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Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - reviews from OpenCritic posted


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From reading these articles, I have no doubt that this is the Age of Sigmar version of Dawn of War II/Company of Heroes:

 

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It's the first big-budget game to release in the world of Age of Sigmar, and developer Frontier has huge ambitions for it.

 

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Realms of Ruin is a real-time strategy game in the traditional mould—you build units, send them into battle with a click, advance up a tech tree, and activate abilities in the fray to try and get the edge. Its grouped-up squads and focus on capturing objectives put me in mind of another Warhammer game: the classic Dawn of War. 

 

But that doesn't mean it's just retreading old ground. Frontier is aiming for a fast and super accessible take on the genre. For example, though you can build pivotal defensive structures on certain captured points, and upgrade your HQ, there's otherwise no base-building in the game, and multiplayer matches are designed to take no longer than 30 minutes.

 

 

 

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Frontier Developments have revealed their new Warhammer RTS, Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin and we've got all the early details.

 

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Realms Of Ruin is set in Ghur, which is the Realm Of Beasts. Its hostile tundra and swampland will dramatically affect how your armies move across the map, so you'll need to plan ahead and scope out the battlefield before charging into a fight. You'll also want to watch out for its carnivorous plant life as well, as anything and everything is out to get you here. It looks like you'll have a fair amount of control over your camera to do this, too, as Frontier have ensured you can zoom out to have a nice, broad overview of the field, but also pull it right in close to soak up its lovely-looking battle animations.

 

Frontier have also worked with Games Workshop and Black Library writer Gavin Thorpe to help bring Realms Of Ruin to life, so you can expect lots of deep lore cuts to make this feel like a Warhammer tabletop game through and through. The main thrust of the story is about following a Dawnbringer Crusade to reclaim Ghur's savage wastes. Playing as the Stormcast Eternals, your fortress settlement Harkanibus will be under constant threat from the Kruleboyz (love a good Kruleboy, me). Fortunately, your leader Sigrun works out there's some kind of magical arcane power out there in the swamps, and you'll need to risk everything to get it and repel the Kruleboyz and their Killaboss Dankfeer for good.

 

 

 

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Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin emulates Starcraft with old-school RTS tactics

 

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Frontier has four factions planned for release, only two of which have been revealed: the superhuman Stormcast Eternals, and the cunning Orruk Kruleboyz. During a recent behind-closed-doors presentation, Polygon watched a portion of the game’s second campaign mission, in which a battle played out between the two factions. The player, commanding the Eternals, had access to the heroes Sigrun, Iden, and Demechrios, along with a varied roster of superhuman units.

 

By capturing “Arcane Conduits,” the player progressed through the Eternals’ tech tree, unlocking increasingly powerful units (including Annihilators, Prosecutors, and the Stormdrake Guard), and defeated the Kruleboyz across the map. The battle seemed intense, if a bit slow. Recent real-time strategy games have included a “tactical pause” option to increase approachability without sacrificing intensity, but it remains to be seen whether Realms of Ruin will follow suit.

 

 

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin - new "AAA" RTS from Frontier Developments (Elite Dangerous, Roller Coaster Tycoon)

I'm such an old fart that it seriously impresses me an RTS can look that detailed. I remember when just having a fully 3D RTS, units, backgrounds, and all, was a huge deal. Now you have a whole army that you can zoom in on and see more detail in a single unit than what a main character had in a AAA game 15 years ago.

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14 minutes ago, Reputator said:

I'm such an old fart that it seriously impresses me an RTS can look that detailed. I remember when just having a fully 3D RTS, units, backgrounds, and all, was a huge deal. Now you have a whole army that you can zoom in on and see more detail in a single unit than what a main character had in a AAA game 15 years ago.

 

Do you remember my reaction on the IGN PCGB when I was able to play the original Company of Heroes for the first time at the highest possible settings after I'd built a new PC?

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Just now, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Do you remember my reaction on IGN when I played the original Company of Heroes for the first time after I'd built a new PC and was able to play it at the highest details?

 

I don't! That would have been around 2007?

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Just now, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Autumn 2006 - my posts were practically incomprehensible because I was absolutely bursting with delight!

 

Ah yeah, well that was a major groundbreaking game in the genre at the time. Company of Heroes wasn't big on scale but it made up for it in detail, and it was one of those things PC gamers could still lord over everyone else.

 

Did you have an 8800GTX?

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2 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

That's exactly the GPU I had in that build!

 

That's right... wow. You owned a legend. One day I might make a video talking about how much that single graphics card changed the industry. One day.

