Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows

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A nice little turn based hex-grid strategy game. Set in space, there's a nice choice of ships across 3 classes (Fighters, Escorts and Capital) each affecting the effectiveness of weapon types and abilities.
But i will note that the later battles can drag a little once the enemy ship numbers go up as others have said.
Deployment costs Energy (one of the 3 resources - metal (for repairing and the main cost of new ships and Data for Research). You can also buy and equip crew and items on each ship to add to specialisation. Theres plenty to tinker away with - but you will in the end find you have a core group that you can deploy regularly and a group of spare ships you only throw in for certain story missions for the added firepower.

The story is a pretty cheese and ham pirate story but its good enough to keep the flow between battles. I get the feeling there was either more campaigns planned that didn't make it (the saves even specify your playing the pirate campaign - but there isnt anything else)

It isnt the greatest game, its not the prettiest game - but its a nice little gem to grab in a sale to while away a few turned based hours whilst your doing/watching something else.

Basically a solid game where a lot of mistakes were made during the development phase. Bugs and the bad game quality are really annoying. Much has already been mentioned by other players.
It is far away to be a good tactical game. You have the feeling that from a certain point the developers themselves had no desire to finish the game. Potential lost....

Had fun for the first 10-15 hours, but it gets very boring, very fast. I had all the ships unlocked and all the tech for the ships I used by about halfway through the game so there wasn't much feeling of advancement and the ships from later in the game so completely outclass the earlier ones that it there's not much tactical choice in what ships you deploy on a given mission.

Battles later in the game frequently have 40+ enemies, which is fine because the AI is pretty dumb. But each AI moves takes the same time as a player move, even when the enemy is off-screen. In the later battles, I spent about 25% of the time playing, 75% of the time watching the question-marks on the right slowly tick by while the enemy maneuvered somewhere in the fog of war.

The initiative system bothers me almost as much as the waiting. Initiative appears to 'wrap' - meaning that in quite a few cases an individual enemy would get two turns before one of the player's ships gets one. For instance, the initiative would be: player -> enemy -> new round -> enemy -> player. I might engage a group knowing I'll take a few hits but thinking I would win since I got the drop on the enemy only to find the initiative system basically made it as if they has ambushed me.

The story is reasonably interesting and the early-game combat is fun, but it quickly becomes tedious. The best upgrades are obvious and the same for almost all ships and the tech upgrades allow you to get them all, so there's no meaningful choice. By the end of the game, I brought nothing but three carriers into battle because the other ships are so terrible I spent most of my time trying to keep them from dying. The enemies get continually better while you have the same ships for more than half the game, only getting small numbers increases from leveling up. No new gear or abilities.

Overall, I can't recommend it. It was too tedious, lacks a feeling of advancement, and I got into the habit of watching TV while waiting for the enemy ships to move.

Finally a game where you can build and control your fleet without overly complicated controls and difficult camera angles. Steel Shadows is a fun game with a nice pace and a decent story. I highly recommend giving it a try.

This is a fantastic little gem of a game. Very moody and thematically perfect for the tone it tries to set.

Its a turn based strategy game very similar in gameplay mechanics to games like X com, Fire Emblem, and other turn based fare, only instead of commanding characters, you command ships, ranging from quick but deadly little fighters, to huge battle cruiser/carriers that come with disposable "body guard ship" as well as a few other surprises that were quite pleasing. Its truly an addicting title, with great music, recently added passable voice acting (some of its really good, such as the pirate queen and her entourage, including one guy who does a minor role as a pirate who sounds like a pro, to others which sound a bit plain and uh....not-so- pro. Its a mixed bag, but thats ok because it really helps with the immersion anyways).

The game also has that "dirty space" atmosphere that reminds me of Alien, or the Millenium Falcon (the old movies, not those Ryan Johnson atrocities) and thats a plus. Space settings are always better when they arent shiny and pretty. Grungy space? Hell ya!

The story is surprisingly well written as well, and you find yourself wondering what will come next as the plot intensifies through the game. the main character is kind of an over-the-hill Burt Reynolds, and could do with a bit more passion in his VA, but he grows on you after a while. His second in command is better voiced, and sometimes steals the show. His religious devotion to a machine God can be kind of funny at times.

Unfortunately, the game isnt flawless. For example, the crew seems like a great concept, and its nice they are there, but they are little more then "buff items" to ships, with no dialogue or personality at all. Even the captains who join you come into the story with an interesting intro exchange, and then you dont hear anything from them in the story again. I would have liked more rpg style immersion between these characters, and especially between the captain and his growing crew. They give you interesting characters you want to know more about, and ...Well, you dont learn anything about most of them, and thats a real shame...And this could easily have been handled just by maybe giving them a voice in the pre-battle discussions from time to time and giving them each a quest, perhaps for a unique ship upgrade or something....

