Dominions 5 is a pretty fucking awesome game. It’s way better than you could possibly expect from an indie TBS. There is too much to praise about it. Gameplay is tits. Here are the features that stood out to me…
Features Galore
- Many monsters (3000+) and many many (300+) special abilities.
- Over 80 different nations to choose from, varying from Marignon with paladins, witch hunters and inquisitors to under water nations like the Lovecraft inspired R’lyeh.
- Three Eras to play in, Early era is most magic and the late era is more technologically advanced with good steel weapons and armors.
- Design your Pretender God and how his dominion influences provinces.
- Design your Pretender’s blessing will affect his sacred units.
- Multiplayer with simultaneous turns (up to 32 players).
- Network or Play by E-Mail for multiplayer.
- AI opponents for single- or multiplayer game.
- Random maps with cave, mountain passes, rivers, bridges and snow when it’s cold.
- An extensive magic system with over 900 spells.
- Blood magic, power your rituals with human sacrifices.
- Global rituals that affect the entire world.
- More than 400 magic items.
- Unique magic artifacts that all players compete for, once forged no one else can make it.
- Mercenaries are bought on a global market.
- Scouts, Assassins, Spies, Seducers, Corruptors, Werewolves, Illusionists and more can be sneaking in your provinces.
- Claim the thrones of Ascension to gain special powers and eventually win the game.
- Permanent battle afflictions.
- Easy to Mod (2d graphics)
- Playable on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
Graphics (or lack of)
The list of features seems pretty enticing, right? Well not so fast traveler – before we go on, I must warn you the graphics are pretty shitty. The sprites representing the units are so small that you can literally count the pixels. If you’re able to put aside graphics and appreciate deep strategic gameplay- you will find a lot of enjoyment with this game.
Despite the minimalistic graphics – I’m always drawn into the world Dominions presents. Every time you start up or exit the game presents a slow pan around one the game’s environments in the background as you gaze upon the main menu. Aided by the fantastic, epic-sounding music fit for a movie soundtrack, this game always presents a thick atmosphere and sense of adventure.
Warriors of the Faith
Dominions 5 is massive so the best way to describe it without getting too verbose is that it’s Risk with magic. You pick an age, pick a nation design an aspiring God (called a ‘Pretender’), pick or generate a map, build an army, collect gems, research magic, seize thrones, conquer your enemies, and become God. When you engage with enemies on the map, you will be taken to a battle visualization reminiscent of old Total War games. A match go could go anywhere from two dozen turns to 200+ turns due to the dynamic nature of the game. This game’s amount of content is so enormous because they built upon the previous games with each sequel rather than starting from scratch.
Glancing on the game’s map is daunting at first. There are a lot of icons but not a lot of information. To make things even more intimidating is a general lack of intuition in the control layout. For example, it might take someone a couple minutes to figure out that if your unit is capable of sneaking (which many are), your unit will not attack unless you manually tell them to by holding ‘Shift’ when giving the Move order. If you select multiple commanders at once, your selection is saved when you click on the commanders later. Occasionally players will forget to unselect previously selected commanders and end up giving an unintended order without realizing. Nuances such as these add up to create what many players would consider to be a confusing play experience.
Not Your Grandma’s TBS
The way I see it; you cannot have a game with great depth without it seeming at least a little bit complicated on the surface. Observe the user review posted above. It’s difficult for me to speculate, but I suspect the individual was suffering from brain damage. Starting the game is as simple as clicking “Dominions 5” on Steam. If you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t like to read the manual or play a tutorial: Great! Then just play the game and learn through trial and error like I did. DasTactic has some great YouTube videos that will teach you how to play in about 30 minutes. A little patience will yield great rewards such as insanely huge battles or fun random events that occur turn to turn.
Your experience in this game will be dictated by thousands of dice-rolls conducted under the hood each turn. These dice rolls will determine for example: the results of your battles, good luck events, bad luck events, and if a patrolling squad finds spies or not. Nearly every aspect of this game is determined by some element of luck, but that does not mean that strategy isn’t the determining factor. In this game’s battles you will not have direct control over the battle so must win by properly preparing your armies and giving much forethought to the tactics you dictate to your units.
More Battles Than Varg can Shake his Stick At
Once on the battlefield, your units have a mind of their own. They will follow the orders you gave them on the map screen to the best of their ability while simultaneously acting in their own interest when necessary. This creates battle replays that are very entertaining to watch because you literally watch your strategy unfold before your eyes as you watch helplessly. This is also very stressful because you are unable to do anything if things start to deviate from the plan. Of course if things all go to plan you’ll find yourself with a sense of satisfaction you can’t find in any other game. Every unit in this game can experience and power. Commanders even have wide variety of equipment slots which means this game is also a deeper RPG than most RPG’s.
Larger battles in the game will feature thousands of units. Different nations present a very large unit variety and interesting battle counters. If you observe the battle in my screenshot above, you’ll notice my priests obliterating the Undead army with pillars of light. In another battle my mages are fighting underwater merman by utilizing water-breathing amulets. Playing in a multiplayer match with 12 other nations will inevitably lead to a series of unique and interesting battles requiring you to constantly think about your tactics and strategies short-term and long-term. Given Domionions 5 is FFA-oriented and there is no diplomatic victory; everything in this game really boils down to the battles.
When all is said and done, Dominions 5 is game that in many ways limited by your own imagination. My review doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this game has to offer. If you really wanted to, you could get 25 friends together and play the most insanely huge and fantastical strategy game you’ve played in your life. It just comes down to if you have the time. I find myself still playing this game a year and a half after it’s release, and I have no plans of stopping.