Info about Taur:

Official game description:
Taur is an action-strategy sci-fi game. Inspired by a multitude of games in classic genres such as tower defense, shooter, real-time strategy and more, creating a unique type of gameplay. Created by one-person indie studio Echo Entertainment.  
Gameplay
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*   **Prime Cannon**: Control the powerful Prime Cannon, equipped with a primary and a secondary weapon that can be fired simultaneously.  
*   **Weapons**: Unlock and upgrade different weapons, and bring them to bear at any time on the battlefield.  
*   **Abilities**: Unlock multiple, powerful abilities and use them to turn the tide of battle.  
*   **Build**: Use the resources gained from secured war zones to expand your Taur defenses by building a variety of auto-turrets, droids, aircraft and more.  
*   **Destruction**: Every unit, structure, tree and plant is fully destructible, leading to tactical advantages or disadvantages over the course of a battle as the environment is destroyed.  
*   **Attacks**: Plan your defenses for different types of attacks such as full-scale invasions, air raids, tank sieges and infantry skyfall attacks.  
*   **Imperion**: Defeat the increasingly massive armies of the warmongering galactic droid empire known as the Imperion.
Campaign
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*   **Control**: Prevent the planet of Taurea, home of the Tauron droids, from falling into Imperion hands. Control of the planet will either be gained or lost over time, depending on your success on the battlefield. Should the Imperion gain full control of Taurea, the campaign will be lost.  
*   **War Zones**: The Taur can only be deployed to one war zone per day, forcing you to abandon the remaining ones. Abandoned war zones may incur loss of control, and their resources are lost, so choose carefully.  
*   **Resources**: Obtain resources by successfully securing war zones. Use them to build new structures, reforge weapons and research new tech.  
*   **Forge**: Use the Forge to reshape the quality and damage of your Prime Cannon weapons.  
*   **Research**: Unlock new tech to be used in battle.  
*   **Overlord**: In order to win the war and end the campaign, you must find a way to defeat the extremely powerful Imperion Overlord in battle.

Release date: 19 Feb, 2020

Categories: Tower Defense, Real-time Strategy, Top-Down Tactical Shooter, Base Building, Resource Management, Strategic Combat, Single-player Story, Meta-Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Fun, unique core gameplay (weight 0.91): The core gameplay loop, which combines tower defense and top-down shooting, is engaging and fun. The game offers a unique and refreshing take on the tower defense genre with diverse gameplay and replayability. Battles are spectacular, with hundreds of enemies, quality effects, and physics.
- Appealing graphics and sound design (weight 0.69): The game features appealing graphics, a sleek aesthetic, and impressive visual effects, especially explosions and energy shields. The art style is often described as low-poly with a futuristic feel, reminiscent of games like Supreme Commander and Homeworld. The sound design complements the visuals, creating an immersive experience.
- Effective weapons and tower variety (weight 0.2): Specific towers and weapons, such as the laser turret, shotgun turret, and initial main weapon, are effective against certain enemy types. Guards and shield facilities are almost essential for withstanding enemy attacks. Archers are a main source of damage in the early to mid-game.
- Challenging with diverse upgrades (weight 0.2): The game features a large tech tree with diverse upgrades, requiring strategic resource management. The difficulty scales with the number of enemies, challenging players to rethink their approach. The game combines tower defense and shooter elements with grinding and progression.
- Impactful weapons, unique concept (weight 0.15): The game has a strong sense of impact, with polished explosion effects and weapon systems. Each weapon feels unique, contributing to an immersive experience. The game has a unique and amazing concept.
- Blends TD with shooting elements (weight 0.13): The game successfully blends tower defense with shooting elements, allowing manual aiming and firing. Built units and towers persist across missions, enhancing continuity. The upgrade tree and resource management are engaging, adding depth to the gameplay.
- Updates enhance gameplay and content (weight 0.1): Recent updates have added diverse ground units, a large gunship, rebels, and superweapons, enhancing the early game and addressing previous issues of automatically losing scenarios. The campaign system offers freedom of choice and leniency towards losing missions.
- Fan translation patch revitalized game (weight 0.06): A fan-made translation patch revitalized the game, making it playable after a long period of disuse and fixing previous crashing issues. The game is very popular among Chinese players.
- Good value for money (weight 0.05): The game is considered a very good value for money, especially when on sale, providing an enjoyable experience.

