Following in the foot-steps of its obvious inspiration, Dawn of War, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin seems like it could actually be a really good game. At least to a Warhammer and RTS fan craving more of each. However, do not be fooled by the visuals. It’s a terrible game and certainly not worth its asking price. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it on sale. While it looks pretty, the game is ultimately shallow and a chore to play which results in more frustration and tedium than any semblance of fun. If you had a choice between playing this game or cleaning your bathroom you should choose cleaning your toilet 100% of the time and you’d still be exposed to less ♥♥♥♥ than if you played this game.

The story mostly follows the Stormcast Eternals faction, Warhammer Age of Sigmar’s fantasy version of Warhammer 40K Space Marines. There is just a small battalion left on a crusade against Orks and the campaign follows the various grand battles, sieges, and skirmishes that take place between the two factions. Interestingly, the story shifts POV several times and even follows the Orks for a time, allowing the player to see firsthand how they become a threat to the Stormcast Eternals. While most missions take place between these two factions there are two other factions in the game: the Nighthaunt – pretty much the undead – and the Tzeentch chaos faction. While the Nighthaunt doesn’t get a POV in the campaign, they’re an enemy in quite a few missions. Tzeentch on the other hand is a playable faction for a few missions in the campaign, however it is told in story as a vision being watched by the magician character.

Anyways, the story isn’t really all that special, but it at least seems Warhammer enough with some twists here and there. The story was never really the driving force to keep me going but It at least had something there for a reason to fight in each mission.

Although where the game and story overlapped was one of the first areas that made me hate the game. In-game cutscenes. The actual cinematics are fine (when they didn’t crash on me, more on that later). But whenever there was a scene in the middle of a mission using in-game models I contemplated uninstalling the game and never seeing it again. First – the game actually continued while it forced you to watch the scene play. This meant a battle can continue happening beyond your control and by the time the scene ends your unit may be dead since you weren’t able to deal with the battle. Secondly – while the cinematics are skippable, the in-mission scenes are not. If you have to restart because of some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like the above, a timer, or some other reason for a failed mission then have fun watching the scenes again because you can’t skip it!

Game looks fine, I’ll give it that. Part of what made me want to play it was that visually it looked interesting and reminded me of Dawn of War but with a flavor of Age of Sigmar, Admittedly, I do not know much about Age of Sigmar and played only one other game with it, so I wanted to know more. But unfortunately, it does not have nearly the same kind of staying power as Dawn of War. At least I got to see what various Age of Sigmar units look like?

Realms of Ruin is a real-time strategy game where the strategy revolves around unit caps, composition of the army based on these caps, and map placement to hold various strategic resource points all while completing objectives. On paper, this sounds good. Even the units are described as having a sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic of melee, ranged and shields.

This last point is also where things immediately fall apart. The game balance absolutely does not reflect this triangle. Instead, ranged is simply king and will beat literally everything: melee, shields and other ranged. What is the point of melee and shields if the ranged unit will just obliterate them before they ever reach it? Oh yeah, unit speeds (at least in campaign, I did not bother with other modes) is also pretty slow, just more icing on the cake.

The ranged units are actually kind of fun and pretty satisfying to use – especially the chaos flamers and horrors. At least when you’re actively using them. All too often I will have units just stand around doing nothing while an enemy is in range because they’re looking slightly to the right. Worse, sometimes they could actively be shot and still just stand there instead of pursuing the ranged unit attacking them. There seems to be a lack of any kind of guard mode and playing defense is just very frustrating and unresponsive.

And you will definitely have to play defense, way more than you want to. Many missions involve holding several points at once which is like a terribly unfun game of whack-of-mole. You take a point, leave to take the next one. And already the enemy respawned double your number and take the point back. So you absolutely have to leave squads at your points and hold them while you send another to actively take new points. With the unit cap, this can even seem impossible at times. This was never clearer than the first mission against the nighthaunt – I believe it was mission 3 or 4? The enemies spawn endlessly with no way to shut them off while you’re supposed to simultaneously hold and defend three points. It was painful.

