There’s a moment right before the start of a 1v1 RTS match that’s like nothing else I’ve felt in games, and Stormgate delivers it. I see that countdown timer start to tick, I can feel my own heartbeat, and I take a deep breath. Then I’m looking at a colorful command center and a gaggle of workers, and it’s just me and some random stranger fighting it out for glory or ruin. The twists and turns Stormgate has taken during Early Access to get to where it is now haven’t all been in the right direction, but it is moving the basecraft formula forward on a design level in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Stormgate has come a long way in the year since its Early Access launch, and while it has now shed the Early Access label, it is not being dubbed Version 1.0. There are still major faction reworks and graphical overhauls promised, as well as multiple major modes that are now flagged as “In Development” (whatever that even means anymore). I’m not absolutely thrilled with all of the changes that have been made to the 1v1 competitive mode, which I still enjoy quite a bit overall. I’m going to focus mainly on what’s different here rather than explaining the basics of it all again, so check out my Early Access review from last year if you want to hear more about how things used to work.
Unsurprisingly, since it’s made by a bunch of former Blizzard RTS devs, Stormgate has the feel and overall rhythm of a classic Blizzard RTS. At its best, it’s like home cooking for someone who was raised on Brood War and WarCraft 3. I order around my scrappy human Vanguard recruits while zipping back to my base to click an upgrade just at the optimal moment, and I imagine myself like the food critic in Ratatouille being transported back to his childhood. There is something that just works about the mental coordination and almost musical hotkey strokes in this type of game – even all these years later – and developer Frost Giant gets that.
It has also clearly put a lot of thought into what could be improved about that experience. And it’s here that I feel like the conversations I’ve had with people glibly calling it “StarCraft 1.5” are not seeing the big picture. On an underlying design level, it’s a thoughtful progression even from the flash and polish of StarCraft 2. Quality-of-life features like automated control groups and quick commands for accessing production queues and upgrade menus without having to find the right building smooth out the moment-to-moment experience in a way that took some getting used to, but now I want them in every RTS.
All In the Craft
As a Terran and Human main in StarCraft and WarCraft respectively, it’s no surprise that the faction that spoke to me the most in Stormgate was the Human Vanguard. I know, I’m really fun at parties. They play very similarly to a standard RTS faction, making them a great point of entry. But like almost everything in Stormgate, there are little things here and there that raise the skill ceiling a lot.
Vanguard units gain veterancy from fighting, for instance, which increases their stats substantially. This means, to play them at a high level, you want to minimize casualties as much as possible in every engagement. And you especially don’t want to lose your fully-promoted units. This might, unexpectedly, make them one of the most micro-heavy factions if you want to truly master their advantages. And it presents an opportunity for their opponents to focus-fire down veteran units as well. This sort of, “Easy to learn, difficult to master” philosophy is all over Stormgate, and I love to see it.
I am pretty happy with the changes that have been made to Celestials so far, even if they’re the only ones not to get a visual overhaul yet, leaving them looking the most chunky and bland. They were very confusing to play originally, diverging so much from my expectations for an RTS faction in non-intuitive ways that I couldn’t really get a handle on them. Now they’re much easier to pick up and play without sacrificing too much of what made them unique. Morph Cores have a much more obvious and sensible role, I understand when I’m supposed to put down a new Arcship, and power generation is quite a bit less confusing.
I can’t say the same for every faction, though. The Infernals recently got a significant rework that removed the Animus bar – which would fill up and allow you to cast spells when yours or your opponent’s units died. In fact, all of the top bar command abilities have been removed or moved onto buildings, which feels like a step backwards to me. Especially in the case of the Infernals, you’ve taken a mechanic that was thematically awesome and kind of central to the faction and ripped it out. Frost Giant told me they want to bring it back in an improved form in the future, but for now we have to do without. Of all the changes made between the first time I played Stormgate and where it is now, this is the one I’m most disappointed by, even if it’s temporary.