 

Anyway, cool looking RTS.

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21 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Lol I despise the look of Sigmarines so much. I wonder how many races they will start with? There’s definitely lots of room for DLC. 

 

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Realms of Ruin will feature four factions at release, and while only two have been revealed.Realms of Ruin will feature four factions at release, and while only two have been revealed, we can make a pretty sensible guess as to who the others could be. Age of Sigmar forces are split into one of four Grand Alliances: Order, Destruction, Chaos, and Death. The Stormcast and Kruleboyz are already present and representing Order and Destruction, so I'd be willing to bet a set of paints that the remaining as-yet-unannounced factions will feature a force of Chaos troops and daemons, as well as either a bone-rattlin' or ghostly army of the undead.

 

 

7 hours ago, Massdriver said:

Does this have base building?

 

Because it's similar to Dawn of War II, there is no base building.  New units are earned by capturing Victory Points.

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Developer Frontier is venturing into Warhammer territory less explored by games, and making an RTS that's also approachable on consoles.

 

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Both the units and environments struck me as visually impressive from a purely graphical standpoint, but also in how much of the detail of the miniatures and world has been faithfully recreated in the units of the game. These units fall into one of three archetypes that act as a representation of their broad strengths and weaknesses and denote their standing within Realms of Ruin's rock-paper-scissors flavor of combat.

 

Damage-focused melee units (identified by a sword symbol) will be taken out by ranged units (bow and arrow symbol), while ranged units will struggle against tankier units (shield icon). The shielded units will in turn struggle against the punishment of the sword units--and so the combat triangle goes.

Each faction will feature equivalent units to each other but with the aim to still showcase the individual flair and flavor of the factions, which could create the opportunity for unique playstyles. Where I'm most excited to see how gameplay changes, though, is with the hero units. Considering how hero-centric the world of AoS is, these characters will no doubt have a meaningful impact on battles, employing their unique abilities to change the tides of battle.

 

Since units also each have their own set of active abilities such as barrages of arrows, and others enter the battlefield on flying mounts or appear as monstrous beasts, I am sure the combat and strategy will be a little more nuanced than rock beating scissors. This does, however, create the potential of a "low floor, high ceiling" difficulty spectrum, which is something that I think will be important when it comes to attracting new fans or giving console players a fighting chance against those on keyboard and mouse.

 

As Realms of Ruin has been developed for PC and console simultaneously, we got to see what other steps Frontier is taking to try to level the playing field between systems, most notably how an RTS controls on console. DirectStep is a new control scheme that Frontier says will create more flexibility and responsiveness when using a controller. Orders can be strung together by using the analog sticks to draw waypoints, and applying passive attack or hold-and-defend commands to those movements will ensure your troops stick to their path, defend their positions, or crush anything standing in their way.

 

 

 

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Wargamer got an early look at the new Warhammer Age of Sigmar real time strategy game, Realms of Ruin, revealed in the Warhammer: Skulls event

 

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New units are produced at the interdimensional Realmgate portal on your side of the battlefield. Frontier promises that, just like all the best RTS games on PC, players will be able to “upgrade and specialize their forces via tech trees”. Though we didn’t see them during the press presentation, we were told that those upgrades are attached both to your Realmgate, and to an upgradeable “Command Post” building.

 

Classic rock-paper-scissors gameplay is core to how units fight, with different unit types – light infantry, heavy infantry, and ranged – performing best against their preferred target.

 

Frontier says that multiplayer matches will be “quickfire and exciting”, designed to last 30 minutes or less. The scoring system for multiplayer is pure Company of Heroes: you need to hold more Arcane Conduits than your opponent to drain your enemy’s victory points faster than they can deplete yours.

 

 

If there was any remaining doubt that this game will be "Company of Sigmarite Heroes", the Wargamer article should dispel it once and for all :p

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - Beta Announcement Trailer (Open Beta July 7-10)
  • 2 weeks later...
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - "Faction Focus: Stormcast Eternals" (aka "Sigmarite Space Marines")
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RPS speaks to principal designer Sandro Sammarco about their upcoming RTS Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin.

 

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Next month's open beta for Frontier Developments' new Warhammer RTS Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin may be focused on testing its 1v1 multiplayer mode, but the Elite Dangerous studio have told me there's still plenty to look forward to in its single-player story campaign. I got to chat with principal designer Sandro Sammarco last week, and he told me they've been hard at work making sure it's "filled with loads of cool new stuff that people really haven't seen before". He also said that their partnership with Games Workshop has allowed them to "really go to town in terms of the visuals, the lore, [and] the story that we're telling", and he hopes that the way they've characterised the campaign's principal faction, the Stormcast Eternals, will give players plenty to sink their teeth into when it launches in full.