Leveling them is pretty much simplified to ; they go up, stat goes up....No customization or skill selecting is something I found I sorely missed. Personally, I think if the crew were tweaked, and at least the captains had more dialogue to flesh them out, this could have been an epic and grand affair beyond anything thats been done. Its a good game, and definately worth the money they ask, but it could have been incredible and a grand epic with just a bit more writing, and character development both with personality and level-up wise. Still, even with its flaws its still a pretty fun game, and one I recommend to any fan of the genre.

I am really enjoying playing this standalone tactical rpg! It is an expansion, but you don't need to purchase the original to get this one. Their is a lot of customization that you can do with your ships. You can purchase upgrades with resources you can either acquire as quest rewards, or picking them up as they are scattered throughout the battlegrounds. You can also equip your ships with special crew members, that have unique stat increases. In the combat, you have flexibility in how you want to complete a ships turn. Each ship/squadron has varying levels of move or attack points for that particular turn, and each ability will cost you a point, depending on what it is. The graphics and 3D modeling are top notch, and really enjoy the zoom in which happens randomly so you can see the detail in action! The voice acting is also very good, and helps bring these characters to life. I am interested to see how this story is going to turn out!

This is a follow-on campaign to the first game, Ancient Frontier, and is just as good as the first one. I don't have as many hours in it, as I got distracted when Total War - War Hammer II came out, but plan to revisit it. Below is my review of the first one:

Ancient Frontier: Great tactics game along the line of Panzer General. It is 2d in space, but actually I prefer that, makes it a little more simple. The graphics are very nice, and the voice acting is great. The User Interface is very clean and easy to use. The tutorial is one of the best I have ever experienced. If you liked Panzer General but hated Space General as it was too boring, this is a much better version of Space General. It has RPG elements, it allows you to do research to tech and ships, upgrade ships, purchase ships, officers, upgrades, etc. You have to manage and balance the use of 3 elements (metal, energy, data) which are used to purchase everything and to launch ships during missions. There are 3 types of missions, story missions continue the plot (get both experience and resources and occasionally depending on how you answer questions, etc., a free mercenary or hero ship), bounty missions (get both experience and resources) and experience missions (get experience but no resources). There are many hours of replaying the two campaigns just to try different strategies. There are 3 levels of ships and 2-3 types of ships per level: Fighters (light and heavy), Escorts (Corvettes and Frigates), and Capital Ships (Destroyers, Battleships, etc.). 5 stars all the way. And a newer version just came out, but play this one first and then play the other one so you follow the story line. Great games!

This game is a fantastic blend of RPG and Ship to Ship tactical turn based combat . A excellent but simple system of moving actions and ship related (Combat, Shields,etc..) give it a depth of strategy you would not expect. The choices in the Action Economy style Combat matter greatly, and can quickly determine if you live or die.The RPG is well done, though the story itself is pretty cheesey sometimes, character development is well thought out . This is what Indie teams were meant to be, unique ideas that they are passionate about , and well made too! We need more of this in todays digital gaming !


BRAVO !!!

Do not waste your money on this "game".
Crush after crush. Totally unbalanced.
Compared to the presented level of graph it's to resources-devouring.

Stay away from this game. It's a mess of uncomprehensible design choices making it an excercise in frustration. It starts out not too bad with a set of scenarios climaxing in a boss fight against a carrier that are well done and reasonable, but then come to Vor, aliens whose ships are nearly impossible to hit, have outrageous amounts of hit points when you do hit, and will out number you at least 2 to 1. Which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't such bullet sponages requiring multiple ships to gang up one one just to take it out. Then if all that wasn't bad enough, there are weird "terrain effects" on the map that cover the hexes under them so that you have to constantly turn and manuever the camera so you can attempt to see under them and figure out where your ships are in relation to the alien ships. Absolutely ridiculous.
The set-up of the rest of the game is done well with the fleet maintenance screen, research and market screens and such well handled and relatively intuitive to use. It's a shame that the battles, which are the heart of the game are so poorly balanced. Also many of your fleet choices, such as fighters, are pretty much useless to take as they are too fragile and any resources you invest in them end up wasted as they get mobbed by the enemy and lost.
The save system is also poorly executed, first when starting the game you must choose "Ironman mode" if you want Autosaves, where it most games "Ironman" means limited saves and losses are permenent. Then a few times I tried to restore a previous save to compensate for the harshness of the battles and ended up losing quest progress, and other progress I had made with my fleet even though I was saving consistently in addition to the auto-saves.
So as much as I wanted to like this game, the bottom line is that I can not recommend this game. It shows a lot of potential and has many good qualities but the difficulty escalation curve is way too steep and you quickly find yourself in a death spiral of diminishing resources to the point you run into a brick wall and end up in a "no-win" situation. So unless getting kicked in the nads is your idea of a good time, don't spend your hard earned money on this one.

