I don’t need high-fidelity visuals, detailed animations, and explosive pyrotechnics. For me, the best-looking PC games are Age of Empires, Cities Skylines 2, Civilization, and Manor Lords – I love the symmetry, the compactness, that feeling that I’m looking at a living, breathing model. Back in 2001, Stronghold was my medieval RTS of choice. Three years since the imperfect Stronghold Warlords, a new city builder and medieval strategy game captures the spirit of Firefly’s original opus. Age of Respair is like a new Stronghold game, and even prettier.
It’s not just me making the comparison – in the debut trailer, aptly named developer Respair Games describes its debut as a “Stronghold-inspired castle builder.” Built using Unreal Engine 5, Age of Respair is a crisp, clean, and colorful RTS game where you gather resources, nurture your people, build defenses and castles, and eventually go to war with your rivals. The detail during battles is incredible, as hundreds of individual units march in formation and lay siege to stone fortifications and opposing armies. As well as training your troops, however, you also have a choice in how to manage the civilians.
Do you want to rule by favor or force? If you think the best strategy is to make your people happy, build taverns and churches to boost their morale. It means they’re more likely to pay taxes – but also lazier, and production slows down as a result. The alternative is the iron fist. Rather than amenities and cozy houses, if you build torture machines and display them in public, your people will hate you, but they’ll put their noses to the grindstone and farm plenty of food and building supplies, lest they suffer your wrath.
Buildings can be gradually upgraded and there’s a sprawling story-driven campaign as well as a drop-in skirmish mode. We’re still waiting for a release date, but Age of Respair is tentatively scheduled to arrive in 2025. If you want to wishlist it on Steam, just head here.
Otherwise, try some of the best city-building games, or maybe the best strategy games on PC.
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