Hammerfight is actually a difficult sell, imo, but it is worth getting into. you DO need to watch some gameplay to make sure your mouse is at the proper sensitivity for a good experience. the tutorial helps you with this. The higher your mouse sensitivity the easier the game becomes, generally, though there is a point where precision falls off. If you play at the wrong sensitivity you might not have much fun..
The story is more immersive than Highfleet, thanks to the storybook style and sense of character and impact. Divergent choices and all that. And the biological enemies are super satisfying to slice and bash...
The game has a really cool 'armory' where you can select all kinds of medieval weapons (implied to be the size of houses) and the choices have genuinely meaningful impact on how you play. A spiked flail will be much more difficult to aim and feint with, but the centripetal force allows for a really strong flick attack. Whereas a straight-hafted pike will be awkward but strong, and difficult to miss with.
There are throwing weapons, too, and I always wanted to do a challenge run with throwing only.
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Regarding Highfleet, I have found carrier tactics to be the best strategic option, since the aircraft bombs are so cheap for the kills you can get, but it is so boring. So my progress with the campaign has been limited, since it can turn into a bit of a grind after you start upping your strike capacity.
I suspect this is one of those typical types of things where the early game is generally the most difficult / rewarding / fun part and it progresses into a grind as you get further along and get better. That being said the fact you can completely build your entire fleet from scratch, along with being able to modify things, I suppose means once you get to that point you can experiment a little.
I haven't gotten very far yet but each time I learn more and get further and the progression feels very satisfying. I really love the storytelling in this game as well. The art is amazing and it's my favorite sort of aesthetic so it's all very appealing to look at. The ant event really tugged at my feelings too a bit
As I've been reading about the game a bit it seems the consensus is that the combat is very pretty and satisfying, but the real meat of where the game excels is the strategy layer, and I think agree. There's a crazy amount of meaningful decision making, and some really cool emergent situations crop up. The event that started the slow tumble downhill of my last run felt very fair and proper in a way. After I had figured out how to decode radio messages without needing to rely so much on keys, my map turned into a war room of notes and lines and scribbles about the names and current activities of all the freighters in the area. After a particularly unfortunate encounter with a garrison in another town that raised the alarm, leading me to have to pop a strike group close and personal with the Sev, I managed to surprise strike a troposcatter town and finally had time to refuel and repair. I was a bit peeved by the troposcatter revealing a strike group AND a tac group in the town up north, but I had no choice, I needed the downtime desperately, so I put an interceptor up in CAP up by the town with the 2 fleets so I could get early warning on when I needed to get the hell out of there with a comfortable margin.
So I was just repairing, resting, and refueling, feeling up about the current run and intercepting all the radio traffic in the area. It all started going downhill when I got a message of a freighter in another town that was departing. At first because I misread the message I thought it was coming towards the town I was in. I was thrilled (and satisfied) to have the early warning due to the radio intercept, but it had 7 hours to arrive and I still needed to repair my main combat ships. Do I strike it with planes and cause a distraction that diverts the nearby strike groups (and maybe gets it to turn back?) do I sacrifice an interceptor to go pop the merchant and its escort before inevitably dying in a hellfire of cruise missiles and aircraft from the nearby tac groups? Do I sit still and hope for the best? I needed to refuel either way, so I couldn't just jump ship and move out of town.
Well despite the options I had, I then "re-read" the message again and misinterpreted the speed of the merchant for its course, and then sighed in relief. "I'm being silly!" I thought, it's not coming towards me, its going somewhere else.
You can imagine my surprise when I get a thermal signature and then out of nowhere this one desert truckin' fucker rolls up on me with my pants down and fuel lines still connected to the docks when he calls up the entire Gerati fleet to roll up on me. The rest of the run was me desperately hopping from one town to another FTL-style as the rebel fleet slowly wore me down. It ended in nuclear hellfire after I figured "fuck it" and tried to nuke Khiva (to no success) and then launched my other nuke in anger at one of the carrier groups that had blown most of my fleet to pieces.
Despite it all I wasn't angry. Usually these types of games make me pretty salty at times (
especially you, Starsector!) but even in the worst moments I'm too caught up in a Dwarf Fortress tantrum-style type fascination of all the emergent systems and chaos unravelling around me to be angry at the game. This is probably the first strategy type game where the game is just so damn pretty and immersive that losing genuinely feels like an epic story and less of a big middle finger, which is awesome.
The game genuinely feels like you're a fleet admiral desperately trying to win a war against all odds. Some of the decisions you have to make really both weigh on your conscious as well as the historical parallels they draw when you're wondering what your favorite naval role models would have done in your situation. It's pretty cool. Haven't experienced something like it before.
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Topic: HighFleet - Hammerfight goes dieselpunk and is now a strategy/simulation?? (Read 11447 times)