BattleForge is a real time strategy game where you play the role of a Skylord, a mortal hero in the world of Nyn who gained immortality and became a counselor to the gods after the great war between the mortals and giants. Skylords have the power to bring the world's legends to life through the use of the Forge's powers, a fortress in the sky where they live. After the great war between the mortals and the giants, the gods suddenly disappeared and a vile twilight engulfed the world of Nyn. In exchange for all the treasures the mortals have possessed, their old enemies the giants agreed to forge a new sun and hurl it up the sky. However, the deal was betrayed and the mortals now flee the wrath of the giants. It is up to you the Skylord to aid and assist the mortals.

Requirements

• Windows XP/Vista
• DVD-Drive (Not needed if you're going to download the game online)
• Internet Connection
• 1.8GHz AMD64 or Intel Core
• 512MB (XP) or 1 GB (Vista)
• Graphics card with at least a 128 MB (NVidia GeForce 6000+ or ATI Radeon 9500+)
• Minimum of 10GB HDD space
• 1024x768 minimum resolution

Installation

I dot not have a physical copy of BattleForge so I can not comment on that part. But since BattleForge is now free to play anyone can download it off their website. Installation was pretty easy, all you have to do is download a installer off their website which is around 84.2 MB. It'll then download the rest of the files online. You should have taken the time to register a new account so you can play as soon as the installer is done.

First Impressions

I used to play Magic The Gathering when I was a high school student back in the Philippines. I've played it up to the 5th edition (1997) and since BattleForge is pretty much a card game except that it was turned into a 3D real time strategy game, I was able to relate to the game really fast. At first I was like This better be not an ugly looking game...or else I'll just go ahead and delete it! since I did not bother looking at the media section of BattleForge for screenshots or videos. Whether it will disappoint me or fill me with joy, I want it to be a surprise especially since it's a free to play game now.

I was really surprised at how good it looked and I guess it has something to do with the games I've played in the past e.g. Starcraft, Warcraft, and Red Alert. And compared to those games...BattleForge looks awesome! It really scaled well too with my hardware since I was able to max every graphics settings out in my resolution (1440x900). The models look smooth, I like the concept art that you see every time you start a campaign.

And just to make sure I get acquainted with the game, I opted for an introduction campaign where it teaches you how to play BattleForge. This is really handy especially if I want to introduce a friend of mine to the world of BattleForge.

Single-Player

I won't go into detail on how to play BattleForge as there are tons of guides and tutorials out there on how to play it. What I want to talk about is the single player aspect of the game for in BattleForge, you can play all the campaigns (except PvP which stands for Player versus Player) all by yourself...if you can. You can start 4 player campaigns if you feel like finishing them all by yourself. That's a nice feature as it made me quickly realize that I need other players in order to at least finish these co-op campaigns (they were labeled as co-op campaigns for a reason).

Multi-Player

I love and hate the multi-player part of BattleForge at the same time especially in co-op campaigns because it's always a hit or miss situation with your co-players. Some of them will be extremely greedy and will get most of the power wells and monuments leaving you with nothing and thus slowing you down all throughout the campaign. I just wish there were bigger maps that could handle more players.

Final Thoughts

I started slow playing BattleForge and it went to overdrive as soon as I started the campaigns since I wanted to beat all of them in all the difficulties with just the vanilla cards that I got. However even though I enjoy playing BattleForge there's quite a few things that I'd like them to add like the ability to delete a character that you've created since as of now, they can't be deleted (or at least let us rename them).

There's also a bunch of bots spamming the chat area selling BF points/cards for real money which is a direct violation of BattleForge EULA. EA won't probably be able to stop all of them but they've been increasing everyday and they're starting to get annoying now.

One thing that I'm always looking forward to in BattleForge is the addition of new content (PvP and PvE). If EA continuously adds more content to BattleForge then I'll definitely be playing it for a long time.

Ratings

Installer - Very easy to install. My only complain is that it would have been better if there was also a full download instead of a installer that will download the full version of the game online.

Graphics - The models and animations look really good and with all the graphics settings turned on and set to high, BattleForge looks really good.

Sound - I just wish the narrator could read everything in the Plot instead of just reading the intro text. Sometimes I just want to close my eyes instead of reading the text.

Gameplay - Once you know how things work, there's no stopping you from creating your perfect deck. Just don't be jealous of other people with better cards and decks than you.