Gamestar has reviewed Stormgate. It's one of the biggest publications to do so until now and their article will likely be influential on the sentiment of the German market at large (non-backers).

So I translated the whole video into English (hey, it's a saturday). I think it might be interesting for the sub overall. Below's the translation. Please keep in mind that I'm no professional, and this was a quick translation, although I think fairly accurate.

The video (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoI2S3ZpYoI

Stormgate promised us Starcraft 3, and that’s exactly the problem! - Early Access Test

Stormgate was supposed to be the next big real time strategy game and the prospects looked good. Blizzard veterans founded Frost Giant Studios and announced boastfully a next generation game. This created waves in the community and led to a kickstarter campaign which brought in 2.4 million dollars last winter. The kickstarter campaign took place even though no more capital was necessary for the funding of the project. This money, was to be “on top” of the funding that was already raised.

After a tumultuous closed beta earlier this year, on the 13th of August Stormgate opens its doors to everyone, since that’s when the game starts with its free to play model, where you only have to pay for campaign content, cosmetics and coop heroes. Since the game is available since 30th July for all backers and purchasers on Steam, we used this opportunity to test the early access version extensively. And yes, now we are also a bit disillusioned and can understand why the graphics, the strong similarities to the RTS predecessors and the marketing strategies made for a challenging start for Stormgate.

The problem begins with the concept. Stormgate throws elements from Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo into a pot, however, forgets to develop its own identity. This we can already observe within the factions. Just like in Starcraft there are three: Vanguard is the human faction. Like the Terrans in the Starcraft 2 they have marines and mechs, their workers are called B.O.B.s, instead of S.C.Vs. The Infernals are demons, like the zerg they use some sort of slime on the ground to their advantage and lose workers when creating buildings. The Celestial Armada with its energy fields and warp technology, are the Protoss of Stormgate.

Despite these similarities and similarities in graphics Stormgate is not a clone. The differences in gameplay mechanics are definitely noticeable. It’s just that Stormgate copies so much from its role models, that the constant comparison to Blizzard’s older titles is hard to avoid, and consequently, the feeling of having seen all this before and having played it. Instead of teasing with a little bit of nostalgia, Stormgate exaggerates with its borrowing and at the same time doesn’t manage to be the better game.

Despite this fact we certainly enjoyed ourselves with the 1v1 multiplayer. Since this mode is free to play starting mid august, a look inside the game might be rewarding, if you don’t approach it with too high expectations. Stormgate is no Starcraft 3 in its content or when it comes to its quality.

Stormgate falls gameplay-feelwise somewhere in-between its two big “role models”. It’s a bit slower than Starcraft 2, but the faction structure is similar. Like in Warcraft 3 you slay neutral camps, only in Stormgate these don’t give items but buffs, for example a short speed boost, healing or vision. Also like in Warcraft you control strong heroes, at least in the campaign and the coop mode against the AI. In 1v1 on the other hand, they aren’t present. But many units possess active and passive abilities, and on top of the screen, on this taskbar, you can choose from six special abilities per faction, for example like this polymorph curse here. For beginners this amount of choice can quickly prove to be a bit too much. In the chaos of the battle it is not easy to make use of these abilities in a way that makes sense or even, remembering that they exist. 

On the other hand you have more time for controlling the units overall, because the base building is relatively simple. The economy with only two resources and a manageable number of workers is much more compact than for example, Age of Empires 4. Stormgate also makes controls easier: When you want to make a building, you don’t have to first pick a worker, the game does this automatically. And there are these very useful control groups here that grant you access to all the production buildings and the upgrades. So you don’t have to search for the right buildings anymore, but everything is packed neatly together. These changes represent some real progress in comparison to the predecessors.

Not at all new on the other hand is the coop mode. Because Stormgate has copied this part exactly from Starcraft 2. As three players you battle against the AI in special scenarios. As an example you defend at night against hordes of enemies, and engage their bases during daytime. But only with human co-players, you can’t partner up with AI players yet. In other missions you have to disrupt convoys, or destroy a certain amount of bases in limited time. Your strategy depends on the hero, which you choose before the mission. The hero appears as a powerful unit on the battefield and grants your faction unique advantages. In principle that’s exactly the same as in Starcraft 2, only at this stage with a smaller scope and less variety, also because the heroes feel very similar to each other at the moment. That could change quickly though, since the sale of these heroes has to (in addition to the cosmetics and the campaign packs) raise the funds for this free to play game.

When it comes to monetization Frost Giant Studios surprisingly handles itself more aggressively than the grand Blizzard. The first three campaign missions for free for all players, after that though, the campaign will be released in acts of three missions, for 10€ pro mission pack. How many acts such as these will be released, that’s a question that hasn’t been answered yet. On average though, also considering just the raw playtime, Stormgate is definitely more expensive than Starcraft 2. At the same time the quality is clearly worse, as you will get to see. Also the heroes for the coop mode are with a price point of 10€ twice as expensive as Starcraft 2 but at the same time more boring than their counterparts, which of course also has to do with the game being at early access and could be better at the point of final release. Until then, though there is no reason to not just stick to the coop mode in Starcraft 2.

