Rise: Battle Lines

Abandoned game, no updates, cannot connect to servers. Do not waste your money, you won't even get as little as an achievement for playing against an AI, because you are not connected to their servers.

I cannot tell if it properly works for multi-player mode,but for single player, it freezes when trying to deploy your first troop on the hexgrid, with CPU toping at 100%.

Clearly a disapointement.

This is a hard negative review to give, because as I think RISE is a fine little digital board game. It's clean, sharp, simple, and everything else the positive reviews assert.

But in order to earn achievements, the game requires you to play online with constant pings back to a server—likely owned and managed by the developer. It appears the game has fallen into maintenance mode. This server is prohibitively slow to respond, even when playing against local AI in challenge mode on your own machine. What's worse, it seems at times that this server goes to sleep and becomes unresponsive. If you quit out of your game, you forfeit and lose hard won points towards the last 2 or 3 achievements. So you are forced to wait for the server to time out and then get the error message and "retry" dialogue box allowing you to reping the server.

As a result, each game, which should last about 5-8 minutes, can easily take twice as long if not more. With the diminishing returns of points earned as you outrank even the highest level challenge AI, you can earn only 20-35 points per game. The playerbase is completely non-existent. I have one friend on my list and we occasionally get together and play RISE together. But when playing another human, the server connectivity issues persist. This means the last 7500 points needed for the two final achievements in this game represents a collassal grind.

Essentially, this game feels like it has been abandoned by the developers and its once present but small player base. The online requirement and the server lag make me give this otherwise simple, cleanly designed Unity engine game a thumbs down.

Sorry. :(

Tags: Tactical
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Slow, Bland, Hollow. Next to no content with inane solo experience and dead multi

HOMM style turn based strategy with a gimped hero and no unit production ends up more like a simplified version of chess than a computer strategy game. The meat of the concept is supposed to revolve around multiplayer but the matchmaking will never work as no one is seeking a game of this. You could challenge friends but why bore people you care about. The game unfolds mostly as a slow trek forward clumsily positioning your units and trying to use a basic rock paper scissor mentality having your cavalry outflank, your shield guys take the arrows and the axemen doing much of the finishing off of foes but in practice you will just turtle all your troops forward and let them mash each other with little to no strategy out of frustration and boredom. The art style was rather nice in a cartoony kind of way and the audio was muted and not taking too much space but was appropriate and not too bad at all. I am removing this for library declutter, there are much superior solo and multiplayer experiences to be had centered around turn based medieval combat. The single player content here is a glorified puzzle game/tutorial as there are no story or reason to care about any of it just three difficulty generals who place the same units you do and battle it out.

Very well worth the asking price (especially if on sale) mostly used for multiplayer, very little singleplayer. Would love a campaign to go along with it

So this is an OK mini turn based game.

All battles are fought on a terrain free hexagon board. There are five different kinds of units plus your general for 6 kinds in total. The distribution of the units is random for each battle, the only constant being that you will always have your general.

The graphics and animations work for the kind of game this is and the sound effects that are there work. I found it a little tricky to figure out how to properly use my range units in the simultaneous turn system, but once I got the hang of it the game was dirt simple.

Overall the experience was OK. However I cannot recommend this game. First, there is almost no single player content. There are three different fights that are almost identical. The bulk of the game revolves around multiplayer. I sat waiting for another opponent for 10 minutes while watching YouTube videos and the matchmaker never found another player.

The game is pretty simple for the asking price, and it is multi-player focused with no multiplayer community. Expect at best 30 to 60 minutes of content.

This game caught me by surprise. It is simple and easy to get the hang of, but the random army drafts and the battle line-style offers alot of different strategies to players. For it's price,its more than worth it for quick and fun multiplayer.

This game could be something but with no single player mod other then 3 short fights or multi players to play multi player, this game sucks all around. I really have no idea what all the thumbs up are for, with no single player mod as was promissed and with no one online playing, WTF are all the thumbs up for, did we get paid to lie?

UPDATE DEC 11/12/2016

Read a post today posted back on Oct 2/2015 with a DEV reporting that they finally heard the cummunity and was going add a single player mode into the game, " which was advertised to be in the game from day 1 and never was ". So i reinstalled the game today and low and behold, yup, still no single player mode, just the 3 AI's, easy, medium and hard, " which had ALREADY been in the game since release " people who dont know that. so i posted this and this was my answer from the DEVS:

Ban notification from a Rise: Battle Lines developer — 7 minutes ago
You have been banned from Rise: Battle Lines Discussions
You have been banned from Rise: Battle Lines Discussions by a Rise: Battle Lines developer for your post in "Expanded singleplayer coming soon!":

My game has been uninstalled since Aug 2015, seen this post and decided to see if the DEV's finally did add a single player mode and reinstalled it, NOPE, no single player mode still. The DEV's are lieing to the people saying that they are going to add in single player mode with 3 AI's easy, medium and hard modes, lmao, what dumb asses these DEV's are and how dumb do they think the people are. They already had that in the game since its release and again those are what we as the players would call, 3 tutorial matches, again not SINGLE PLAYER MODE WOW. Did any of yous get pass elementry school? Now try adding in a real single player mode, you know, with a story line and a campaign to play, not 3 single games of easy, medium and hard, NOT A SINGLE PLAYER MODE. If i have to again, i will type down for yous AGAIN what single player mode means


Ban Reason:

abusive messages


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This is a permanent ban.

