Stormgate Is a Bland RTS Experience

NOTE: The article below reflects our experiences with Stormgate prior to its Early Access launch. Following this article’s publication, but prior to that wide release, Frost Giant Studios released a patch, the notes for which you can read here alongside an explanation of the changes from the game’s lead designer. Community response so far to the patch has been positive.

Every few months, I find myself wishing that the real-time strategy genre wasn’t as dead as it feels like it is. I spent a lot of hours growing up playing Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2, so when I heard several ex-Blizzard devs had gotten together to form Frost Giant Studios, I was excited for their first game together: Stormgate. However, after a few hours with the early access version of the title, I found myself pretty disappointed.

Stormgate’s Gameplay Is Pretty Bland

Stormgate is an RTS in which players are able to play as one of three factions: the human military-themed Vanguard, the monstrous hordes of the Infernals, and the technologically advanced Celestials. If those sound familiar, it’s because they’re basically just the Terran, Zerg, and Protoss from Starcraft, but with a Diablo/Warcraft flavoring.

The gameplay itself isn’t particularly bad; It’s just bland. It feels exactly like it was taken from Starcraft 2 with a few small quality of life improvements here or there. At the same time, there are a few odd choices, like binding the options for creating combat units and workers to the same menu. Characters feel a bit too tanky, and at the same time, the countering mechanics aren’t really good or balanced enough to make combat compelling. It feels like Starcraft 2 but worse. Those sorts of problems can be fixed later. However, there’s nothing that tells me the game could ever surpass Starcraft 2, or even really equal it.

There are three gameplay modes: Versus, Co-Op, and Campaign. I’m going to go into Campaign later, because the issues with it warrant their own section. Versus is basically your standard RTS fare. You take on an opponent 1v1 and try and destroy their base. Co-Op sees you teaming up with people to destroy an enemy base or accomplish another type of objective. Neither mode felt particularly compelling, and I ended up getting bored of them quite quickly.

The Campaign Is Not Good

At the time of writing, Stormgate is still in Early Access, so not all of the campaign is available. However, what’s there isn’t very good and is shockingly barebones even by the standards of Early Access.

I had access to Chapter 0 and Chapter 1, in which you play as a group of Vanguard called the Warhawks. After an invasion by the Infernals, the Vanguard are essentially mounting a resistance. You specifically take on the role of Warhawks leader Amara, who aims to stop a powerful Infernal named Maloc. I was able to beat the campaign in about five hours, and that’s including having played a few levels twice to make sure I was as thorough as possible. I didn’t play them on the hardest difficulties, which I could tell the game wanted me to do, but that’s partially because after the first hour, I mostly wanted to just be done with it.

There are two flavors of level: Standard base/army building and levels where you only control Amara as she does something. To try and make the standard levels more interesting, Stormgate pushes a bunch of different themed areas that feel like they were taken right out of other RTSes. Defend an area for a certain amount of time? Check. Stop a super weapon from wiping me out? Check. Explore ancient ruins? Check. There are some bonus objectives in each level. I did a run where I did them. I did a run where I didn’t do them. I cannot tell you if they did anything substantial.

Without getting too into spoilers, Amara’s arc is just that of Arthas from Warcraft 3 played at 2x speed. I’m not being a jerk here. I haven’t played Warcraft 3 in more than a decade, but I still recognized its beats in Stormgate. That faster speed doesn’t serve the game, as I never had a chance to really connect or understand any of the characters. Amara in particular became almost comedically dislikeable by the end of the second mission.

The art doesn’t really help much with the campaign. The style is a more modern version of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2, but the character models feel pretty lifeless. Since the game is in Early Access, this is definitely something that could get polished up later. I don’t want to harp on it too much.

There are, according to listings in the Stormgate Store (yes, the game already has DLC. Yes. It is expensive) two more chapters planned for release at some point. Both are slated to have three missions. Honestly, though, if the storytelling is anything like what it was in the first two chapters, I don’t see much of a point in continuing on. By the end of my time, I just wasn’t invested in the campaign at all. That doesn’t feel like something that can easily be fixed in Early Access, especially when chapters are being sold individually.

Overall, I didn’t much enjoy my time with Stormgate. It doesn’t feel like it quite has the same panache as the games that it’s trying to copy. Extremely hardcore RTS fans who’ve been hankering for a new Starcraft will probably enjoy it a lot more than I did, but the experience is so barebones in Early Access that I really can’t recommend it right now.

A PC code was provided by the publisher for this article. Stormgate is on sale now.