"Return to the Empire" Review: Real-time Combat Rate Soil LIKE Category Evolution Next Stop?

For most Chinese game companies, the first half of 2022 is the worst of times.

The inventory of products with the plate number in my hand was exhausted years ago.

For a small number of companies that have pressed the release of new works to the next year, this is the best era, there are almost no competitors in the same period, the epidemic has re-emerged, Shenzhen and Shanghai have restarted control, and the "game dividend in the plague" has been put on the table again.

Even the "Qing Yu Nian" drama changed to a mobile game, which once entered the top 10 of the best-seller list, you can see how Chinese mobile game players are hungry during this version of the famine period.

Not to mention Tencent's heavy promotion of "Return to the Empire", in recent days you should see the media, social networks and circle of friends brushed with Luo Yonghao and PDD starring in the "Return to the Empire" advertisement, good or not good to judge, is you look, this game, particularly rich.

In the view of game critics, of course, microsoft will not expect microsoft to "Age of Empires" such a heavy IP external authorization, will really be used to make a "real-time strategy RTS mobile game", this track there are too many martyrs, Tencent Aurora also has a "global action", the income lies in the sewers.

Of course, we will not expect Tencent Tianmei Studio to get the IP of "Age of Empires" to do transformation, and really can make something particularly original. I just want to see what observations Tianmei has made on the entire strategic SLG market over the years on the foundation of "Gone with the Wind" in 2017, and what it will learn from friendly products.

The demo battle that Return to the Empire first started is somewhat similar to Sword and Homeland or Civilization and Conquest, of course, you know that this will not be the real core gameplay of the game, but just a lead-in, trying to convince the player that there are two important features of the game mechanics of Return to the Empire, free marching and skill interruption.

Then you will be led to a particularly common SLG category, which looks like a traditional COK style European-style main city, and start to build a city, the building can be freely placed within a certain range, and the trained soldiers are parked in the school yard, which is a design paradigm familiar to COK LIKE players.

Then cut from the main city to the large map, you see the surrounding marked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of various plots, typical of the like style of resource land, the player with the town center upgrade can capture more resources, no need to specially garrison to continue to harvest resources.

The opening two days of the novice period, the physical exertion of the ground is halved and not affected by the night, are the rules of the land like players are familiar with, the outstanding difference shown here in "Return to the Empire" is that the player no longer needs a grid to pave the way, nor does it need to expand the sphere of influence of the tower fortress, which piece of land army is sent over, the defenders are occupied, and the marching combat strength is not restricted by distance or supplies.

The core selling point of "Return to Empire" as a like mutant product is that the player's army can be freely dispatched and moved on the large map like the traditional RTS game, and only the specific attack and occupation behavior will consume physical strength. Scattered groves of trees can be found everywhere in the wild for the player's army to hide and unexpectedly launch attacks on passing enemy troops.

The battle form of "Return to the Empire" is indeed like the advertisement expressed by Luo Yonghao's teacher, showing that in the "process" rather than a momentary collision settlement, all the corps confrontations in "Return to the Empire" will occur in real time on the big map, and other troops can participate at any time to form a multi-party melee.

When the battle situation is not good, the player can also click "recall" to retreat as appropriate, and the troops will not go out like "Rate the Soil", "Three Wars", and "Hongtu" to fight until the last soldier, just when they encounter the opponent who restrains you and smash it in a second.

Hitting the city can also allow multiple troops to participate at the same time, share the damage, it will not be like the traditional lead like the soil, the first person to go up the first to the troops with the loss is particularly large, when the siege with the alliance teammates to calculate each other, waiting for others to go first, they then eat the remnants.

It is difficult to say who learned who studied this real-time war strategy design of "Return to the Empire" and "Civilization and Conquest" of 4399, the two were almost developed at the same time, but there was a slight difference in the settlement mechanism of team battles: "Return to the Empire" chose a single settlement and then sputtered 70% of the damage to the surrounding enemy forces, while "Civilization and Conquest" chose a one-to-many corps at the same time, grouped settlement.

This allows Return to the Empire to implement special tactics, such as a counterattack team of gunmen on the main road, blocking several enemy troops from attacking and weakening the range, and then allowing other corps hidden in the woods around the battlefield to disperse from the rear and block the retreat.

It seems that it can really reproduce the daigo taste of the ancestors of real-time strategy.

If you only look at this set of fusion rate like and "Civilization and Conquest" and then improve the war strategy mechanism, "Return to the Empire" will indeed be a product that the game critic recommends to all players to experience, whether it is an individual playing the field, or the alliance gathering to fight the city, "Return to the Empire" is indeed eclectic, the ultimate stitching, making a highly differentiated experience, quite transcendent real-time rate soil LIKE evolution product.

Tencent Tianmei's strong personnel and financial strength also ensures that "Return to The Empire" can not see any obvious shortcomings in hardware, rendering level relative to many iterations of the "Three Wars" and "Hongtu", at first glance there is not much advantage, but to achieve the slow replacement of day and night and four seasons, every day at different times to open the game is almost always "another scenery", visually difficult to see tired.

The horizontal and vertical screens are seamlessly switched, and the players of "Under the Red Map" shouted for a long time and Zu Long never had the function of implementation, which is not a problem at all here in Tianmei.

The fly in the ointment, probably only the nail hammer UI of this city building, is too small, it is easy to misoperate, the player enters the main city does not show the remaining time of the current building under construction, each time you have to click more on this nail hammer, and the loading screen of the large map /main city cut in and out, together become the most frequent annoying experience pain point of "Return to the Empire".

It seems to be deliberately trying to make the player uncomfortable, encouraging you to use "acceleration" more to complete the city.