Wow cry babies have to ban the people telling the truth about thier product because they want the money and thats it, good job kids...i mean DEVs

A good little game with simple but novel mechanics that are easy to pick-up. Those not comfortable with MAD tactics (mutual assured destruction) might be confounded at first but generally will get learn the game up quickly. The only downside are that there aren't enough unit types, the battles are too quick and the board too small. But for the price (on sale) it's still a good deal and I hope the dev make another one but with grander ambitions one day.

Ive played my fair share of difficult and hard to learn games. Ive grown up with the mean games you could find on the NES/SNES and similar ones. But Ive seldomly felt as lost as when Ive clicked "issue orders" in this game. This game is just really really random and it makes you feel really bad about the choices you make because theres very little to know about what happens at what time and why.
What the game taught me that I couldn't have explained to myself:
- all of your units lose 1 hitpoint if your general dies
- Attacking units deal more damage than defending units

What the game taught me that I couldve explained to myself:
- units have different place in the row (something like initiative)
- units have hitpoints
- units have more initiative closer to the general

What it didnt tell me:
- how close to the general do they have to be?
- can you tell units to walk here and attack there? If not why do the crossbowmen say cannot attack after moving and the bowmen say cannot move after attacking? Like what the hell? Is that a joke?
- how do you know whether your archer can do something before his archer? Is it just random? Sounds fun.

And the biggest question of all - Why cant I give my units orders after one another? I cannot react to anything. Its the second unity made game with this weird restriction of giving orders pre-everything and I have no idea why. Its not fun all it does is make it random. Sure you can try to read what your opponent will do but he can counteract it by doing something differently. It all ends up being random.

Especially if you add in the fact that units of the same type seemingly randomly attack after one another, which can easily determine win and loss seeing that attackers deal more damage.

Overall I wanted some strategic game to play every once in a while but it looks like a mess to me. Sure if you can chew through it, maybe theres depth that will forever be lost on me. But Id rather get my refund through while I still can. It wasn't worth my 1.50 €.

PRO:
- Simultaneous turns
- Drafting

CON:
- Not variety enough
- Too slow
- No campaign

I do like this little tactical game. However the single player is far too easy: its only value is to get used to the game. The meat of the game should be in the multiplayer, but it has been very hard for me to find opponents lately.

However I did play several online matches, and thus far I won all of them, every time using the same strategy. This makes me wonder if there are other valid strategies as well... I also feel like some of the soldiers you can choose from are always the best choice and some are always worst.

Why a thumbs up? Because I like the simple rules and I like the way it plays out like a boardgame but in ways that couldn't easily be brought in practice in a real tabletop game. And most of all because I would like you to join and fight me :)

EDIT: No thumbs up anymore. Something needs to be done to bring the multiplayer alive (or to provide a challenging computer opponent) but I see no signs this is happening.

The problem here is simple: the game didn't fly. It is effectively multiplayer only, but there are no people.

Fun strategy game for when you only have 15 minutes to play. Absolutely love the presentation. Very addictive too!

Not a bad game but there needs to be more. Also not enough real people online to battle against . I am always ending up fighiting some bot instead of a real person. I wont give this a negative review because I do like some points of this game but there needs to be more units and different types of battlegrounds. The game gets old quickly . So add new types of units , different maps and need more people online and a few other add ons and this game would be a gem. I would give the game a 6/10 for now . My review may change as this game progesses.

Great little turn based game would recomend to everyone for that price cant go wrong ! Keep up the good work guys

This is really a great little turn based game!
Quite simple but addicting.
Just a little field and you can only play the same game vs AI / friends / random people online.

I just hope some more people gonna join. After only 3 hours playtime im in the top 20.
Would never have noticed the game if it wasnt in the "latest updates" section and i clicked it.

I love turn based games but most of them take quite some time to get used to and each game last for a longer time.
This one is easy to get into and the games are quite short so you can log in ´just to play a few rounds.

I already got my 5€ worth of fun from it. so i clearly recommend it!

Buy it. Seriously. It's like chess enriched with the element of randomness and incomplete information. The random pool of units, simultaneous turns and well-balanced units grant a deep strategic challenge.
A match usually takes 6-15 minutes (with a tendency towards the lower end), making it a perfect game to play during boring lectures.

Although it is early access, it is not the typical tech demo disguised as early access. There are no significant bugs and the developers appear to be very active and responsive to the suggestions of the community.

I challenge you personally to battle against king Jackreacher!

A great little gem, perfect for fulling my strategy needs.

Games are very nice and quick, easy to pick up and play when you get a few minutes to spare. The drafting phase is especially well done, forces both players to come up with new strategies on the fly. It's very satisfying to be able to predict what your opponent is planning from their draft and then to see your own plan come in to action. It's also pretty fresh to see a well designed simultaneous turn based game, not many games like this on Steam.

The game looks great too, very pleasant lush look, kind of reminds me of Fable.

Solid little multiplayer title.

If you like to get a quick fill on a multiplayer turn based strategy game then I highly recommend this title. It is very simple and straightforward but it will definitely get you thinking as to how to outsmart your oppenents.

For $5.00 you cannot go wrong in my opinion.


WARNING
If you are looking for an in depth single player experience then this game is not for you and clearly it was never designed to be. It does what it does pretty well and doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.