Stormgate Early Access Review: This StarCraft Wannabe Is Full of Potential, but First Impressions Are Poor

Stormgate is a confusing proposition. It’s an RTS directed by former Blizzard developers that’s almost, but not quite, completely different from StarCraft. It’s free-to-play, but it has a business model that makes you feel like you’re getting a worse deal than if you just spent thirty grand on it. It’s in Early Access now, but it’s been out in a kind of gravity-defying Super Early Access for a few weeks (which you had to pay for).

All of this made me feel very tired and I miss the days when you would go to the store and buy a boxed game for a set amount of money and the whole game would be in the box and you would go home and install it on your computer and play until your mom said “Richard!” (only my mom calls me Richard) “step away from the computer, go outside and do some exercise! Do you want to die at 35?” Well mom, I’m 36 now. Almost 37. So who’s laughing through the heart palpitations now?

Eh. The most confusing thing about Stormgate, though, is that there’s a potentially fascinating strategy game here. Unfortunately, it comes to the forefront first, with an intriguing trio of factions buried under a shell of Focus-test-approved blandness, and the campaign barely shows you anything good before it asks you to get out your wallet.

The basic premise of Stormgate is this: imagine StarCraft fell in love with WarCraft and together they spawned an army of little demons that poured out of… well, don’t imagine that. It’s a clever and effective rule-of-three RTS with three very different factions to play as and three different ways to play them.

Unfortunately, the first path is currently the worst. Stormgate’s main attraction is a six-mission single-player campaign in which you take control of the Vanguard: the technologically advanced human faction of Stormgate who are fighting the Infernals, the demonic faction of Stormgate. Her story centers on a hard-nosed soldier named Amara, whose father was present during the initial Infernal invasion, as he attempts to unite the Vanguard against the machinations of an Infernal named Maloc.

The story is distinctly Blizzard in its approach, from the flashy opening cutscene with its steep CG animation, to the cursed sword that Amara acquires early on in the story, which definitely doesn’t ruin it in any way. The problem is that none of it is particularly compelling. Amara has all the charisma of a Jedi from a Star Wars prequel, while the demons are pantomime villains from Clive Barker’s amateur theatrical society. It should be noted that developer Frost Giant has stated that some of the VOs and animations are short-lived, but I’m not sure that fresh vocal talent would change the fact that Amara is terrible company.

This monotonous cover contains a few passable but unremarkable RTS missions. The free prologue contains one character-focused mission where you have to complete a level with a circumscribed set of units, and two missions that involve building a base to conquer one or more enemy bases. This is all fine, but nothing I haven’t seen in a thousand RTSs before.

What’s more, everything I like about Stormgate now has one massive, trembling “but.” Base building, for example, is fluid and satisfying, with nice animations for assembling structures. However, once built, I find the different buildings hard to visually distinguish, meaning I tend to forget which structure is which. Combat is flashy but lacks heft, especially when larger units are fighting. I like the quick menu that lets you issue building and recruitment orders, but I don’t get how selecting units and confirming orders isn’t universally tied to either mouse button. The left mouse button should ALWAYS select units, Frost Giant, while the right mouse button should ALWAYS issue orders, even if you’re deploying a special ability or confirming building construction. Anything else is heresy. I’ve spoken.

By the third mission, where you build and defend a base against three demon bases, I was already getting to grips with Stormgate, although I hadn’t had the chance to fully enjoy it yet. This was the point where Stormgate said, “OK, you’ve gotten enough free stuff, mate, time to shell out some cash.” The remaining three campaign missions cost £9 to play. If the previous three missions had been a thrilling ride, I might have been tempted. But they weren’t, so I wasn’t.

Instead, I went into solo multiplayer and skirmish to look at the other two factions. It was here that I discovered Stormgate at its most fascinating. While the Vanguard can be a bit monotonous, the other two factions, the Infernals and Celestials, are anything but monotonous.

Of the two, the Infernals are my favorite faction. Frost Giant clearly put a lot of thought into making them feel appropriately demonic. For starters, they don’t build structures, they sacrifice flesh to literally raise them from hell. Each building you “build” opens a gaping fissure in the ground from which your structure eventually emerges. Likewise, you don’t really “recruit” units. Each unit type automatically generates charges over time. Once one charge is full, you can instantly summon that unit onto the battlefield. This means you can very quickly create armies and throw them at your enemies to give them a nasty surprise.

Playing as Infernals brings back fond memories of being a nasty little bastard to fantasy heroes in Dungeon Keeper. This feeling is reinforced by the imaginative demon types. Even your basic demon, the Brute, has a nasty trick where it can sacrifice itself to split into two smaller, AI-controlled demons.

The remaining faction, the Celestials, are less engaging than the Infernals, but you could argue they’re more intriguing because of how weird they are. Imagine if a bunch of elves from Lord of the Rings got really into modern age crystal nonsense and then started building planes, and you’ll have a vague idea of ​​what the Celestials are like. Their work units are literally blue prisms that absorb energy from resource sites, while buildings are built using biblically right angelic units that transform into the structure of their choice on command. They’re slower to build armies than the Infernals, with a ponderous emphasis on air units. But if you can get those air units up, the Celestials are very tough to beat unless you’re properly prepared.

I should stress that this is a very, very basic introduction to these factions. Most units have special abilities that can be activated on command, while both Infernals and Celestials can activate faction-wide, accumulating a special, tertiary resource. Infernals gather ritual power by killing enemies, while Celestials gather energy by placing specific types of buildings. The maps also have a wide range of control points that provide bonuses in themselves, encouraging the construction of satellite bases next to your main base.

In low, there’s a ton of strategic nuance to the way these factions are built, which makes it all the more of a shame that Stormgate’s mechanical diversity is overshadowed by the game’s painfully post-Overwatch art style. Full disclosure, I’ve never been a fan of this semi-stylized approach to art design, and I’m even less thrilled with it now that it’s been adopted by every big-budget multiplayer developer who wants me to care about their characters without actually providing any narrative groundwork. Still, I really don’t think it works in a strategy game about demonic aliens tearing through reality to grab humanity by the lungs. I want Stormgate to be grimmer, darker, heavier, more impactful, and not presented with all the seriousness of a Saturday morning cartoon.

As it stands, Stormgate is a potentially good game that makes a destitute first impression. Six missions, only three of which are free, don’t make for a good campaign or a good deal, while the game’s most fascinating factions are hidden away in the multiplayer mode, where you have to learn a lot on the spot to get the most out of them. That said, I don’t think anyone should write this game off. Behind its dull art style lies a very tactically chewy strategy game. If you’re a fan of the genre and have friends who are fans, you can have a lot of fun in the 1v1 multiplayer mode, which, I have to emphasize, doesn’t cost anything to try out.