Roman history is the best history. Every British school child who was subjected to tales of the industrial revolution or Dickens’ Victorian slums, would long for the day where you got to learn about legionnaires in shiny armour, gladiators, and Russel Crowe, the most famous Roman of them all.
For better or for worse, the team at Russian developer Nezon Production seem to have paid a little more attention to their Roman history lessons. Shieldwall sees you take command as the second most well-known Roman of all time: Julius “the salad dressing dude” Caesar.
As the game has just launched into Early Access, you’re getting a taste of what’s in store. There’s four campaign missions to take on, with more to come alongside the tantalising promise of multiplayer in Battle mode.
Each campaign level takes an historical battle as its inspiration and gives you a full, detailed rundown of the real-life events that led up to it before you begin. If you want to know your Belgic tribes from your Celts, Shieldwall has got you covered.
That’s where any real sense of historical accuracy gets thrown out the window. If you’ve played TABS or Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator then you’ve got an idea of the type of encounters Nezon are going to involve you in. Visually, the team have gone for Playmobil-style chic over realism, and as the high-pitched voices of your unit call for “Shields!” or “Missiles!” you can’t help but smile.
Battles are essentially a round of the classic game mode Capture The Flag. You begin in your own fort and from here you can spawn defenders or Militia to provide you with some military might. It’s then a case of taking your diminutive army across the map, capturing flags and attacking enemy bases in an attempt to make them your own.
There’s a wonderful balance to these encounters, with the perfect amount of push and pull as you battle with the AI in an attempt to win the day. There’s a real sense of drama too, despite the fun aesthetic, and that’s amplified by some epic orchestration in the soundtrack that backs everything.
As time goes by you accrue gold. Initially this pays for troops, but you also have access to an upgrade tree that will make or break your command. There’s improved troops, ranged weaponry tiers and a number of upgrades to reduce your cooldowns that you simply can’t do without. The more flags you hold, the faster your wealth grows, so you can’t hole up in your home base and hope for the best, or you’ll eventually be overwhelmed.
Once you’ve unlocked the Army Standard a further upgrade tree becomes available, with a batch of passive effects improving your unit immeasurably. You can increase their damage, regain health, and increase the speed your gold accrues at, with further skill points depending on how long you can keep your Standard alive.
Each of the maps promotes a slightly different tactical approach, with some offering sneaky paths between each capture point that can have you circling the enemy for many minutes, while others are more direct. One map has a single central flag and the inevitable kill zone that surrounds it makes for plenty of frantic moments. I can well imagine that once the multiplayer portion drops it’s going to be an instant classic.
There’s a few things I’d love to see as the game moves towards its final release, and different game types are top of the list. Defending your fort against waves of bad guys is perfect horde mode fodder, and the ability to grow your units beyond the current twenty-five soldiers limit would be fantastic too. While I appreciate the tighter confines that Shieldwall has in place and how well balanced it feels, some options for bigger groups would be great. Besides that, a few more unit types, like archers or a heavier soldier class, would introduce more tactical options for players to explore.
Considering that Shieldwall is in early access, it’s remarkable how solid the experience is. Barring one glitch that saw an enemy’s gate permanently shut, it runs smoothly, with the action already feeling more accomplished than Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator. I can’t wait to dig further into it over the coming months.
