Reviewed: April 6, 2005
Reviewed by: Trey Wheeler
Publisher
Strategy First
Developer
Nicely Crafted Entertainment
Released: October 7, 2004
Genre: MMORTS
Players: Online
ESRB: Teen
6
5
6
5
6.0
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Time of Defiance is a massively multiplayer online only real time strategy game (oh the acronyms!) set in a huge world of lots of floating rocks…lots…and lots of floating rocks. Brought to us by Nicely Crafted Entertainment, this game is definitely huge and immersive.
Time of Defiance features:
- Each player opponent is human, unpredictable and dangerous requiring all of your military, tactical and diplomatic skills.
- A world that is over 4,000 square kilometers (Approx. 2,500 square miles) of real distance.
- Numerous islands to colonize.
- A variety of space ships used to explore, scout and conquer.
- Involving game play that can last up to 4 weeks.
- Active community of experienced players.
- Offers five different kind of game play experiences ranging from beginner, intermediate, advanced, skirmish and blitz servers.
- Evolving game play with new features, space ships and enhancements added regularly.
- Developing story line revealing the past, present and future of Nespanona.
- 3 distinct races involved, the Cog Dominion, Shadoo Alliance and Nespan Collective. The Nespan have emerged recently on Nespanona and offer new and strange technology to the players.
- Random features: Magnetic Storms, asteroid strikes, quantum disturbances will all affect your decisions during the game.
The gameplay here is very immersive and highly addictive. You’ll start out with a small island and all the basic tools you need to help you get to the building and scouting and gathering. There really isn’t much to the controls; you will mainly just use your mouse to delve into menu screen after menu screen to select all kinds of unit commands and actions.
One thing that bothered me about all the menu options was that it was very overwhelming and a lot to have to figure out for a new coming player, but that is to be expected due to all the detail put into unit commands, and especially due to the fact that this game is so complex and involving. The game is so big though, I typically got bored just waiting on a selected unit to move however many kilometers to whatever selected location; it took so long to move my units that some times I even forgot what unit I picked to move where, so I had to scroll around looking for it, and that generally got pretty tedious.
Time of Defiance pulls away from the standard RTS conventions by offering a massive world that operates in real time. Constructing even a basic building like a mine takes around ten minutes. The islands are thousands of kilometers apart, so ships typically have to travel for about twenty or forty-five minutes to reach there various destinations. Fully scouting even one sector requires a very strenuous amount of your time.
And to make things even more tedious, the game world stays active even when you log off. Therefore, whether you are online or not, your empire is highly prone to any predator. All of these factors demand a level of commitment not seen in the usual massively multiplayer game; it enhances the tension, and it does not take you out of threat or danger just because you are logged out.
This game requires much planning and patience. You have to think long and hard for every move you make; each decision takes valuable time, and not every result is clear or even positive. All of this does a good job of keeping the game tense, and keeping decision making critical. A strong defensive output is necessary if you want to be able to rest well at night knowing your empire is well protected. The constant threat and real time also help to ensure that players interact and make important diplomatic connections, so that maybe while one player is offline, the newfound friend will keep an eye on you—or perhaps not, it is totally fair game to just exploit your connection and go try to take over your empire while you are asleep—this kind of tension keeps the game very interesting and unique.
Unfortunately, the game seemed pretty empty in terms of community. I rarely ever even saw another player, much less talked to one. There are several chat channels set up, but they all just as well should have been cricket orchestras because not a soul conveyed a thing. It’s a shame too because this game has the potential to provide a really unique and tense environment, but it all relies on the players, and they just didn’t seem as involved as they should have been.
Well, let me just say this: the sky is pretty, yep, a pretty pink and blue sky, and nothing else. The islands are, for the most part, just chunks of rock. Now, granted I did not get to see every island in the game, but the ones I discovered were pretty plain. Some of the battle effects, such as smoke and explosions, are nicely done, but they are nothing to make you feel like you are right there in the action.
The ship models are pretty boring and blocky, as are the various building structures. In all fairness though, this is a RTS game, and a huge one at that, so the graphical impairments are excusable.
The sound might just be my favorite thing about this game, and I rarely even heard any. There is some pretty upbeat techno mix that starts up as soon as you get to the title screen, and there is just a bit of some subtle ambiance as you explore, and both amused me. That said, I rarely even heard anything else, besides the incredibly annoying sound of my drills or whatever the hell that was mining—it was actually a bit frightening.
Also, the world is so huge that I hardly ever even saw another player, much less had a battle with them, so nothing exciting about the battle music even holds a memory in my mind.
I would only recommend this game for people with a lot of free time. The game is just too big to allow for any real satisfaction from a simple pick up and play session; it will require much more commitment out of you. The game does come with a monthly fee, and it is a relatively good deal too. I even experienced a patch while in the trail, so this just goes to show you that you will be getting what you pay for. There were a lot of upcoming content updates, so this is a reassuring factor for anyone wary of games with monthly fees.
This game is too tedious and huge to even really get into without sacrificing your job, wife, friends, girlfriends, health, life… Then you have to consider this is an online game designed around player interaction and there just isn't anyone playing it. After six months of operation, either everyone has already come and gone or nobody showed up to begin with.
Games literally take weeks to complete, and chances are you won’t see how it begins or ends; you will merely be just passing through.