Rodinia War Review

Rodinia is a free to play browser-based game that mixes two different genres. It’s part a strategy game and also a MMORPG. The two genres work well, although sometimes it can confusing because the game has two different gameplay styles and visuals. When you first sign up for Rodinia, you have the option to play the game the game directly on a browser, or you can download some of the game data first. I suggest you download some of the game data first to help make the game download a little faster. The 3D portion of the game takes a lot of time to load so it’s best to download the data first to speed up the loading times.

The first thing you will do in this game is pick the region you want to play in and choose the name you want to have. After that, a short cutscene plays that explains a little background story of Rodinia. The game is set in the Rodinian continent with the black dragon called Nidhogg being the main villain. The gods managed to seal this dragon’s power until one hundred years passed and his power has infected the land with monsters crawling around. To combat this threat, the region has called upon Heroes to help out and eradicate this new evil. Much like many other strategy games, Rodinia starts off a little slow because you are building up your city and region first. This requires you to construct several buildings and collect resources before you are able to go out and fight.

Unlike other RTS games, you need to use gems to speed up production. Thankfully at the start of the game, you have lots of gems so you can speed up construction quite quickly. If you don’t have enough gems, you have to wait a long time for any of the buildings to get finished. This is where the game gets a bit boring as you cannot do much unless buildings are finished getting constructed. One issue I have about this game is the interface. The tutorial windows are all over the place and sometimes it’s hard to see where the game wants me to click. There are several menus and sub-menus everywhere and this game does a poor job of telling you where to click all of the time. It’s a pain to navigate through the interface and it would have been better if the game had a more cleaner and simplistic design.

I would often have to shift the whole screen around just to click in the right position. They make the tutorial windows so large that they sometimes block the objectives. You cannot even close off the tutorial windows or minimize them too. It becomes very annoying, yet the tutorial is mandatory since you won’t know what to do without playing through it. After several boring minutes of constructing buildings, the game then allows you to enter the 3D realm which is where the RPG elements kick in. Once you build the barracks, you’ll be able to hire a Knight and explore the 3D world that this game has to offer. Knight Mode is where the game becomes a 3D-style MMORPG.

When you enter this mode, be prepared for long loading times. Even though I downloaded some of the game data first, it took several long minutes for this portion of the game to load up. I also had to use Firefox to play this game as well. For some reason, Rodinia is not a fan of Google Chrome or even Internet Explorer on my computer. Exploring the 3D world in this part of the game is pretty cool because it looks similar to other MMORPGs. However, the controls are absolutely horrible in this mode. It’s hard to move around the character and the camera is also shoddy too. Not to mention the frame rate is super low as well.

However, it’s a nice touch they added this mode. It’s the first free to play video game I have seen that mixes two different genres like this. The 3D Knight mode feels a lot different than playing the rest of the game. It can be fun exploring the world on foot and hacking enemies. If only the execution could have been better I would have liked it a bit more. In terms of graphics and presentation, Rodinia is commendable. The 2D graphics in the RTS portion of the game look nice and colourful, although they’re nothing special. On the other hand, the 3D graphics are outdated and have washed out colors. At least this game has good sound effects and music to make up for the visuals. Overall, Rodinia is a unique game that has two different genres in one. It can be fun, although there are too many flaws that weigh it down. It’s still worth playing if you are a fan of both RTS and MMORPG video games, but there are many other better games out there though.