My opinion on Strategy browser game Caesary Online
I received an email from Caesary Online Game regarding a brand new browser game and right off the bat I had a few developing opinions. First thing that caught my eye was actually the brown background, a uninteresting color with no… passion to it. Just a few shades of brown and tan yet this was in some ways saved by the more interesting splash banner across the top, a battle-hardened Roman legion posed before a night sky that appeared to be on fire. And then of course I saw the name of the game itself.
And where I had my first really big issue with the game. “Caesary” is not a good name. First of all its not a real word at all, just Caesar with a Y added to prevent being sued by Sierra games. Secondly, adding a Y to Caesar doesn’t NOT remind you of the series of titles called “Caesar” released by Sierra games. Whether intentional or not, its a poor choice to cut the line that closely. Both games are based in ancient Rome where you control a city and slowly build the place up and defend it from attacks. In many ways, Caesary is even less complicated than the Caesar titles. Additionally, “Caesary” sounds like a joke name, similar to “cheesy” or some weird salad dressing. I can imagine someone going, “I feel Caesary today” and it sounds goofy as heck. Most people I told the name to thought it was stupid or laughable.
However, as I do like real time strategy games and have interests here at Aeria Games, I thought I would try it out and get past the goofy name. The page the game is hosted on is pretty nice at the top, with a large version of the email banner as a background, fitting in well with the new Aeria look across the top. As the game loads I scroll down the page and see… empty white space. You don’t need a shoutbox on a page with a game that has its own shoutbox. Its an unnecessary waste of space. Furthermore, if someone feels the need to have a “featured games” list on the page of another game, at least spread it across the bottom, and not all on one side. This leaves a ton of empty space in the middle that looks very poor. The top half of the page looks great, while the bottom is an empty spot that looks to have nothing to do with the top.
As the game loads, I find that even a RTS requires a buxom woman to promote. Then you’re lead through a short tutorial to get you started. All pretty good, if a bit on the heavy reading side. Then you get into the actual game and start to stamp out your dominion in the wide world of… all of Europe?? Did someone miss the memo that Romans didn’t own everything in Europe at the time? Anyway, now its time to get your city built up.
As one little city surrounded by tons of other similar looking cities, there’s not much to differentiate you from your neighbors. In fact if you aren’t careful about your name choices, you could end up being exactly the same as the guy next to you. Not very unique in terms of visual appearance on the map. Many leagues had even begun to assign random status (friendly/hostile) simply to add more color to each flag and tell who was who. Furthermore, all the near by “wilderness” areas seemed very similar to each other, and the forest areas in particular were like if someone had used the “clone” tool in photoshop a couple times. Some of the ‘river’ areas were hard to visually tell apart from areas that were just empty spots with rivers running through them. Additionally, my area had a large river nearby that would graphically mess up every time I exited the city view and would have to be fixed by moving the camera. Then the river would jump to its correct location and would be fine until the next time I changed views.
Speaking of moving the camera, the current system is very poor and reminds me of playing on a DSi or iPod type device, being required to continually drag the mouse to move the camera position. A preferred method would be to simply allow user to right-click or ctrl-click and hold while moving the mouse around to change the camera position by moving it around the edges of the screen. Additionally, allowing the player multiple viewing angles in either the global view or the city view would allow different experiences and see “around” the area.
As a constantly updated and changing RTS game, I expect to have to deal with timers falling at bad times and having a lot of down time. However as I got further into the game I realized that this would happen more and more for longer periods of time. Eventually I would get to the point where I would have nothing to do for an hour but wait for the next timer to count down so I could make the next choice and wait for another hour. By a level 8 rectorate, you will end up waiting for over a day while the building process sucks up a spot on your potential list of things to do. I can only imagine what it would be like for people with only 1 builder who would be force out of things to build for an entire day because they’re trying to upgrade a single building. However it is true that there are several other things you can potentially be using that time for, such as researching, making jobs and engaging in battles. However it is all too easy and too often happens that you have nothing to do but wait. There needs to be something to suck up little amounts of time, things that you can constantly be changing to keep yourself busy and ahead of all those other guys.
A major problem connected with the above post is that in no way can this game be considered “casual”. Every second you spend offline, someone else has the opportunity to surpass you, colonize your place and seize all your hard earned-wilds without you being at all aware until the next time you log on. There is no interest for me in playing this game casually as the potential to come back and find your work and armies decimated while you were eating dinner leaves a lingering sense of dread. A casual game to me is something you can pick up, play for a while, then leave and forget about for a while. This is not something you can only play once every few days or even once a day for a few minutes and expect to get any real sense of accomplishment. Every hour that you don’t play your rank drops like a rock and your enemies and friends outpace you and dwarf your tiny city. God forbid someone gets AP, then they can jump entire pages of ranks in a matter of minutes.
