Fancy the Total War games? Or have you enjoyed Age Of Wonders, and the Civilization series? Looking for newer titles, but not finding suitable ones? A newer turn-based strategy game is on the horizon. Say hello to the new indie turn based wonder, Codex Of Victory!
Codex Of Victory is a sci-fi turn-based strategy with real-time base-building elements developed by Ino-Co Plus and distributed by 1C. The game will be released on the PC platform via Steam on March 16th 2017.
Codex Of Victory
Detailed Review
Game-play & Mechanics
The game plays a bit different from most other turn based strategy games. It is focused only on the military aspect of the game. Players deploy troops on the battlefield and fight each other to the death till all their reinforcements are exhausted. There is no base-building or training of troops. Kind of similar to End War or World in Conflict? Codex of Victory isn’t a real-time strategy title – it’s a turn based strategy to allow for more suspense between players engaging in combat. No capturing or harvesting resources, no building cities – simply raze your enemies to ashes and be the last one standing alive.
Single Player
The game features a campaign mode, where players fight with the remnants of mankind against synthetic foes called the ‘Augments’. In multiplayer, the player fights off other players online by making their own armies. The game lacks a customizable skirmish mode, where players can select maps, design their own loadout of units and jump into a battle with the AI. Technically it’s a necessary portion of most (if not all strategy games) to include this feature, so that players get accustomed to the multiplayer before jumping online.
Multiplayer
The PvP mode that hosts the multiplayer is very clunky at the current point of development. The customization of loadouts for multiplayer is has no explanation at all, and making a new loadout feels like a chore. Searching for games against other players takes quite some time, which can be considered a bit due to geographical and time constraints. The lack of a proper starting for the story mode is one of the biggest deterrents from playing the game, as the setting is not properly explained anywhere except on the Steam store page for the game.
Misc
If a player manages to brave the odds and survive past these problems, there is a wealth of gameplay features hidden. The hex based turn based strategy is one of the best strategy elements seen in recent times in strategy games. Range of weapons is a thing to consider, if you move too close for comfort, you’re mincemeat. Action points is the only resource one needs to be worried about. Extra action points are generated by capturing cities, and are spent per action per unit. Even deploying units costs action points. However, one downside would be that terrain conditions do not matter most of the time. One gets the same firepower from high terrain and low terrain, and even from different biomes.
The base building portion of the game is a bit different from classic strategy games, which makes a nice break from the usual fight-to-the-death strategy of the game. One needs to manage resources, while adding forces to the existing army, filling gaps, and improving the base constantly. The base management system is a lot like XCOM, except that it is much simpler and does not have that much depth.
Many developments are planned from the developers in the days to come, so it is not a title to give up on. But in its current state Codex Of Victory does not offer enough to keep you hooked.
