The Valiant Review

RTS games have become a bit of a niche genre these days, gone are the days when franchises like Command & Conquer, Warcraft and Age of Empires ruled the roost. Even more so on console as the controls didn’t translate well on to a controller and made for a poor experience. That changed in January of this year when Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition was released on Game Pass and the controls were made ground up for console controllers which revolutionised the way us console players can play RTS games.

Suffice to I was looking forward to playing The Valiant. It didn’t get off to a great start however; in fact, it was a bad start. No introduction, no cutscene, just straight to the home UI which greets you with 4 options: Campaign, Skirmish, Competitive & Last Man Standing. Me being me I looked for some kind of tutorial so I could get to grips with the game a bit before jumping into the campaign or a skirmish. But there didn’t seem to be anything on offer apart from the controls layout in the settings.

So I decided then that the best course of action would then be to start the campaign, surely there would be something in there at the start that would show you the ropes…nope. Well, a big nope wouldn’t be entirely accurate as it tells you how to select a squad, move it and then use devotion on your ally…but that’s it. I’m not going to lie, I was shocked. RTS games are known for their complexity so some kind of tutorial is a must in my eyes. When I paused the game, I did however notice a ‘help pages’ tab. In there are some more of the basics plus a few others. Now without trying to bore you here, if you are unaware, for us humans there are 4 types of predominant learning styles: Visual, Auditory, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic. I fall into the latter which means I’m a doer and learning things by either reading or listening takes longer than most.

Now I know that all games can’t be tailored for everyone, sometimes you have to face facts and acknowledge that you’ll have a steeper learning curve then others. But for me it’s criminal that an RTS game throws you in the deep end like The Valiant does. I had to restart the campaign 4-5 times just so I could understand what the white bar above the squads’ head is, what abilities are, what they do and even something basic like selecting all squads on the map.

Once you get past all that and you’ve learnt how to play the game, the campaign itself is good, although another moan from me is that you can’t change difficulty until you’ve reached the third mission. So if you’re a first timer playing an RTS game you may well struggle. Once you’ve completed a mission you can go back and try a different difficulty where there is easy, normal, and hard to choose from. There are also additional challenges you can set for yourself. Out of combat Fortitude regeneration is disabled (the white bar above your head), no replenishment available and only one ‘hero’ squad allowed. You don’t have to do all 3 at once, so with 16 handcrafted single player missions in total there is plenty of replay ability for you to get your teeth stuck into.

The Valiant offers something different when it comes to the campaign. The ‘heroes’ gain experience, level up and gain access to ability and talent trees to make them more formidable in the upcoming battles. There are 3 trees for each hero, Defensive, Offensive and Utility. Each hero has a different playstyle, the main hero Theoderich, is a sword and shield bearer so each talent is based around his class. For example, the first skill in his defensive tree reduces damage by 25% when fighting more than one opponent where as if you go to Konrad’s defensive tree, who is an archer, his first talent regenerates fortitude when not in melee combat. As well as your hero squads you do have your normal grunt squads, some of these consist of your Swordsmen, Archers, Spearmen and Cavalry. Some of the talents you unlock with your hero’s also transfer across to your normal grunt units.

There are ways to boost the XP you get from missions as well. You of course get experience for completing each mission but can also get XP for completing medal challenges and survival experience, which means you’ve completed the mission without losing any health points with your hero’s. You are also rewarded for exploring the map as you can pick up new weapons and gear which can change your hero’s main ability.

Another element of The Valiant is the ability to retreat – this may not sound exciting, but if you find yourself in a pickle, retreating will enable that squad (if they survive) to make their way back to the nearest replenishment camp, which is your homebase in a way. The only downside to retreating is that you can’t cancel the order once you’ve signalled for it, so if the current battle you’re in is far away it will take that extra few minutes to return to the action.

Something which The Valiant hasn’t delved deep into is base building, the replenishment centre I mentioned earlier acts as your main hub where you can train your units, there are a few other structures you can build but it is limited, which to be honest isn’t a bad thing as you can concentrate on annihilating the enemy. This also helps is skirmishes which are different because of this.

In skirmishes there are 2 ways of winning, by conquest (defeating your opponent) or by depleting your opponents Victory points. At launch from what I can see in the build provided there will only be 4 maps available, 2 1vs1 and 2 2vs2. You don’t have to stick to this though as you can do 1vs2s. There might be more maps available in the form of DLC post launch.

Speaking of DLC or microtransactions, there is none viewable right now in game or even on the games store page, however I can see there definitely will be some as when you go into your profile to change your banner there are some locked behind a DLC icon, but these will of course all be cosmetic.

I was unable to test the other 2 modes: competitive and Last Man Standing as the online privileges haven’t been activated. Competitive will be your bog-standard online mode where you can battle up to 4 other human players. The Last Man standing mode does sound fun however, where you will partner up with two other comrades to defend supply wagons against waves of attacks.

Conclusion

The Valiant recovered from almost making me put my controller down to blossom into a decent entry in the RTS genre, it’s different take on the traditional RTS mechanics could well make it stand out against it competitors, but time will tell if The Valiant can turn into a franchise for THQ Nordic or be a one and done title.