Age of Darkness: Final Stand is a hardcore survival RTS that will challenge even the most veteran player’s skills, with the game throwing up to 70,000 creatures at the player during a death night.
Age of Darkness reminds me of Warcraft’s The Lich King era, with hordes of ghastly monsters viciously intent on ripping your town apart, leaving an eerie shadow in its wake.
If you’ve ever played They are Billions, you will be familiar with the concept of thinking that your town is impenetrable, simply to watch it be sliced through like butter, well, welcome to that familiar feeling again.
I will be the first to admit that it takes me some time to get used to these types of games, but with each failure, I adapt and take my town a little further.
Progression feels slow in Age of Darkness, but again that’s down to the games extreme difficulty, but at no point did I find myself getting bored.
In fact, quiet the opposite, due to the procedurally generated maps, each time felt different, and I had learned something from my previous defeat, making it continually fun.
The key to survival in Age of Darkness is speed, just like in They are Billions, thankfully you can pause the game, giving you time to carefully plan your buildings and defences.
Surviving The Fog
As the death nights approach, the land surrounding your town becomes covered in a dense fog that hurts any units caught up in it.
With each death night you encounter, the chances of survival dwindle, unless you are quick and manage to create an impenetrable fortress quickly.
You can upgrade units and buildings, and even obtain blessings for each death night you defeat, but even with these upgrades Age of Darkness never feels easy.Â
Summary
Age of Darkness has provided me with a kind of challenge that you rarely see in modern games, each time I watch my town fall into annihilation, I think will be the last, but never is.
I’ve found myself constantly coming back for more, determine to get further than the last attempt, and never finding myself getting bored of the challenge.
If you enjoy games that make you think fast and require players to think tactics before diving head first into battle, then Age of Darkness: Final Stand is definitely one for you.
While I really enjoy playing Age of Darkness, there are a couple of issues I hope will be sorted at some point.
Firstly, the death nights do not feel very balanced, there have been many times where I have been overwhelmed by too many boss creatures, and no matter how much in invest in defences, I simply cannot survive.
I also hope that the developers bring in some more variety to the creatures, although there are some new heroes coming into the game, so it’s likely we could see more creatures added too.
