Tribal Wars

Tribal Wars is a medieval strategy game right in your browser. You complete quests and manage your village much like you manage your online fantasy football team. It’s all about the clicking and reading in order to build up your city and gather resources in order to expand your domain. Open PvP means you need to be wary, but it also means you can attack your neighbors and conquer their cities; always have troops ready to defend your empire. Like all of Innogames’ developments, Tribal Wars is a strategical conquest game. It is slightly better than Travian, and at the moment has more players, so if you enjoyed Travian– or strategy games in general– join in on the combat.

Gameplay

As I already stated, it is a lot like all of Innogames’ other developments, and honestly it isn’t one of their best. The gameplay is dependent on screens that read more like reports. If you always dreamed of being the head of a nation– with a desk full of random reports to decipher in order to rule your domain, then non-immersive report like building functions, solider command functions, and map/continent page will be listed on the pros, but for me it was a con.

In order to advance the game and build your empire, you have to upgrade buildings. You cannot even start building your army until you have upgraded your headquarters to level 3, at which point the barracks will be available for construction. The more you expand, the stronger you become. Once you have troops, you can invade other villages, pillaging the town and devastating your opponents.

Considering the combat is all calculated and text-based, here isn’t much to say about awesome combat scenes. You actually don’t see the fight at all. Even with the addicting strategy, Tribal Wars can get boring pretty quick due to it’s lack of engaging graphics.

The map is vitally important to the Tribal Wars player. You can use it to scout out potential enemies, or even to determine your next target. The map shows your surrounding villages and gives you a little information about them; however, you should be careful when attempting to attack a village, because some smaller villages band together to form a tribe. If you attack a member of a tribe, you should expect retaliation from other sources. This alliance mechanism creates a strong teamwork incentive within the game. Players can make in-game friends to form alliances with, or even just invite your real-life friends to play.

Players also have to opportunity to send messages to other players. It could be in hopes of forming an alliance or even a threat. This mental warfare adds another dimension to the gameplay. No longer is it solely about physicality and brutal displays of strength, but also diplomacy.

Atmosphere

Like I have already mentioned, Tribal Wars is lacking in this department. There is no audio and the graphics are highly text-based. Tribal Wars has a potential to be a great game, but it is stuck at mediocrity. The lack of depth in the atmosphere makes the player feel more detached from the gameplay, and the story line is non-existent.

Bottom Line

If you like strategy MMOs and don’t care about the aesthetics, you could give this a try and might not be disappointed. Tribal Wars is at best, okay. Innogames has definitely come out with better titles that are similar.