The short, short version: Meh.

The just short version: It works, no bugs, no lag and that's great. Havng said that and despite liking turn based games the combat is boring. Ship upgrades aren't a game changer and leveling ships doesn't add any cool abilities, just gives you more HP, basically.
If you're like me and are bored out of your tiny little mind with all other games at the moment, then this is a good way to waste some hours, but it's not one of those games I'm eager to get back to in my free time. It's fine for what it is, but I only continue to play as I have nothing better I can be doing during those times.

Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows builds off of its predecessor as another entertaining strategy space game. As before the series draw is the myriad options for building up the perfect flight roster in order to tackle the next challenge. Strategy mainly comes from deciding on which ships to purchase and enhance, but improvements always come with a cost. Just upgrading everything can often lead to only being able to bring one or two ships into a critical mission, so choices must be made wisely and planning for future missions should always be taken into account as resources for deploying ships can run out.

The game has a nice polished feel to it with smooth animations, a rotatable playing map, options for varying difficulties, and an enjoyable rock soundtrack. There is also an option to play with a save game mode or an "every mistake counts" mode depending on how hardcore you want the game to get. All in all this is a nice little space strategy diversion that can really draw you in and keep you playing for hours at a time.

I've really enjoyed this sequel to Ancient Frontier, and it's a great game even if you haven't played the original. It's easy to jump right into this turn based strategy game and I like the ability to choose from the different missions. The story lines are interesting, the graphics are detailed and the gameplay is enhanced by the music and sound effects. I like that there are different levels of difficulty to choose from, so there is a lot to offer both beginners and advanced players.

Wish i could give this a thumbs up, but looking past the superficial issues there is a problem at the core of the game which prevents it from getting a recommendation here

Rating

Content

Polish

AI / Difficulty

Communication

Another fun turn-based space combat sim from this indie developer. If you enjoyed the first you'll enjoy this one too. If you never played the first this is a completely stand-alone sequel that you can jump right into. The turn-based combat requires a decent amount of strategy on building up your ships and their assigned abilities to make it far in the campaign. There are also 3 difficulty settings and an ironman or save game mode to choose from. Customization is really the defining factor in this game as it is all about choosing which ships to buy, which equipment to install, and which crew members to assign each with their advantages and disadvantages. Whether you are a fan of the turn-based space sim game or a first time player it is an easy game to get into.

Nice follow up to the first one. Cool space strategy game, pretty involved choices for building up a fleet. Pretty good difficulty level, there are different options to set game to.

Yes, would recommend this game.

I own the first Ancient Frontier, which is a good game, but so far I am enjoying this one more across the board. The RPG-like aspects are fun, the little random events are a nice touch, and the missions are enjoyable.

Good soundtrack. Enthusiastic recommend.

Only thing I've noticed so far that's not quite right is some funky behavior with switching into windowed mode.

Having played the original Ancient Frontier, I really welcomed the new addition of Steel Shadows. Everything in the game is improved over the original and it is clear that the developers listened to the players and thrown in some of their own ideas for good measure.

New and good things:

+ new faction and ships, which previously were unavailable;
+ new feel (pirates);
+ new side mission types;
+ new graphic assets;
+ new story with a mix of characters old and new (nice for the veterans of the original, but the newcomers won't feel
lost)
+ great development system for your units, there are four ways in which you can improve your units (leveling, equipment,
officers and research) and each has different pros and cons;

If you like turn-based tactical games with some RPG, it's definitely worth buying, especially at the asking price. Also the bundle is a good way to get the original game. There is decent plot and a sense of progression as you unlock more and more powerful units. Missions are tactical enough, there is a little randomness, just enough to make it a little unpredictable but not enough to be frustrating. Finally, the developers really listen to the player community and release patches to address bugs and issues pointed by players. Worth your time and money.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ancient Frontier and coming back into the same game world for more stories feels good.
Very solid tactical combat with plenty of options in customizing your team.

Still playing, but I'll do a quick review.

This is a sequel to last year's Ancient Frontier tactical RPG.
So what you're looking at is a hard sci-fi setting with plenty of space battles.
There's been a great deal of refinement and improvement over last year's game.

I'm enjoying it so far. You don't need to have played the previous game to have fun with this one (though it certainly isn't a waste of your time to play the previous one). If you're a fan of Tactical RPGs and Sci-fi stratagy games, I think you'll enjoy this. I highly recommend it.