But there are still a bunch of awesome, epic games to be had if you give Savage 2 a try. Just do yourself a favor and play the tutorial level first.

Great graphics (esp for an indy)
Good, mostly balanced mechanics
Full stat tracking & replays
Some really, really epic battles that you will remember forever
Real depth, and skill level makes a huge difference

However, there’s just something wrong with it. For some reason that I haven’t been able to pin down, the game loses players like crazy. They’ll do a huge promo, get a couple hundred players into the game, and then over the next couple of weeks that’ll dwindle back down to the same 100-150 players that’s been there from the start. This happened at release, then with their first heavily-promoted content patch, their steam release, and it may happen with this free thing as well. It’s just bizarre. Usually with games you can immediately tell why their not successes. It sucks, too boring, small market size, horrible advertising, etc. This one, nothing jumps out.

The best thing I’ve been able to come up with is that the way this game does stat tracking, every game you play is on the ladder. Each player is assigned a “Skill Factor” based on previous performance, and this number shows up next to every player in every game. Since the vast majority of players suck at this game (this game has a pretty high learning curve), most players get constantly told that they suck game after game. That, coupled with the fact that it’s not very obvious how to get better, means that new players play for a bit, have fun, realize they suck, get discouraged, and leave.

Also, since every game is on the ladder, you can’t goof off in this game. After a particularly epic game, you can’t just mess around in the next game because if you do, that’ll lower your rating. You have to try to play at your best every single game. Unfortunately, what that actually means is that after a couple games, I’ll tend to log off because I know I can’t play my top level anymore.

There is, btw, a feature to not record stats. At the beginning of every game, you can opt out. This is great, but at least for me, there’s a bit of a feeling that, if there’s a number next to my name called “Skill Factor”, I should try to max that as much as possible. True it doesn’t actually mean anything, but there’s that deep-seated impulse to pump that as high as I can.

Anyway, if anyone end up playing this, post some impressions. I’d love to hear the impressions that new players have of this game.

But no, I can’t do that! I have an exam tomorrow!

Savage seems more about killing more than the other team. Where Empires have more area control, and building importance. But thats me. I also play engineer on TF2.

I bought Savage 2 when it was a weekend deal on Steam, but I haven’t played that much. I guess it actually is a very good game once you have -really- learned and understood how to play it, but until then it is a … difficult experience. I hope S2 have more luck with the new business model. Last time I played, the servers were quite empty. Savage 2 deserves better.