 

Sammarco tells me Frontier have taken a "multi-pronged approach" to making sure this is an RTS that newcomers and strategy game veterans alike will be able to have a good time with. "We haven't set out to reinvent the wheel, we don't want to fix things that aren't broken," he says. "We just want a really great modern, fresh take on what an RTS could be, so there's a level of familiarity there in terms of the controls and the way that you play an RTS game."

 

 

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - "Unit Spotlight: Annihilator"
  • 2 weeks later...
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - Open Beta gameplay videos
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - Open Beta now live on Steam/EGS/PSN/XBL
  • 3 weeks later...
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - gameplay mechanics/information videos posted

Also, the developers have discussed the changes that will be implemented following feedback from the recent open beta:

 

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Team shift focus from second open beta planned for next month to implementing changes before release.

 

 

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Frontier ran the first open beta for Realms of Ruin earlier this month, collecting feedback from one-on-one multiplayer matches between actual humans and games against an AI opponent. According to the devs, the open beta test was a big success, with "vast amounts of AI data" and "a huge amount of feedback" around unit balancing obtained, spanning more than 7,000 player comments across the game's Discord and social media channels alone.

 

In response, Frontier has detailed a whole gamut of fixes, changes and improvements to Realms of Ruin, ranging from the major to the more minor.

Chief among the improvements is a change to perhaps Realms of Ruin's biggest gripe: the fact that ability and retreat commands for units shared the same key, resulting in accidentally yoinking units out of battle if you timed it wrong.

 

"We have heard your feedback loud and clear on this one!" Frontier said in the blog post, confirming that abilities and retreat would be bound to different keys in the final game. A new addition will be a separate key that allows the player to retreat groups of units with a single press.

 

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Another big improvement will be to Realms of Ruin's AI difficulty, which - speaking from experience in the smoking hole a 'normal' computer opponent left me in, wiping away my hubris at winning multiple matches online - will be much fairer at launch.

 

"The AI was not balanced for the Open Beta," Frontier said. "We would like to thank you for the vast amounts of AI data you helped us gather, even if it meant defeat at the hands of a suspiciously deadly 'very easy' AI."

 

In the same way, the devs said that Stormcast and Orruk units would be balanced based on player feedback on the units deemed to be weak or overpowered, combined with its own data.

 

 

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Polish to Realms of Ruin's UI will add options to scale the UI for bigger screens, automatically closing menus when player click away, adding tooltips that explain units' unique abilities, making it clearer which units benefit from tech tree upgrades and introducing a dedicated Codex for all of the game's units that details their lore and place in the world.

 

Control improvements, meanwhile, will remap the movement keys to WASD rather than the arrow keys, make the cursor more visible on consoles and allow players to move around the map by clicking the minimap. Y'know, RTS stuff.

 

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  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - developers detail post-open beta feedback changes
  • 2 weeks later...
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") -"Unit Spotlight: Beast-Skewer Killbow" video
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") -"Crafting the Realm: Resources" video
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") -"Unit Spotlight: Breaka-Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth" video
  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin (aka "Company of Sigmarite Heroes") - 17 November 2023 release announced, PC Gamer hands-on preview

17 November 2023 release announced:

 

 

 

 

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In Shyish, the Realm of Death, Nagash the Great Necromancer moulds the souls of the deceased into his personal army. Cursed with new forms that reflect their mortal sins, he creates endless hosts of wailing, suffering spirits known as the Nighthaunt. And then he sends them all to capture my bloody control points.

When this real-time strategy game set in the mythic fantasy world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar was announced, only two of the game's four factions were revealed: the shining warriors of the Stormcast Eternals, and the vicious, swamp-dwelling Orruk Kruleboyz. As I play through two of the game's campaign missions, I get to meet a third—and it's not a friendly introduction. As I attempt to hold three objectives—the bases of spectral chains I need to break to retrieve a powerful artefact—the Nighthaunt throw themselves at my heroic Stormcast in relentless waves.

This seems to be what, at its core, Realms of Ruin is all about: objective control. Though the two campaign missions I play are quite different conceptually—one, pushing into orruk-controlled territory, the other holding out against the aforementioned barrage of ghosts—they both essentially come down to seizing and holding ground against repeated enemy attacks. With little in the way of base-building or economy management, beyond being able to plop one of a limited set of structures on points you control, the focus isn't on how you make your armies, it's on how you use them to dominate the battlefield.

 

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