And while the community was pretty split on them, I actually liked creep camps as a way to give you more things on the map to fight over and positions to hold that weren’t expansion bases. The replacement, the titular Stormgates, don’t feature hostile NPCs and don’t give any benefit for hanging onto them, so they’re more like sounding a horn to summon both players to battle for a choice between some neat, randomized rewards. That can be exciting, but I can’t say I love them in their current iteration, unfortunately. They can also, a bit counter-intuitively, encourage the kind of “jousting with razor blades on a long stick” base trade scenarios that I don’t like so much, rather than creating big, fun field battles.
Take It From the Top
Where Stormgate has seen the biggest glow-up is in its 12-mission campaign, which was its most disappointing pillar in Early Access. Very little actually remains from that affair, with all the Vanguard characters and units having been given more grounded and realistic models and all but the basics of the story being completely redone. In most cases, this is a massive improvement. But it’s also obvious in some ways that it was rushed through production.
To give you an idea of the buy-in for what I’d call the complete Stormgate experience, you can snag all four episodes for $25, while the 1v1 and experimental modes remain free to play. The whole thing took me around 10 hours to finish as an experienced RTS player going for all the bonus objectives and chatting up my crew for juicy lore tidbits between each one.
The newly-introduced deck of the Raptor 1 does a lot to make the whole experience feel cohesive, especially with the addition of unlockable unit upgrades and an item locker that let you customize your hero and armies across multiple missions. The campaign missions themselves are clever and challenging. And the reworked story tosses out some of the tired Blizzard tropes I was less than thrilled with in the Early Access rough draft.
The main thing dragging it down is that it’s still clearly lacking at least one coat of polish. This is most apparent with some rushed or unfinished cutscenes, particularly at the conclusion of certain missions, where a throwaway line will mention something important that apparently happened off screen instead of showing it to us. The bad guy got away with the McGuffin! Darnit, you just missed him!
Also, some of the new voice lines for some characters, including the protagonist, Amara, honestly sound like the actor is reading them for the first time and only got to do one take, or weren’t told how their character is feeling in a scene. The cadence is totally off to the point of coming across as bizarre.
Holy Tutoroli
I’ve always learned about each faction in most prior RTSes from their campaign missions first, and there still isn’t much context at all for the Celestials, which makes it hard for me to get excited about them. What are they even doing here? What are their ideals? What is their society about? I know there are Infernal and Celestial campaign chapters planned. But compared to even StarCraft 1, in which we spent multiple hours with each faction, I think this really hurts the onboarding.
Different missions can highlight different units or faction mechanics, and ease you into thinking about how to use them. It can be very intimidating to simply jump into 1v1 and sink or swim. Stormgate currently doesn’t feature any hands-on help for new players in terms of how to think about Infernal shroud, or the neat things you can do with Celestial Arcships. There’s a “Learn to Play” link on the main menu, but it just sends you to a web page with some short YouTube videos, several of which are outdated at this point. I don’t know… does that even count?
Novice players can enable a feature called BuddyBot in non-ranked matches that helps you out with some busywork like base management, but I honestly find this to be the worst kind of assistance. It doesn’t actually teach you how to play. It just does things for you. I’d much prefer a “buddy” that notices when I’m messing up, like banking too many resources, and pops up with some tips on what I could improve. StormClippy, if you will.
While it’s still in the experimental phase, I am pleased that Stormgate finally has an editor and custom games available. There are still some key features missing, like triggers, but this hasn’t stopped dedicated community members from already creating some really wild and impressive maps and game modes that I never would have thought possible with the current tools. For what they are at the moment, I found them very easy to use and quite flexible as someone who cut my teeth making custom scenarios for Brood War and Warcraft 3.
The 3vAI Co-op mode has actually been pulled back from center stage into the experimental “Sigma Labs” section along with the map editor, but it’s still a fun place to mess around as they try to dial it in. I like RTSes with hero units and interesting abilities, and that’s all here. Plus, account progression and some unlockable cosmetics added since the Early Access launch give me more motivation to keep at it than pure bragging rights.