Common complaints:
- Overpriced for limited content/replayability (weight 0.88): Multiple reviews express concerns about the game's high price relative to its content, length, and replayability. Many feel the game is too short and repetitive for the asking price, especially considering the lack of depth and replay value after the initial playthrough. Some reviewers suggest the game feels incomplete or more like a tech demo.
- Underdeveloped tower defense mechanics (weight 0.77): Many reviewers criticize the tower defense mechanics, citing a lack of strategic depth, poor tower AI, and limited tower variety. Some towers are considered useless, and the game often devolves into spamming a few effective tower types. The game's balance is also questioned, with some reviewers noting that the primary focus is on shooting rather than strategic tower placement.
- Double cursor and technical issues (weight 0.37): A recurring technical issue is the presence of a double mouse cursor, which many reviewers find distracting and game-breaking. Some also report game crashes, freezes upon exiting, and other technical problems that impact the overall experience. The mouse acceleration issue is also a known problem that has not been fixed.
- Unsatisfying weapon/upgrade system (weight 0.19): Several reviews mention issues with the weapon system, including poor weapon balance, reliance on RNG for upgrades, and unsatisfying starting weapons. The upgrade system is criticized for its random nature, where higher-tier weapons can sometimes be worse than lower-tier ones. This inconsistency and lack of control over weapon progression can lead to frustration.
- Missing features, language support (weight 0.1): The game lacks certain features, such as mod support, co-op mode, and language options like Chinese and German. The absence of Chinese language support is a recurring concern, as it requires players to rely on fan-made translations, which can introduce bugs. The lack of these features limits the game's accessibility and potential for community engagement.
- Lacks information, uninteresting maps (weight 0.1): Some reviewers note that the game lacks crucial information about unit and structure effectiveness, making it difficult to optimize strategies. The maps are also criticized for lacking interesting terrain features and bottlenecks. Additionally, buildings are considered too expensive, and losing them can significantly hinder progress.
- Unengaging ending, post-game content (weight 0.1): The game's ending and post-game content are considered underwhelming. After defeating the final boss, the game transitions into an endless mode that many reviewers find unengaging. The lack of a satisfying conclusion or compelling endgame content diminishes the overall sense of accomplishment and replayability.
- Lacks depth, not true TD (weight 0.08): The game lacks depth compared to other tower defense games, with limited resource management and a lack of a feeling of progression. The game is not a tower defense game, despite initial impressions.
- Poorly explained mechanics, frustrating controls (weight 0.05): Some reviewers find the game mechanics poorly explained, making it difficult to understand certain concepts. Manual shooting with the cannon is also considered frustrating, hindering the ability to observe the battlefield and analyze the situation.

Gameplay feedback:
- Active tower defense hybrid (weight 0.35): The game blends tower defense with active shooter elements. Players directly control a central tower, manually aiming and shooting while managing abilities and automated defenses against waves of enemies.
- Strategic resource management (weight 0.25): Strategic resource management is key. Players earn resources from missions and must strategically allocate them to unlock technologies, build defenses, and carefully choose missions based on enemy type, environment, and available rewards.
- Diverse, specialized turret options (weight 0.11): The game features diverse turret types with unique functions. Players must balance anti-air, anti-crowd, and anti-tank defenses, and choose between basic and special turrets, each with distinct capabilities and upgrade paths.
- Effective unit upgrade strategies (weight 0.1): Specific unit upgrade strategies are effective. For example, maxing archers' ultimate skills significantly increases damage, and aircraft should be built with interceptors and fighters in a 1:1 ratio.
- Multi-phase boss fight challenges (weight 0.08): Boss fights consist of multiple phases with unique challenges. Players must adapt their base and weapon choices to counter different attack types, such as air raids and direct laser strikes on the main base.
- Prioritize Aegis shield upgrades (weight 0.06): The Aegis shield technology is crucial for defense. Players should prioritize unlocking and upgrading the Aegis shield and its active skill for instant shield recovery.
- Early turrets become obsolete (weight 0.05): Early game turrets become obsolete later on. The early game provides frequent tech unlocks, but later the tech tree focuses on numerical adjustments to units.
- Building destruction refunds resources (weight 0.04): The game refunds resources for destroyed buildings. Players can destroy buildings and recover 100% of the resources, but cannot rebuild on the same spot in the same round.
- Terrain affects weapon targeting (weight 0.04): Terrain impacts weapon effectiveness. Some maps have terrain that blocks the angle of fire, requiring the use of indirect weapons.
- Short main campaign (weight 0.04): The main campaign is short. Missions are short, which is good for short sessions but lacking for those expecting more lengthy gameplay.
- Slow early tech progression (weight 0.04): Tech progression is slow initially. The tech progression system's pace is slow at first, but becomes more apparent after day 40.