After a longer period of experience, you will gradually find more things that are wrong. For example, at the end of the list of several small card pools in Return to the Empire, the oranges will be fixed at the end of the list of several orange cards, Jon, Henry, Wei lan, Shadow Warrior, Bodica, Constantine, Andrea.

Several of them are mainline processes or giveaways that unlock with the number of days you log in.

Although the orange cards in the small card pool all look like 8, but you only draw 10 times 25 times, almost all of them are one of the last 3 cards, flip the system to indicate that other players draw the warriors are always them, almost never appear at the left of the card pool list of female emperors and Xiang Chu such high-level cards.

This has led to the orange general that most ordinary players experience in the first week, the repetition rate is very high, there is no cavalry, almost can only be used to form infantry and archer lineups.

And "Return to the Empire" 6 yuanchong gifted the orange general "Martial Saint" Guan Yu, is a cavalry.

That is, after you get Guan Yu, you will find that it is very uncomfortable to find the cavalry bondage, and you will be very tired and full of 36 to get this "Lady Yu" Yu Ji that you gave away.

After having Yu Ji, you look at Guan Yu's cavalry lineup recommendation, just a "gentian god general" Zhao Yun, 128 yuan of "Hegemony Baoce" directly sent, this money you can't help but charge it.

Xiao Krypton got this set of "Guan Yu-Zhao Yun-Yu Ji" cavalry combination for less than 200 yuan, which was basically able to stabilize the krypton-free head charge civilians, and all kinds of miscellaneous infantry archery teams were excellent.

Then go up to the next level, the beginning of the draw more than 250 krypton players, "Return to the Empire" will ensure that you give you a gunner "Xiang Chu", this can be with Podica / Henry / Friedrich to form a counterattack gun combination, a stop on the main road, several cavalry teams besieging you are not vain, facing the kryptonite group with an enemy, positive feedback is excellent.

And players who have recharged tens of thousands of dollars may have the opportunity to draw the "female emperor" Wu Zetian recommended by the cover of the big card pool.

Status and status symbols.

In fact, the main domestic like products, there is a hidden "lock card" mechanism, almost an open secret in the player group, how many gold cards in a card pool, the probability of withdrawal is 6.78%, this is a clear rule for national supervision.

Then there may be a particularly rare gold card in this 6.78%, which requires you to accumulate 5 to 8 ordinary gold cards before you have a chance to draw, or you will unlock it after you recharge beyond a certain threshold, and truly enter the chaotic sequence.

Or, a month after the beginning of the season, the card pool will unlock the high-level gold cards in the card pool. At present, the mainstream like products on the market are hidden in a similar set of public probability rules, not with consumers to express the unspoken rules.

In fact, players can always summarize these unspoken rules set by game companies, but rarely will they decisively take the game car to the Consumer Protection Commission to defend their rights like the players of "Cloud Dress Hagoromo".

You will see many players on Taptap feedback that the probability of "Return to the Empire" is too low, until the problem of repeating the warrior, which is actually the consequence of the unspoken rule of "locking the card".

On the probability of gold card shipments alone, "Empire", "Three Wars" or "Hongtu" are actually similar, and there are even preferential unspoken rules for each small card pool head 10 draws must be withdrawn. However, "Return to the Empire" in the initial stage of the player, the scope of the card is limited to about 7 or 8 cards, it is absolutely impossible for the player to repeatedly open the number and swipe the first draw and other means to obtain the powerful orange general of the head of the small card bag, resulting in most players below krypton, the lineup will be extremely convergent, and the strategic combination of each other on the battlefield is the same.

Clearly, kryptonless head charge plays infantry, small krypton plays cavalry, medium krypton plays counterattack gun, tens of thousands of krypton to have a choice. The planner arranged the class suppression sequence for you, and "taught you to play the game" to the extreme, then "Return to the Empire" as a kind of sloppy LIKE strategy game, it also lost the diversity and strategy of the matching level, and it was difficult to absorb users from the competitors.

"Return to Empire" is a very clever game, grasping the two most important experience pain points of the LIKE category, walking the grid and one-second settlement, doing gameplay and experience differentiation, and undoubtedly marking the powerful direction of the next evolution of like in the rate of soil.

However, these plans of the Tianmei studio group are a bit too clever, some seem to be more lame interaction design, and more stringent "lock card" unspoken rules than "Three Wars" and "Hongtu", and the large amount of gold card TOKEN that needs to be consumed for the long-term cultivation of martial artists, in the eyes of game criticism, in fact, it is not that Tianmei cannot do better, but deliberately screens out users whose payment habits and willingness to pay are "not in line with product objectives". What it wants to catch is a very accurate special user, neither satisfied with COK LIKE's too much emphasis on numerical values and lack of strategic gameplay, but also dissatisfied with the traditional rate of land LIKE recharge hundreds of thousands of thousands of you long-term line may really not win the ecology of the monthly card bandits.

If your purpose in playing a strategy game is not to recharge hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to compete with others and "prove yourself", then Return to Empire is probably not a game for you. There is no possibility for civilian players to win the strong through long-term accumulation, dialogue with the strong, "weak to win strong" strategy, the paying class completely determines your position in the game ecology, the elimination rate of small and medium-sized R is higher, and it is difficult for long-term lines to grow into head national-level products.

This leaves an opportunity for the team that still wants to challenge the LIKE category in the future, you can completely imitate the framework of "Return to the Empire" to do gridless expansion and real-time combat, while building a relatively fair and friendly ecology for small and medium-sized R, as long as you can accurately eat the "Return to the Empire" filtered down, the real-time rate of soil LIKE is interested in but has no intention of high-intensity paid inner volume users, may also be able to carve out their own territory in the market.

Have you experienced the "next generation of real-time SLG", walking the grid for a second to determine the victory or defeat of the classical rate of the earth LIKE, can you still go back?