A tip for any poor unlucky soul who actually plays this game – focus on upgrading your HQ over anything else. That raises your unit cap. The game is actually playable when you have enough units to defend multiple points. Still absolutely tedious and annoying though. Don’t expect any kind of blitzkrieg assault here. No, the campaign is a slog where each mission will feel like you’re slowly crawling to victory via a war of attrition as you scramble your units across the game of whack-a-mole.

I will admit there are some cool moments or ideas here or there. But every time I want to praise the game, I’m immediately hit by another reason to be like “oh that’s right it’s still crap – just a polished turd.” I think it’s poor design when sometimes it’s just actively better to ignore the mission you’re given. For example, there is a “boss” encounter where you are meant to capture several locations to weaken it. I tried to do that and it just became an endless battle where the enemy was able to overwhelm me and take it back. So I looked up online and saw other people had the same problem. They all recommended to ignore that objective and to just attack the boss at its’ full strength instead. I did that and had a much better time. Amazing. I was just happy to no longer play the game.


The game crashed to desktop on almost every cinematic for me. Actual game ran fine and I could watch the cutscene once I loaded back in.

Operating System: Windows 10
Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @3.40GHz
Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Memory (RAM) 16 GB

GAME BAD. Absolutely not a full-price game, what the hell were they thinking with that price point? I’m aware I kept playing it even though it’s a bad game. But I certainly do not recommend anyone else doing that. It was just a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and a desperation for Warhammer RTS content with a curiosity for Age of Sigmar. Well, my curiosity was satisfied. But at what cost? Sixty dollars and some wasted hours. Not the end of the world but figured I might as well help someone else save their own money on this mediocre title. What’s truly disappointing is that it could have been good with just some effort on making the game actually fun to play, but oh well.

