Siege of Centauri

I finished Siege of Centauri last night. I bought the game just a few days back. It is a tower defence game. The game is well made and polished. It has a science fiction theme. By its nature, tower defence is a fantastical notion, not really anchored in reality, thus it lends itself well to science fiction, fantasy and horror themes. I came upon the tower defence games late. I have played a handful over the years, the best being Deathtrap, created by the makers of the Van Helsing action RPG games.

The Siege of Centauri is a tower defence games of building turrets. It is straight forward in that sense, one does not get mobile forces to sally forth and engage enemies, one does not have to build prerequisite buildings to get others. In any case, the map designs do not lend itself to that. Instead, one gets the usual turrets or towers, those beginning basic damage dealing ones, the medium damage dealing ones, the ones that slow the enemy, the ones that does long range damage, the ones that does damage affecting and area and more.

The graphics are attractive, the design aspects of the hardware are convincing. As for the story about posthumans and all, and also the narrative arc, I am not too sure. It seems unresolved and contrived.

The gameplay is just right without being overly difficult which is a pleasure to play. There is a tendency for games these days to be overly hard and tedious, with the Darkest Dungeon, XCOM1 and XCOM2 being the worst, shameful offenders. I finished all the scenarios in normal with the exception of three. This doesn't count as a normal finish as I didn't get the "achievement". Some scenarios did require a few tries. As for difficulty levels, it is flexible, it has a gauge allowing one to tweak the difficulty level as to what one is comfortable with. The game requires positioning, careful thought and planning based on the composition of the coming enemies and the direction of their approach, and lastly, the turrets chosen and what to upgrade.

All in all, it is a good game, I enjoyed Siege of Centauri. I would recommend it.

I will return to Conan Unconquered in time to come. The Conan tower defence game has a lot of tension and the upkeep aspect, the command point aspect and the population aspect are tedious. I will also be looking at They are Billions.