Performance notes:
- Generally smooth, optimized performance (weight 0.16): Many players report that the game runs smoothly and is well-optimized, even on older or less powerful machines. Some recommend a mid-tier machine for optimal performance, especially with many on-screen enemies. Several reviewers specifically stated they encountered no bugs or performance issues during their playthroughs.
- Crashing upon exiting the game (weight 0.08): A recurring issue involves the game freezing or crashing when exiting to the desktop. This problem often requires users to terminate the game via the task manager. This can be frustrating for players who expect a seamless exit from the game.
- Inconsistent frame rate reported (weight 0.05): Some players have reported that the game's frame rate is inconsistent regardless of graphical settings or battle size. One player reported a doubled mouse cursor, which was resolved by changing the screen resolution.
- Unoptimized at high refresh rates (weight 0.04): The game appears to be unoptimized at high refresh rates, leading to high GPU consumption. Limiting the frame rate can reduce GPU usage, suggesting a need for better optimization at higher refresh rates.
- No raw mouse input option (weight 0.02): Players are unable to use raw mouse input, and must instead rely on the in-game sensitivity settings. This limits the precision and customization available to players who prefer raw input for aiming and camera control.
- Shadows rendering incorrectly (weight 0.02): Some players have reported that shadows are not rendering correctly, even when using the maximum graphics settings. This graphical glitch detracts from the visual experience and may indicate a bug or optimization issue.
- Performance during final battle (weight 0.02): One player reported that the game runs at 50-60 FPS in 4K resolution during the final battle using a 9100F CPU and RX588 GPU. This information is not very specific and only represents one player's experience.

Recommendations:
- Worth buying, especially on sale (weight 0.82): Many reviewers suggest the game is worth buying, especially on sale. The full price is considered too high by some, given the amount of content or replayability. A price point of $10-$20 is frequently mentioned as more appropriate.
- Repetitive, lacks long-term depth (weight 0.78): Some reviewers find the game enjoyable for short sessions or as a quick distraction. However, others find it becomes repetitive and lacks depth, especially in the late game, leading to a lack of replayability and end-game content.
- Consider difficulty curve adjustments (weight 0.65): Some reviewers mention the game's difficulty curve, suggesting new players start on easy mode. One reviewer disputes claims of excessive difficulty, attributing them to a lack of understanding of game mechanics.
- Significant technical issues present (weight 0.16): Several reviewers experienced technical issues, such as mouse input problems and double cursor issues, that made the game unplayable. These issues significantly detract from the experience, leading to refunds and strong recommendations against purchasing until they are resolved.
- Good for tower defense fans (weight 0.11): The game is recommended for fans of the tower defense and strategy genres. Some consider it a solid mix of genres, while others find it just okay or short.
- More progression, less repetitiveness needed (weight 0.06): Reviewers suggest the game needs more permanent progression and randomness to reduce repetitiveness. They want to experience the best parts of the game earlier and more often.
- Improve turret setup mechanics (weight 0.05): The game is enjoyable when players can create large turret setups. Reviewers suggest making it easier and quicker to build these setups and reducing the impact of losing turrets.
- Longer missions, more resources needed (weight 0.02): Reviewers suggest that longer and harder missions could be more enjoyable if players could gain more resources during the mission, allowing for more intense firefights.
- Add post-game stat page (weight 0.02): Adding a post-game stat page would greatly improve replay value by providing players with more information and goals to pursue.

Other player notes:
- New units and resource trading (weight 0.13): Recent updates introduced resource trading and new units like the 'Rebel' platoons and 'Sentinel' units. 'Rebel' units gain experience and improve accuracy, while 'Sentinel' units allow summoning special units like the Paladin tank or Avenger ship, adding strategic depth.
- Standard menu and settings options (weight 0.09): The game features standard main menu options and customizable settings. Graphics settings include resolution, display mode, ambient occlusion, dynamic shadows, and screen-space reflections. Gameplay settings cover tutorials and mouse sensitivity, while audio settings offer master, music, and ambient volume controls.
- Sci-fi tower defense hybrid (weight 0.09): The game blends tower defense, shooter, and strategy elements within a sci-fi setting, where players defend the planet Taurea as the Prime Cannon against the invading Imperion forces. The lore establishes a conflict between technologically advanced synthetics, setting the stage for the defensive campaign.
- Disconnected, random campaign missions (weight 0.04): The campaign system feels disconnected from the core concept of defending a planet. Instead of strategic fortification, players engage in random defensive missions in wilderness areas, lacking urban or industrial sectors to defend.
- Conflicting reports on updates (weight 0.04): There is conflicting information regarding ongoing support for the game. Some reviews indicate continued updates, while others state that development has ceased, creating uncertainty about the game's future.
- Impressive for solo developer (weight 0.04): The game's graphics and gameplay details are considered impressive, especially given it was developed by a single person. However, the art style is only considered passable.
- Text as images hinders translations (weight 0.03): The game's text is rendered as images, which complicates the creation of fan translations, potentially limiting accessibility for non-English speakers.
- Feels like a tech demo (weight 0.02): The game feels like a tech demo showcasing physics, destructive effects, and crude AI, suggesting a lack of polish or depth in gameplay mechanics.
- Request for Chinese language option (weight 0.02): A reviewer specifically requests the addition of a Chinese language option to improve accessibility for Chinese-speaking players.
- Missing achievement support (weight 0.02): The game currently lacks achievements, which may be a drawback for players who enjoy collecting them.

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