Good Old Reviews: Conquest: Frontier Wars

StewShearerOld

Geekdad News Writer
Jan 5, 2013
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Good Old Reviews: Conquest: Frontier Wars


Conquest: Frontier Wars offers challenging RTS gameplay diversified by jump point and supply mechanics.

Conquest: Frontier Wars isn't a perfect game. Much of its story campaign and presentation feel fairly generic. It doesn't help that the game takes more than a few open cues from Starcraft. The Terran, Mantis and Celaerans of Frontier Wars are pretty much just the Terrans, Zerg and Protoss with different names. Nonetheless, Frontier Wars manages to distinguish itself with easy-to-use mechanics that are small on their own but, put together, add up to an RTS experience that, in many ways, is actually quite unique.

Jump points, for instance, break up battle maps into small sections that can only be accessed via fixed wormholes. This might not sound like much of a change, but it has the effect of providing natural choke points that you have to use if you're going to do anything besides listen to the game's soundtrack. Units, in turn, are balanced in such a way that even your strongest ships are vulnerable to the game's various defensive structures. It makes for a game where defenders have a natural advantage while attackers will often need to push hard to capture even the slightest bit of ground.

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The implementation of supplies, in turn, places finite limits on your ships' abilities to fight. To stay in combat you'll need to bring supply ships and those supply ships, in turn, will need to be defended. It adds a new layer of management to pay attention to, especially since each unit's special abilities draw from the same supply pool as your primary weapons. The Terran Battleship's area-of-effect attack seems nifty, for instance, but you might regret using it when the ship's cannons run dry two minutes down the road.

Outside of these elements, a lot of Frontier Wars is, admittedly, par for the course real-time strategy. You build bases and units and use them to blow up your enemy's bases and units. That said, the whole thing is just really well done. Units are balanced and varied, while the races, unoriginal as they are, offer diverse strategic options for every breed of player. The enemy AI, in turn, is and can be made dumber and smarter as you prefer. These options are good because the game's online community is pretty well empty at this point. Besides that downside overall Conquest: Frontier Wars is the epitome of an under-appreciated gem, and for only <a href=http://www.gog.com/game/conquest_frontier_wars>$5.99 at GOG it's one that RTS fans have no excuse to pass over.


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StewShearerOld

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Halyah said:
I actually remember playing the demo for this game way back and thought it was interesting. I don't recall ever seeing a copy of it in stores though.
Did you check the bargain bin? That's where I found my original copy for a whopping $3 in an EB Games.
 

Saregon

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May 21, 2012
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I actually had this game when it first came out, and it, along with Warcraft 3, is to this day my favorite RTS. Unfortunately I lost the disc years ago, so I was overjoyed when it came out on GoG. Nowadays I can actually play strategically, as opposed to teching to the biggest and baddest cruisers to overrun the enemy (on easy) like I did when I was younger. Definitely a big recommendation from me if you're on the fence about trying it.
 

Skeleon

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Nov 2, 2007
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Got this game from a gaming magazine ages ago. Liked it a lot, especially the beam weapons the Celaerans use. They really have that "cutting beam"-feel few weapons have in games (most are of the pew-pew blast variety). And the human ships were nicely "battleship"-like in their design, especially the huge Dreadnoughts ("The bug stops here."). God, did I waste many hours on gianormous skirmish-games. Never liked the Mantis much, though. I guess once you've got a bunch of Tiamats, they're fun to play with, but otherwise they were just too fragile for my taste.

Just out of curiosity: Why review this game now? Is there anything that triggered it? There's no GOG-sale on it right now. Just got nostalgic somehow?
 

StewShearerOld

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Jan 5, 2013
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Skeleon said:
Got this game from a gaming magazine ages ago. Liked it a lot, especially the beam weapons the Celaerans use. They really have that "cutting beam"-feel few weapons have in games (most are of the pew-pew blast variety). And the human ships were nicely "battleship"-like in their design, especially the huge Dreadnaughts ("The bug stops here."). God did I waste many hours on gianormous skirmish-games.

Just out of curiosity: Why review this game now? Is there anything that triggered it? There's no GOG-sale on it right now. Just got nostalgic somehow?
We've been playing around with some GOG-centric retro write-ups recently. Since there isn't always a steady supply of "new" games to work with and we want to keep the schedule on this fairly regular, we thought it could be interesting to look at entries from GOG's existing library.

And yes, the Celaeran beam weapons were awesome. Very Babylon 5-ish.

I was also never much of a Mantis fan. You can swarm pretty effectively with them, but that's not really my style.
 

Skeleon

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StewShearer said:
We've been playing around with some GOG-centric retro write-ups recently. Since there isn't always a steady supply of "new" games to work with and we want to keep the schedule on this fairly regular, we thought it could be interesting to look at entries from GOG's existing library.
Heh, I'm all in favour of that. I was just curious what triggered this specific game to be reviewed, since it's not newly released on GOG nor currently on sale there or anything. Just games you folks like from there?
 

StewShearerOld

Geekdad News Writer
Jan 5, 2013
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Skeleon said:
StewShearer said:
We've been playing around with some GOG-centric retro write-ups recently. Since there isn't always a steady supply of "new" games to work with and we want to keep the schedule on this fairly regular, we thought it could be interesting to look at entries from GOG's existing library.
Heh, I'm all in favour of that. I was just curious what triggered this specific game to be reviewed, since it's not newly released on GOG nor currently on sale there or anything. Just games you folks like from there?
Pretty much yeah, at least until we set up the dart board lined with GOG titles.
 

RicoADF

Welcome back Commander
Jun 2, 2009
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Ah I missed this game first time round, will have to grab it now from GoG. Thanks for the recommendation!
 

Hypertion

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May 10, 2011
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why would i buy something i still have the disc for?

Hehe...

Still remember modding in the hero units from the campaign and even doing a bit of self editing =P