Rating of
4.5/5
Nice Island
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/20/11
I'll admit up front that I am NOT a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) fan. Something about how the genre requires micromanagement but at the same time requires the player spread their attention across their entire area of influence just doesn't click with me. When I heard about “Dawn of Discovery” (“DoD”) and how it was a ‘beginner-level' RTS title, I figured I'd check it out. After all, I tried “Goblin Commander” for the same reason (and was still unimpressed). Instead of aping “Warcraft,” though, “DoD” seems to ape “Age of Empires,” a series I have tried repeatedly to get into. Despite my misgivings about this game being published by Ubisoft, one of the biggest offenders in the creation of shovelware, the $20 price tag dared me to take the plunge.
Presentation
“DoD” is a very nice looking game. It is full of bright colors and simple, but well-animated, polygonal graphics. While gameplay in this type of game usually requires the camera to be zoomed out quite far, zooming in doesn't reveal any hidden hideousness. Instead, zooming in reveals all sorts of little details on the land and buildings as well as little woodland creatures or the player's people going about their business. Usually, games like this try to cram a bunch of details into low-res textures, but “DoD” goes the opposite route, using lots of solid colors and simple textures to striking effect. I was also impressed to see that there were absolutely no jaggies to be found.
Aside from the game world, each character is represented by a talking head in a circle. These character busts are quite well animated and have a bit of a cell-shaded look to them that is quite sharp.
The only real downside to the graphics is the fact that the animated cutscenes that take place throughout the story aren't actually ‘animated' at all. Instead, they consist of static images that occasionally move ‘pop-up book' style through camera trickery and layers. It's kind of a neat effect, but the resolution is a bit low, so the images look pixilated at times. I would have preferred some nice traditionally animated scenes, but I fear that would have been pushing the development budget too hard.
“DoD” also features a decent soundtrack. The music is omnipresent, but never gets annoying or covers up any important notification noises. Some of the tracks are actually quite catchy.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of “DoD's” presentation is how good the voiceacting is. Every character sounds distinct and delivers their lines with personality. It was also quite refreshing not to recognize 80%+ of the voices belonging to anime-dub hacks. More companies should use unknown voice actors (but that doesn't mean they should use Bob from Accounting).
Story
The narrative of “DoD” is told over the course of 7 chapters. The story revolves around the fact that King George, ruler of the Occident, has summoned his two sons, William (the player) and Edward to help him solve the problem of famine that has struck the land. Edward, being the stereotypical jerk character, immediately suggests going to war, while his goody-goody brother suggests that the citizens of the Occident begin settling on the fertile islands off their country's coast. The King, of course, sides with William, and the brothers are sent off to found new settlements.
Throughout the course of the story laid out by this not-so-original premise, the characters experience situations that allow them to forge alliances with foreigners, fall in love, rescue a kidnapped ally, and deal with a traitor. All of these plot points are predictable, but they are also well written.
The fact that the game is populated with interesting characters, such as the weak-constitutioned and tax-hungry accountant and the tomboyish privateer, makes playing through the story enjoyable. Each character's personality shines through and, despite being a large collection of stereotypes, they're fun.
The story also provides a nice structure for the gameplay. Most RTS and Sim games I've played haven't had much in the way of story, let alone anything engaging. Having more direction than just building-up settlements and rushing the enemy was a refreshing change of pace.
Gameplay
Compared to other RTS games I've played, “DoD” seems incredibly simple. This is partially because the story mode focuses almost entirely on the Sim aspect and relegates combat to the last three chapters alone. Of course, the fact that combat is largely neglected isn't a bad thing, as it is a bit iffy and heavily favors the defender.
The main gameplay takes place from a top-down perspective. From this vantage, the player moves the Wiimote pointer like a mouse cursor and uses it to strategically place buildings and roads in order to create a thriving settlement. These buildings are all chosen with the A button from a circular menu that can be brought up with the B button.
The game can be played with the Wiimote alone, but I found moving my cursor around the map was too frustrating. Enter the Nunchuck: using this in combination with the Wiimote allows the player to move the map view with the analog stick, which is extremely fast and smooth.
The + and - buttons control the zoom level, which is usually in the middle. Upon zooming out all the way, the player is presented with a map of the entire area (which conveniently freezes time), including other islands and ships on unlocked portions of the map. There is no ‘fog of war' in this game: the player simply must unlock portions of the map by earning ‘achievements,' which are preset conditions, such as having a certain amount of gold or a certain number of citizens, etc. None of these achievements are very difficult or tedious (like their namesakes on the Xbox 360), as that would prevent the player from completing each chapter's objectives.
The objectives of each chapter are clearly laid-out, and depending on the level of ‘help' selected in the options, the supporting characters may harp on the player incessantly about completing them. The objectives themselves are usually quite straight forward, requiring the player to bring their settlements to specific levels of civilization through increasing the population and providing required utilities. Each level of civilization requires up to four utilities. When these utilities are created, citizens within the proper area of influence upgrade themselves. Upgraded citizens can be taxed more heavily, thus allowing the player to create yet more utilities with the increased income.
Unfortunately, none of the combinations of utilities required to upgrade citizens are intuitive or discoverable. If the game wasn't so hand-holdy, it would be impossible. This is a huge problem, as the game's instruction manual is absolutely useless and too vague, and there aren't enough tool-tip pop-ups in the game. I would have greatly appreciated a place to check whether my milk supply was sufficient before my citizens started complaining about it and I was forced to hastily construct dairies on whatever patches of land I could spare. In the later chapters that feature combat, I found the notification symbols on the map designating attacks on my settlements were far too small and showed up far too late to allow me to do anything about them.
The combat in “DoD” is extremely simplistic, as there is only one type of soldier. These guys can be loaded into battleships in order to fight other ships. Battleships with troops can also be turned into beachheads, which provide a launch point for attacks on enemy islands. Unfortunately, beachheads don't hold nearly enough troops, and whenever I sent troops out of my beachheads to make room for more troops to disembark from a nearby ship, the enemy would magically send out a soldier to destroy my beachhead before my replacements could get there to defend it. Aside from beachheads, there are a variety of buildings that can hold troops: warehouses, shipyards, marketplaces, and barracks. Barracks continually produce new troops, so it's important to empty them out occasionally and send the troops to defend other buildings or wait on ships. As I mentioned earlier, the defender has a huge advantage as long as he has a barracks. If he keeps control of that one building, he can continually regenerate troops and easily wear-down any invasion force, as the maximum number of ships any player can control at one time is five.
Overall
“Dawn of Discovery” is a nice little RTS title that focuses more on Sim and less on combat to keep frustration down. It's surprisingly well-put together for something by Ubisoft and holds the player's hand enough that it's playable by a genre neophyte. While I doubt “Warcraft” or “Age of Empires” fans would find this title engaging, fans of “SimCity” can easily get 20 hours of gameplay for $20. Not a bad deal at all.
Presentation: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
