Conquest: Frontier Wars Review

Thorough work is a prelude to success. But what if you get a bit too thorough? Conquest: Frontier Wars has been developed for more than four years now! Be that as it may, Fever Pitch Studios (former Digital Anvil), can be pleased with the fact that they finally finished this game, and we can rejoice with them as we got a great game with excellent atmosphere and genuine real-time strategy concepts.

Wandering through the depths of space, Terrans accidentally stumble upon an alien race of advanced insects, Mantis. This civilization is ravaged by civil wars. To make things more complicated, it turns out that there is another alien race involved in all this - the Celarons, creatures made of pure energy trapped in robotic armors. The Celarons are sworn enemies of Mantis, and hence, your natural allies, but for how long this alliance can last... only time will tell...

The game has three modes of play: campaign, skirmish (quick battle), and multiplayer. The developers focused on the sixteen huge and extremely long campaign missions, which can only be played on the Terran side. Why, you may ask? Well, concerning the concept of the game, it would be senseless making campaigns for all three races. The differences between the races are minimal and all races have practically identical technology tree, types of units and buildings. This makes the game perfectly balanced and therefore perfect for skirmish and multiplayer sessions. Now, if I add that the skirmish maps can be fully customized, that there is the a possibility to train computer-controlled admirals to command fleets (which is a feature sadly not available in the campaign), and that Ubi Soft game service is excellent, Conquest has a lot to offer outside of campaign play.

All sixteen missions take place on enormous maps and each of them has unique multiple goals and is very time-consuming. Advancing through the campaign is completely linear, and each mission you complete will be marked on the main map, which allows you to replay missions you finished, or see the cut-scenes you unlocked. The cut-scenes look great, just like the intro.

Conquest's engine functions much like Star Trek: Armada: all models in the game are 3D, but they move on a 2D surface. This proved to be a great solution. The background planes have been perfectly designed, colorful and versatile, and save a lot of GPU time allowing it to render the vast number of extremely detailed units on screen. Unit design is simply breathtaking. The number of details on each object is simply incredible. And I am not only talking about textures and objects - the game has a real-time battle damage feature. This means that you won't have to peer at those damage bars in order to see how damaged a unit is; you can see the ship's condition simply by looking at it. The ships are not too big, but the way they move, shoot and explode with great particle visual effects, looks really spectacular. My only objection here is that it is relatively hard to distinguish units when the screen gets crammed, but that doesn't affect my good impression. To make things even better, the sound and music you will be hearing throughout the game are marvelous. The music is powerful and forms a fantastic epic atmosphere in the game.