Iron Harvest Xbox One Review

Our Verdict

Iron Harvest'south mech-based strategy can burn a little slow, but the payoff is undoubtedly worth it.

Need to know

What is it? Mech-tacular RTS with strong whiffs of Company of Heroes.
Expect to pay: $50/£47
Developer: King Art
Publisher: Deep Silverish
Reviewed on: Nvidia GeForce 2080 Super, AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 32 GB Ram
Out: September 1
Multiplayer? Yes
Link Official site (opens in new tab)

Iron Harvest is a 30-60 minutes exercise in self one-upmanship. Oh! Yous think a crack sniper lady with a pet bear is cool, practise you? Then how nigh a walking oil-drum armed with twin heavy-auto-guns? So y'all think that's absurd eh? And so how most a quadrupedal personnel-carrier that fires mortars out of its roof? OH! You recollect THAT'S cool, bucko? So how near a goddamn Boxing TRAIN? Aye, yous heard me. Battle. Train.

The game's approach to entertainment is an avalanche of awe, burial your cynicism in a scrapheap of increasingly powerful toys that'll take you grinning like a sure cat from a sure English language county. Information technology makes itself hard to dislike, even with a story that'south clumsily written and an underlying strategy engine that needs more oil in its gears.

Atomic number 26 Harvest graduates from the Relic schoolhouse of real-time-strategy circa 2006. A standard lucifer sees you battling over resources-generating control points dotted effectually the map with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy headquarters. Base-building and maintenance is streamlined to require minimal attention, such that the game can focus near entirely on combat and conquest.

The basic formula sticks close to that established in Company of Heroes, but in that location is one crucial difference—the setting. Fe Harvest takes place in an alternate 1920s conceived by Smooth artist Jakub Różalski and previously used for the critically acclaimed boardgame Scythe. Its story revolves around 3 factions that emerged from Iron Harvest's version of Earth War One, namely Saxony, Rusvia, and Polania (no prizes for guessing the inspirations there). Iron Harvest focuses on the state of war'southward aftermath, where a fragile truce between Saxony and Rusvia threatens to collapse under the pressure of a shadowy conduce of malicious instigators.

In this world, Tsar Nicholas II is still live, every bit is his all-time pal Rasputin. The 1917 revolution never happened, and rather than becoming an independent state at the terminate of the war, Polania is subject area to Rusvian rule. There's one other tiny difference also—mechs. Towering, diesel-powered combat walkers armed to the teeth with World War ane era weaponry. Machineguns, flamethrowers, artillery, Iron Harvest takes the appalling armaments of the Bully War and gives it legs.

The detail lent to these gigantic war machines is delightful, especially the animation.

The mechs are undoubtedly Iron Harvest'due south main draw, so information technology's to the developer's credit that they are and then rewarding to command. The designs are astounding, ranging from the Polanian Smialy, a sort of weaponised boiler that carries a massive commodities-activeness rifle, to the about-unstoppable Rusvian Gulay-Gorod, an enormous bipedal artillery platform that tin can destroy unabridged buildings only past walking through them. The particular lent to these gigantic war machines is delightful, particularly the blitheness. Iron Harvest's mechs are lumbering, stumbling creations with thrumming diesel engines that crusade the whole machine to oscillate, as if constantly on the verge of collapsing or exploding. They seem to defy physics with every moment of their existence, and this makes them thrilling to watch in motion.

As for combat, proficient grief. The spectacle of any given Iron Harvest match is astounding. Matches start out minor, with squads of rifleman trading potshots from cover equally they rush to capture early command points. Then it layers in more than advanced types of infantry—grenadiers who can destroy encompass and cripple units with a well-placed grenade, and car-gunners who tin can pin enemy units downwardly and create chokepoints on the map. Shortly afterward, the mechs begin to announced, mainly anti-infantry at first, merely soon combat is mech on mech, giant death machines trading massive cannon shots that leave whole sectors scarred with craters and reduce buildings to rubble. The audio of Fe Harvest in full swing is tremendous. I can't decide if the audio designers deserve a medal or a reprimand for creating such a cacophonous hellscape.