AP is another big issue that will definitely cause major schisms. It currently takes hours to trains units in Barracks, Stables or Workshop, however for the right price, you can simple buy yourself a bunch of Aglets from the item mall and trade them all in for hundreds of units. Furthermore you can simply spin that zodiac wheel and just get prize after expensive prize for a lot cheaper than actually buying the items from the mall. If you spin 500 gold worth of tries (100) you will not only get that item that was worth 500 gold, but 99 other things as well. At the same time, you will find yourself beset with a ton of junk, items you have absolutely no use for and can do nothing with. Simply being able to sell these items back for the gold they are worth would be an easy fix for these junk items.
And there is the matter of the items like Spices, Wines, Wool, etc. Incredibly hard to get by luck, and again makes me question the value of this game as a “casual” title. It took me over 30 attempts to get a single Spice. In that time I managed to receive more than 10 treasure maps. Why are the resources harder to find than treasure maps yet are actually labeled as “likely loot”? No casual player will want to spend all their time fighting again and again just to collect that one missing resource. Its a waste of their time. Meanwhile, for any AP buyer you can just outright buy the items in the mall and be done in seconds. Furthermore, you can spend AP to just advance any building instantly. While a non-AP buyer will have to wait an entire day for their lv8 rectorate, you can spend a tiny bundle of Gold to be done instantly and save over a day’s worth of time. Basically, AP buyers can outdistance non-AP buyers to where if you didn’t buy AP, you don’t even stand a chance.
Caesary though, is very management oriented and while there are not a lot of options for advancing your city, you do often need to make choices between best way to manage your resources. Much of the actual gameplay comes from battling however there is a problem here too. The battles themselves are boring as they are simply math problems that take forever to get over with and are virtually unrewarding. Heroes level very slowly and besides from the small profit you get from a victory, you get no since of fulfillment from attacking the same lv4 wilderness for the 100th time. You have no control over the actual battle and its just a matter of which numbers are higher. Replays are remotely interesting in that you actually get to see some action, but as you know the outcome, all you watch is little numbers appear and units die. I’ve watch a couple myself, but now just skip them completely. Greater control over battle situations would be greatly preferred, even if it was in the realm of having special defensive bonuses or attacking bonus depending on how you are attacking/defending. The real preferred would be control over the battle itself, even if it was turn-based. However you would keep the option to just “auto-attack” and let the numbers play out for you. However if you are skilled, you could use manual and potentially save more troops that way.
Finally, some parts of the game are still hard to understand or at least make sense of. Highest amongst these problems is the Market system of buying/selling resources. The options are very vague on how it works and its difficult for many players to understand what prices they should be buying and selling items for. Another major problem is the depositories in the League, especially for leagues that have reached level 10 and have no more use for the stored items. Not only can players still contribute resources that the Host/Vice Host can not use, but there is nothing explaining any of this to newcomers. If the host could potentially use these goods to upgrade the size of the league (as currently only AP buyers or lucky players can get the 300 size leagues) or could use the goods as “taxes” to give out to the members of the league or use for themselves.
In summary, here are the major points I would like to see addressed as far as I have been able to advance.
1. Graphic presentation of the game (better emails, website)
2. Better name if possible
3. More unique geographic features in-game, (cities, wilderness, maps)
4. More customization of the cities
5. Camera control
6. Amount of Downtime
7. Lack of protection while offline
8. Imbalance of AP buyers versus Non-AP buyers
9. Scarcity of needed resources
10. Control of battles that feel rewarding
11. Better market system
12. More League options
Things that look good:
1. Easy to get into
2. Expanding empire adds more involvement
3. Work in teams
4. Management of resources between cities
5. Small customizations such as character face, league emblem
6. Useful items
7. Good quest system to guide you
8. Open chat and league chat
9. some features change as upgrade them
10. Colonization feature allows feel of an “empire”
11. Attachment to certain heroes (often through renaming)
12. Can make aspects very personal (name cities/heroes after IRL things)
Basically I think Caesary is currently in need of development. It has a very good basic structure but it lacks the real immersion and control that I have come to expect from an RTS game.
Related Banner Flag Articles
Technorati Tags: browser, Caesary, game, OnLine, opinion, Strategy
