role of the ruler of your own little autonomous polity, ready to crush the opposition, or even achieve diplomatic victory, as is standard in any decent 4X experience. You can even choose to be part of a weird eldritch worm cult and win by fulfilling all the conditions of your typical eldritch summoning ritual and doom the planet. Haven't tried that one out myself, but it sure sounds neat.
Yes, Very Nice, But How Does It Play?
Before you head out to conquer the skies, as it were, you may want to learn the intricacies of the ship builder, and there is much to learn. The amount of individual parts is much larger than even Highfleet's, and the fact that stationary turrets and tanks are also a factor means that you must account for combined arms combat. By extension, you cannot just build the super mega death vessel of the everlasting skies like you can do in Highfleet because, even if that one ship is very good at ship vs. ship combat, it might not be equipped to handle aircraft carriers or heavily armored defense towers. Also, instead of just shooting the enemy to dust, you can do boarding actions and capture ships as well. You'll have to deal with smaller traditional aircraft, too, that your huge howitzers will not be able to shoot down, requiring smaller caliber armaments. Conversely, those smaller guns are next to useless against any sort of armor. This lends a great deal of strategic depth to the whole thing, which is greatly appreciated.
You can also decorate and paint your ships. Beat that, Russia.
The great potential of the shipbuilder is sadly hampered by several other things. First off, I will be clear like Obama and tell you that Airships does not simulate physics. Not realistically, anyway. Everything has a weight, a speed, and all the parts must connect, yes, but you'll find that bombed out towers will not collapse as they would in real life. Hitreg is also a bit wonky, with cannonballs often just disappearing, indicating a miss, and rockets seemingly exploding on target but leaving no mark on a ship's hull. Missed shots won't hit other things behind the intended target, and there is no friendly fire. I, for one, was very disappointed to realize all of this. It's not quite a deal breaker, but it does diminish immersion quite a bit, and seeing shots visually but not actually connecting is extremely unsatisfying.
Often, your **** will just get stuck on half pixels of a sky rock, for example, or a tree. Very annoying.
Once you've built and tested a ship or a tank or two, you can go and try the meat of the game, the much vaunted 4X style map, which comes complete with a research tree, diplomacy, and trade. It moves in real time, too. I'm sorry to say that it is not very good. Let's start with the map:
If this is readable, I'm the pope.
As you can see, graphically, it's a complete mess. The image may not do it justice, but you can tell absolutely nothing at a glance: not where troops are, not which cities are big and which are small, not what you're currently building and where, etc. It's a disaster. Zooming in closer doesn't really help. You're not notified when a building has finished, or when a ship is done getting repaired. You are notified when enemy fleets are headed your way, but those notifications are so inconspicuous you'll be excused for just missing them with all the other 100 things that are currently happening. Bad marks all around.
The 4X mechanics are rather shallow. The research tree is quite basic, with research going extremely quickly. Diplomacy is VERY basic, being reduced to approval scores, and city building is minimalistic, to say the least. Sid Meier did NOT make this one, that's for sure.
The actual meat, the way I see it, is in the combat that takes place on a designated 2D combat screen. Much to my surprise, combat uses my favorite and objectively the best combat mode ever devised: real time with pause. You select a ship/tank/tower as you would a PC in a CRPG, give it an order to move or attack, and watch it go.
Big problems require big solutions. Like a really big missile.
Combat is janky, if you want me to put it in a word. For one, the AI reads your inputs. This means, if you move a ship to be within cannon range, the AI will move out of the way whenever it can and as soon as you issue the order. This does not mean that you'll never hit anything, but it does mean that you'll constantly have to manually order your ship to be within range, as the other ******* keeps inching backwards. You can set your fleet to be AI controlled, but I don't recommend it. Those dumbasses keep crashing into each other. Manually ordered ships have no real pathing and will readily crash into stuff as well, forcing you to do an unnecessary amount of micromanagement.
There's also the issue of the game not correctly recognizing when you win. It only seems to award you a victory when the enemy's fleet is actually entirely ******* dead. "Yeah, I know the opposing fleet is burning and has crashed onto the ground, BUT they can still technically shoot at you, should you be dumb enough to come in range, and MAYBE they'll land a lucky hit and set your ammo stores on fire, so uuhh, I'm sorry, but I'm legally not permitted to let you have this one, sonny." One particularly egregious incident was when I had obliterated all but one ship, and that one had been blasted to literally half it's size and had slinked away to the other end of the screen in the chaos. Wondering when I was gonna win, I searched the screen from left to right, only then spotting the harmless flying equivalent of a triple amputee crawling to safety. The game then started counting down for a draw, and I wasn't quick enough to fly to the ship and put it out of its misery. I consequently drew that encounter, meaning I lost, because draws favor the defender. That was stupid.
****, Sounds Like It Sucks
Well, uh, a little, yeah. Not to say there's nothing to like here. Shipbuilding and testing, I think, is still very fun, and if you're like me, you'll get 40 hours out of the shipbuilder alone before you ever even touch the 4X aspect. However, you may not be entirely satisfied with how your precious creations handle, or how the campaign is a bit flat.I give Airships a cautious recommendation. Depending on how you weigh the game's respective drawbacks and advantages, you may get a good time out of it. Sadly, though, I was left a tad disappointed by the whole thing.