Ancient Warfare 3 Review Summary

Unparalleled Creative Sandbox: The game offers immense creative freedom, allowing players to design and build virtually anything, from custom units and weapons to complex scenarios and entire campaigns. Its robust modding support and scripting options provide endless possibilities for user-generated content.

Easy Controls & Accessibility: The game is noted for its easy-to-learn controls, particularly for unit and object placement, making it accessible for new players. This ease of use contributes to the overall fun and creative experience.

Active Development & Quality: The game benefits from consistent updates and active development, with developers frequently adding new features and responding to community feedback. Reviewers praise the game's overall quality, art style, and ongoing improvements.

Versatile Battle Simulation: Players can create and participate in diverse battles across various historical eras, customizing units, weapons, and environments. The game functions as a comprehensive battle simulator, allowing for detailed recreation of historical events or imaginative combat scenarios.

Supportive Community & Workshop: The game boasts a friendly, active, and helpful community, particularly on platforms like Discord. The Steam Workshop is a vibrant hub for user-created content, offering a vast array of maps, units, and scenarios for players to download and enjoy.

Performance & Polish Issues: Many reviews highlight significant technical problems including poor optimization, frequent lag, crashes, and numerous bugs. Additionally, the game lacks overall polish, with clunky controls, basic visuals, and unrefined mechanics.

Missing Core Features: The game is criticized for lacking essential features such as online multiplayer, a campaign mode, and direct unit control. There's also a notable absence of localization for several languages, limiting accessibility for non-English speakers.

Steep Learning Curve: Many players find the game, especially its visual scripting system, difficult and confusing to learn due to a lack of clear tutorials or online resources. This steep learning curve means significant time investment is required before the game becomes enjoyable.

Poor AI Performance: A recurring issue is the game's artificial intelligence, described as static, dumb, and prone to poor pathfinding. Specific problems include units making illogical choices, friendly fire incidents, and robotic, slow movements, often forcing players to compensate.

High Price for Content: The game's price is considered too high relative to the amount of content and features it currently offers. This suggests a poor value proposition for many players.

More Tool Than Game: The game is often perceived as a powerful set of creative tools or a game engine rather than a traditional game with a predefined story or progression. This emphasizes its open-ended sandbox nature.

Blocky Graphics Style: The game features a distinctive Minecraft-like blocky aesthetic for characters and environmental objects. This schematic style is often described as cute.

Accessible, No Grind: The game is noted for being easy to pick up and play, without the need for traditional progression systems or grinding. This allows players to immediately dive into its creative and simulation aspects.

Similar to TABS: Many reviewers frequently compare the game's core concept and gameplay loop to Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS).

Infinite Replayability: Due to its extensive sandbox and creation tools, the game offers virtually infinite playtime. Players can continuously create new scenarios and content, ensuring long-term engagement.

Good Performance, Low Requirements: Many players report that the game is well-optimized and runs smoothly even on older or less powerful PCs, including laptops, with stable frame rates. This includes quick asset loading and good performance during large-scale battles (e.g., 50 vs 50).

Performance Dips with Objects: While generally well-optimized, some players on weaker PCs have reported performance issues, particularly when a large number of objects are present on screen. This suggests potential optimization challenges in highly dense environments.

Overall Positive Recommendation: Many reviewers express a general positive sentiment, recommending the game as fun, good, and worth the price. This indicates a strong overall satisfaction among a large portion of the player base.

Technical Issues/Low Value: Some players reported persistent issues that led to refunds, while others felt the game was not worth their time or money. This suggests potential technical problems or a lack of engaging content for some users.

Consider Sale Purchase: One reviewer suggested purchasing the game only when it is on sale, implying that while the game may be enjoyable, its full price might be a deterrent or that its value is better at a discount.

Appreciation for Development: One reviewer expressed satisfaction in being able to support the ongoing development of the game, indicating appreciation for the project's progress or potential rather than specific gameplay features.

Encourage Personal Trial: One reviewer suggested that others should try the game for themselves, indicating a neutral stance and encouraging individual experience rather than providing specific feedback on game features.

Improved creative tools/coding guide: Players desire a comprehensive guide for the game's coding system to make it accessible to non-programmers. They also wish for more precise control over object placement for better creative freedom.

Add Russian language support: There is a request for the inclusion of Russian language localization. This would make the game more accessible to a broader audience.

New custom game modes: Players are interested in the addition of new, user-definable game modes. This would allow for more diverse gameplay scenarios and replayability.

Uniform customization options: Players are requesting more comprehensive customization options for uniforms. This would allow for greater personalization and role-playing opportunities.

Add WW2 artillery: There is a desire for the inclusion of artillery units specifically for World War 2 themed content. This would enhance historical accuracy and gameplay variety in relevant scenarios.