Achron Review

[Slycne]

Achron Review

Achron will probably be the most unique RTS you?ll play this year. The implementation of free-form time manipulation really takes the genre in some new and interesting directions, but only if you're willing to work through some flaws.

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[Rauten]

"If the mere promise of true time travel gameplay intrigues you and your forgiving enough to overlook other areas than Archon is worth a look."

Inner Grammar Nazi: MUST; KILL; REVIEWER.

Sorry, but the whole "your" and "you're" thing is a pet peeve of mine; a pet peeve the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Edit: oops, almost forgot; friend of mine talked me about this game about a week ago, interesting idea, but too bug-ridden to pay 30? for it. I'll be passing on this one.

 

[Keltzar]

Am I the only one that wanted to grab him and say "That's not how the damn game's name is pronounced have you seen a single video of the game before!?"

More on topic I found out about the game a while ago and I think it looks pretty awesome. With luck the developers will release some patches to fix pathfinding issues.

 

[Hungry Donner]

I don't normally play RTSs but the time travel mechanic looks really neat. If it was $15 I'd snatch this up now, but at $35 I think I'll wait a bit.

 

[kalt_13]

so what platform is this on? I'mm assuming pc but it doesn't say at the end of the review

 

[Slycne]

so what platform is this on? I'mm assuming pc but it doesn't say at the end of the review

Yes, it's a PC only title.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Sounds interesting, and it deals with one issue I've always had with RTS games where a couple of misclicks or bad reads early on can essentially doom you to lose the battle even if it takes an hour for that result to roll around.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Hmm. So it's finally finished. I've been following this for some time, and it's certainly an impressive technical achievement...
Good to hear it more or less works as a game idea too. Though it's disappointing about the lack of polish.

There was one aspect to time travel that I found rather vexing though. If you go back in time, your units will continue to follow your orders as they are given in the future unless you use the undo command to clear them, which requires you to select the unit and then select on the timeline where you want commands deleted from. Maybe I'm not seeing the broader picture, but when all I want to do is keep my hero unit from dying by moving him slightly away from the front line, it would be so much more intuitive if he simply ignored future orders once I started commanding him in the past.

That sounds like it would have unforseen consequences. Also, since issuing orders in the past takes chronoenergy, imagine the headache that would result if you just want to tweak an order slightly, but delete a huge chain of commands instead...

Maybe the probability of needing to make a minor adjustment to a complex set of orders is lower than that of changing the orders altogether, but having to re-enter a huge number of orders all over again sounds pretty nasty.

Especially if each order issued costs you chronoenergy in the process.

Still, I guess it sounds like there should at least be a command to cancel 'existing' orders (They're technically orders that haven't been issued right? Or am I confusing things here? Time travel will do that. XD)

 

[BabySinclair]

Sounds interesting but the AI pathfinding bit puts me off a bit. If changing past orders costs a resource per command having to spend more to deal with shoddy AI is a major problem.

 

[Jiefu]

Personally, I've decided to call Chrono Energy "Time Juice" instead.

 

[Jadak]

Am I the only one that wanted to grab him and say "That's not how the damn game's name is pronounced have you seen a single video of the game before!?"

No, you definitely are not. I just want to smack him.

 

[cerapa]

So, instead of pressing the quick safe button I'll be pressing the reverse time button.By the looks of it, there is no point in this mechanic.

You cant exactly do a grandfather paradox with a quicksave button.

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

It sounds very interesting and worth looking into, but am I the only one (no, probably not obviously) that felt the maps looks very...boring? Not so much a graphics issue, but that I don't even see anything there at all. Just...empty space. This is the first time I've heard of the game so maybe I'm missing something.

 

[shiajun]

Am I the only one that wanted to grab him and say "That's not how the damn game's name is pronounced have you seen a single video of the game before!?"

More on topic I found out about the game a while ago and I think it looks pretty awesome. With luck the developers will release some patches to fix pathfinding issues.

So how is it pronounced? I didn't know of this game until know and I would also pronounce it ah-kron without further instruction based on its spelling.

 

[shiajun]

Ups....forum hiccup made me double post. Sorry.

 

[coolguy5678]

Am I the only one that wanted to grab him and say "That's not how the damn game's name is pronounced have you seen a single video of the game before!?"

More on topic I found out about the game a while ago and I think it looks pretty awesome. With luck the developers will release some patches to fix pathfinding issues.

So how is it pronounced? I didn't know of this game until know and I would also pronounce it ah-kron without further instruction based on its spelling.

If I remember correctly from the developer's videos, it's ay-kron. The name comes from "achronal", which means "not chronal", so it's pronounced similarly to words like "asymmetric". Or something.

I read on the forums that there's an upcoming patch which will fix up the pathfinding, although I'd wait for the demo to see how much it helps.

 

[leviadragon99]

Well it sounds like a clever use of time-travel as a gameplay mechanic to me.

 

[Shadowfury333]

More on topic I found out about the game a while ago and I think it looks pretty awesome. With luck the developers will release some patches to fix pathfinding issues.

Sounds interesting but the AI pathfinding bit puts me off a bit. If changing past orders costs a resource per command having to spend more to deal with shoddy AI is a major problem.

In fact, the next patch (Due this monday) is set to address these issues very directly.

Also, for those worried about bugs, this game is being regularly patched, so bugs and interface problems will decrease as time goes on.

It sounds very interesting and worth looking into, but am I the only one (no, probably not obviously) that felt the maps looks very...boring? Not so much a graphics issue, but that I don't even see anything there at all. Just...empty space. This is the first time I've heard of the game so maybe I'm missing something.

In the video, or in the actual game. If you are just seeing black space then that's probably a graphics driver issue. Go to the Achron Tech Support Forum [http://www.achrongame.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=27] if this is the case. If it's in the video, then search YouTube for videos, as those will have maps with stuff in them.

That sounds like it would have unforseen consequences. Also, since issuing orders in the past takes chronoenergy, imagine the headache that would result if you just want to tweak an order slightly, but delete a huge chain of commands instead...

This would be especially problematic with production, as any time you'd want to tweak a production order in the past, or add one because you had accidentally floated resources, you'd have to redo your entire set of production orders for that building.

 

[Shadowfury333]

Triple post, sorry.