[h1]Age of Overpriced Games: Realms of Ruin[/h1] [h2][u]Overview[/u][/h2] Following in the foot-steps of its obvious inspiration, [i]Dawn of War[/i], [i]Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin[/i] seems like it could actually be a really good game. At least to a Warhammer and RTS fan craving more of each. However, do not be fooled by the visuals. It’s a terrible game and certainly not worth its asking price. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it on sale. While it looks pretty, the game is ultimately shallow and a chore to play which results in more frustration and tedium than any semblance of fun. If you had a choice between playing this game or cleaning your bathroom you should choose cleaning your toilet 100% of the time and you’d still be exposed to less shit than if you played this game. [h2][u]Story[/u][/h2] The story mostly follows the Stormcast Eternals faction, Warhammer Age of Sigmar’s fantasy version of Warhammer 40K Space Marines. There is just a small battalion left on a crusade against Orks and the campaign follows the various grand battles, sieges, and skirmishes that take place between the two factions. Interestingly, the story shifts POV several times and even follows the Orks for a time, allowing the player to see firsthand how they become a threat to the Stormcast Eternals. While most missions take place between these two factions there are two other factions in the game: the Nighthaunt – pretty much the undead – and the Tzeentch chaos faction. While the Nighthaunt doesn’t get a POV in the campaign, they’re an enemy in quite a few missions. Tzeentch on the other hand is a playable faction for a few missions in the campaign, however it is told in story as a vision being watched by the magician character. Anyways, the story isn’t really all that special, but it at least seems Warhammer enough with some twists here and there. The story was never really the driving force to keep me going but It at least had something there for a reason to fight in each mission. Although where the game and story overlapped was one of the first areas that made me hate the game. In-game cutscenes. The actual cinematics are fine (when they didn’t crash on me, more on that later). But whenever there was a scene in the middle of a mission using in-game models I contemplated uninstalling the game and never seeing it again. First – the game actually continued while it forced you to watch the scene play. This meant a battle can continue happening beyond your control and by the time the scene ends your unit may be dead since you weren’t able to deal with the battle. Secondly – while the cinematics are skippable, the in-mission scenes are not. If you have to restart because of some bullshit like the above, a timer, or some other reason for a failed mission then have fun watching the scenes again because you can’t skip it! [h2][u]Presentation[/u][/h2] Game looks fine, I’ll give it that. Part of what made me want to play it was that visually it looked interesting and reminded me of [i]Dawn of War[/i] but with a flavor of Age of Sigmar, Admittedly, I do not know much about Age of Sigmar and played only one other game with it, so I wanted to know more. But unfortunately, it does not have nearly the same kind of staying power as [i]Dawn of War[/i]. At least I got to see what various Age of Sigmar units look like? [h2][u]Gameplay[/u][/h2] [i]Realms of Ruin[/i] is a real-time strategy game where the strategy revolves around unit caps, composition of the army based on these caps, and map placement to hold various strategic resource points all while completing objectives. On paper, this sounds good. Even the units are described as having a sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic of melee, ranged and shields. This last point is also where things immediately fall apart. The game balance absolutely does not reflect this triangle. Instead, ranged is simply king and will beat literally everything: melee, shields and other ranged. What is the point of melee and shields if the ranged unit will just obliterate them before they ever reach it? Oh yeah, unit speeds (at least in campaign, I did not bother with other modes) is also pretty slow, just more icing on the cake. The ranged units are actually kind of fun and pretty satisfying to use – especially the chaos flamers and horrors. At least when you’re actively using them. All too often I will have units just stand around doing nothing while an enemy is in range because they’re looking slightly to the right. Worse, sometimes they could actively be shot and still just stand there instead of pursuing the ranged unit attacking them. There seems to be a lack of any kind of guard mode and playing defense is just very frustrating and unresponsive. And you will definitely have to play defense, way more than you want to. Many missions involve holding several points at once which is like a terribly unfun game of whack-of-mole. You take a point, leave to take the next one. And already the enemy respawned double your number and take the point back. So you absolutely have to leave squads at your points and hold them while you send another to actively take new points. With the unit cap, this can even seem impossible at times. This was never clearer than the first mission against the nighthaunt – I believe it was mission 3 or 4? The enemies spawn endlessly with no way to shut them off while you’re supposed to simultaneously hold and defend three points. It was painful. A tip for any poor unlucky soul who actually plays this game – focus on upgrading your HQ over anything else. That raises your unit cap. The game is actually playable when you have enough units to defend multiple points. Still absolutely tedious and annoying though. Don’t expect any kind of blitzkrieg assault here. No, the campaign is a slog where each mission will feel like you’re slowly crawling to victory via a war of attrition as you scramble your units across the game of whack-a-mole. I will admit there are some cool moments or ideas here or there. But every time I want to praise the game, I’m immediately hit by another reason to be like “oh that’s right it’s still crap – just a polished turd.” I think it’s poor design when sometimes it’s just actively better to ignore the mission you’re given. For example, there is a “boss” encounter where you are meant to capture several locations to weaken it. I tried to do that and it just became an endless battle where the enemy was able to overwhelm me and take it back. So I looked up online and saw other people had the same problem. They all recommended to ignore that objective and to just attack the boss at its’ full strength instead. I did that and had a much better time. Amazing. I was just happy to no longer play the game. [h2][u]Specs[/u][/h2] The game crashed to desktop on almost every cinematic for me. Actual game ran fine and I could watch the cutscene once I loaded back in. Operating System: Windows 10 Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @3.40GHz Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Memory (RAM) 16 GB [h2][u]Summary[/u][/h2] GAME BAD. Absolutely not a full-price game, what the hell were they thinking with that price point? I’m aware I kept playing it even though it’s a bad game. But I certainly do not recommend anyone else doing that. It was just a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and a desperation for Warhammer RTS content with a curiosity for Age of Sigmar. Well, my curiosity was satisfied. But at what cost? Sixty dollars and some wasted hours. Not the end of the world but figured I might as well help someone else save their own money on this mediocre title. What’s truly disappointing is that it could have been good with just some effort on making the game actually fun to play, but oh well.