Darfall

I picked this one up because I like City Builders in general, and it had good reviews right when it came out. After one try, it sat on the shelf for a month or so. I pulled it back out and gave the Campaign Mode a try, which I do not recommend at all.

Before deleting the game, I opened up Survival mode to give it a try. Turns out that even though it doesn’t get top billing on the menu, this is what this game is meant for. There is a huge map of various levels to try, with a variety of different environments, difficulties and heroes to choose from. I spent a lot more hours here than I expected I would, and enjoyed most of it thoroughly. The survival mode involves base building, leveling up your hero with a skill tree, and provides a variety of paths towards success.

My biggest complaint with survival mode is that there is an option to end each level by hunting down and killing enemy gates, but the maps are so large and complex that I never felt close to doing so. For the endless survival maps, this option is removed. I’d have spent more time playing Darfall if I could have actually tackled the stated objective on the maps that don’t end after a certain amount of nights. The mini map is also not super helpful, it is not always clear when enemies are inside your base. It’s not a particularly deep or rich game, but other than those complaints, Darfall is surprisingly solid.