What has to be urgently improved upon, is the communication. In this rather short period Stormgate has already managed to shoot itself in the foot. The buyers and backers of the Ultimate Bundle paid upfront 60€ for a free2play game, and they didn’t even get all the content that is released with the early access build. Even in the case of these superfans, Frost Giant put a hero for the coop mode behind another paywall, which of course, caused for upset. One would naturally think, with an Ultimate Edition, one wouldn’t be required to pay an additional 10€ on day one. 

In an attempt to calm down the player base the developer backpedaled a bit on friday. As they say, they have tried to make the content in the kickstarter bundles clear during the campaign, but they understand why many players looked at their ultimate bundles on Kickstarter as a path towards purchasing all the gameplay content. That’s why these players will get the next hero for free.

Since in the statement it sounded like that the issue was on the buyer’s side, that the buyer wasn’t careful enough, we decided to investigate this a little bit. Until friday, in the official Kickstarter FAQ the statement was that “all of the year zero heroes were included in the Founder’s Pack”. And the Founder’s Pack was the cheaper version of the Ultimate Pack. At the same time the start page of the Kickstarter Campaign clearly indicates that “year zero" is synonymous with the early access phase. Consequently, all current heroes had to have been a part of this bundle.

It is possible that Frost Giant simply made an error in the FAQ. In the descriptions of the individual bundles it is stated that only the Ultimate, not the Founder’s Pack seems to include all the known heroes. In any case, it was for sure not clear that already the EA release would contain a hero that would be paywalled for every backer. This information was intentionally excluded. If, at the end, all this was an honest mistake or not, the mistake is on the shoulders of Frost Giant, not with the buyers. Overall, we cannot speak of clear communication when it comes to Frost Giant. The whole behaviour in this debacle builds no confidence when we consider the monetisation model for the near future. This is not all - we notified the studio on the 2nd of August of this contradiction and asked politely for an explanation. Instead of answering back, on the same day the suspect paragraph in the FAQ was changed, as you can recognise on the time stamp here. We don’t want to blow all this stuff out of proportion, it’s not the end of the world. But yes in the end, the whole thing doesn’t leave you with a good feeling. 

One of the biggest points of criticism we haven’t touched upon yet, the graphics. The graphics are sterile, lacking in detail and in tandem with the generic design, has little to no recognition factor. Although we have to say, this was known before - we have seen it in the trailers and the gameplay videos. Also this is a little bit of a subjective area and the game is not complete yet. On the other hand we were surprised very negatively by the campaign, despite all the disclaimers. Because this part of the game, is in best case, on mobile game level, and doesn’t have anything to do with “Next Gen”. The models for the protagonists look like botched clay figurines, the animations and mouth movements are stiff and clunky, and plus these uncanny eyes…

For such an ambitious project and with this price point for the mission packs, this is just not good enough. Of course straight-up disappointment also plays a role in the resentful sentiment the developers had to face until now. When a small indie developer presents a campaign such as this, that’s one thing. With a project worth millions many had higher expectations, and here the developers share the blame. They hyped their game beyond their capabilities and created this expectation.

When it comes to the subject of quality, we are not yet talking about bugs and audio problems which are understandable at this point in development. Even though, also in this area there are some rather large issues. For example: You can neither pause or save game in the campaign. This should just be possible even in the alpha version of a game. 

Of course, all this can theoretically change, but until now, it doesn’t leave a good impression.

On the other hand, the plot framework has a good start with the rather chic cinematic trailer. Sadly our raised interest quickly gets torpedoed by very apparent borrowings from other games. Whoever has played Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3 and Diablo will recognise a lot of elements of those games within the story and mission design of Stormgate, and will not get the feeling of walking into a lively setting that can stand on its own.

To sum up, twenty years after their first appearance, the Infernals are being fought by a resistance group, the Warhawks. They are centred around our hero Amara, who like Jim Raynor has lost a loved one to betrayal. Just like the good old Jim, you have to go on a hunt for artefacts, and protect a gigantic drill in a mission that resembles “The Dig” from Wings of Liberty a tad too much. During this we are building no connections to the world or the characters, because the game simply doesn’t allow for that. The events between the good intro cinematic and the first mission just get left out of the narrative. About the individual characters we learn during the first six missions, but nothing about those who are already playable in the early access. 

We cannot omit mentioning the bad dialogues and missing background information on the world. The highest peaks of storytelling are some curious data pads. A meta progression, a real freedom of choice or even just optional chats with the different crew members don’t exist. Hence the Stormgate campaign fails to deliver on at least one of the three relevant areas and justify its cost. It doesn’t look better than the predecessors, its gameplay is mediocre, and it doesn’t tell an immersive story. In other words it is at the moment a clear backwards step when compared to Starcraft 2, whose campaign is just in another league compared to Stormgate.

Ultimately right now only 1v1 is worth your time, even though also this mode just does not approach Starcraft 2 as an experience. This could change in the future with good balancing patches, but this might happen only if the f2p start in August brings a big wave of new players. Because nothing kills a competitive multiplayer game faster than a too small player base, even more so when there is no convincing single player content.

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