Iron Harvest loves playing with calibration, and that goes for its campaign as much as individual matches. Although they seamlessly conjoin into i story, there are actually three campaigns, each focussing on a different faction. The Polanian campaign, for example, charts the story of the country's resistance against Rusviet occupation, as young resistance fighter Anna Kos tries to rescue her father from the evil general Zubov. It's a surprisingly cinematic experience too, with missions bookended past meticulously directed cutscenes telling the story of the three-style conflict. It'southward an impressive endeavour filled with twists and turns that elevate it beyond a straightforward war story, although stock characters and a whiff of cheese about the script hamper its narrative aspirations.

In play, the entrada intersperses familiar RTS skirmishes with more graphic symbol focussed missions, with each gradually building upwards your unit roster from lone infantry to your full combined forces. Sometimes they alloy the two. 1 of its more unique examples sees you trying to protect a railroad train filled with supplies as it weaves its manner through a Polanian valley, while an early Rusviet mission involves sneaking through St Petersburg, joining upward with scattered Rusviet forces as y'all gradually piece of work your way toward the Winter Palace. The variety imbued in the campaign does result in some weaker scenarios, nonetheless. One mission in the middle of the Rusviet campaign includes insta-fail stealth, which is uncommonly frustrating.

There are other problems too. At infantry level, Iron Harvest employs a cover organization much like Visitor of heroes, with green circles highlighting when your character can hide behind walls. Only the organisation is spotty near what counts equally embrace, while the maps aren't really built to engender burn and motility mechanics. Compounding this is that, when defenseless out of cover, AI infantry tends to run directly into your line rather than retreat to a defensive position, which can make infantry encounters scrappy and unsatisfying.

The game's main feature, those massive, city-destroying mechs are arguably the source of Iron Harvest's biggest trouble.

It'southward a shame the cover-system is a little haphazard considering otherwise Fe Harvest's early on to mid game has enough of tactical nuance. Aslope anti-infantry mechs, in that location are anti-mech infantry who pulverise armour with massive cannons. Flame units of all stripes will admittedly annihilate infantry, but are much less effective against mechs. Mechs too take more than damage when shot in the rear, encouraging you lot to flank them or to utilize infantry to toss explosives behind them.

Defensive structures similar bunkers are extremely useful for stopping your opponent harassing your base with infantry and smaller mechs, while keeping a grouping of engineers with your mechs enables them to perform repairs in the field and go along them in the fight longer. Lastly, infantry retains a central role when the bigger mechs gyre-out. Only infantry can capture command points, and can too harvest resources from destroyed mechs (both yours and the opponents) enabling y'all to field new units more quickly.

All this works well at a smaller scale, but the game's main feature, those massive, city-destroying mechs are arguably the source of Iron Harvest's biggest trouble. Larger mechs are so slow so powerful that tactics tend to go out the window when they get involved, and then fights mainly come downwardly to whoever's got the biggest gun. Their sluggish speed too slows the tardily game downwards to a crawl. It tin can take a larger mech five to ten minutes to cross the map, and then long that the state of affairs has often changed when it arrives at its destination. If that mech fails in its objective and is destroyed, you then accept to go through the whole rigmarole once again.

It's worth noting that the factions are well-balanced, and battles are rarely one-sided affairs. But this attritional warfare combined with slow-moving units means matches tin drag on incessantly, less build 'northward' rush and more build 'n' plod.

I'm non proverb Fe Harvest should exist Starcraft. I don't expect a diesel fuel-powered WW1 era mech to move like a gazelle. But information technology would benefit from making everything resolve a picayune quicker, reducing the reanimation of collecting resources on the map and manoeuvring mechs into position. All that said, Iron Harvest is withal a spectacular and rock-solid RTS—a worthy spiritual successor to one of the best RTS games ever made.

Fe Harvest

Iron Harvest's mech-based strategy tin fire a little wearisome, but the payoff is undoubtedly worth it.