Ok, I'll kick off this review by admitting I'm actually pretty bad at this game, I spent a couple of weeks trying and honestly, I'm just bad
So, onto the review...
Bow we've been following Ironcast on PC since it was released on STEAM March 2015, roll on a year later and the XBox One version was released on the 9th of March.
At it's heart, IronCast is a turn based gem collecting game, but calling it just that does it an incredible disservice. This is a roguelike tactical RPG if ever there was one.
Inspired by Victorian era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire.
Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880's Victorian England. Battles are fought by generating resource nodes which in turn drive the Ironcast's various weapons and systems. You must choose how to spend these nodes wisely, either offensively in order to cripple and destroy your opponents, or defensively, if they suspect a barrage of incoming weapons fire is due.
As the blurb says, you are the commander of an 1800's era steampunk inspired steam tank/walker. You have to collect gems in your turn the correspond to ammo, coolant, etc, which you then use to move your mech, fire your weapons and/or raise your shields, but you never really have enough to do all of it.
The game is simple in idea, but in the execution, its easy to forget what you've done and as you'll see in my twitch playthrough below, I regularly forgot to do something or simply ran out of what I needed to keep myself alive or attack the enemy. Now this could just be me, watching other streams, people are gettign the hang of it, but i also wonder if for me, the transistion from keyboard and mouse, to a single controller system is, for me, the downfall. Everything in the controller layout makes sense, and on screen the items are marked with the button that makes them work, but maybe it was too much for this old senile head to master.
That aside, I really enjoyed playing Ironcast and I love the steampunk vibe of the game.
The sound is also great too, the voice acting is a wonderful cockney British that makes me feel like I'm part of the game (it is my natural accent anyway) and the force feedback of the controller suited the sounds of the gun fire and moving mech perfectly too.
The leveling up and skill system seemed a little tricky to get to grips with and my main gripe while playing it on stream was some of the text is too small to read, even on my rather large tv in teh front room, something that would be less of a issue on a pc monitor you'd usually sit closer to.
As I said though, I enjoyed Ironcast and I will play it a lot more and it's definitely worth £10, so head over to xbox.com or check your Xbox One's store page!
~Lone
A Steam powered 6.5 out of 10!
