Highlands (PC) Review

By Ian Soltes 26.05.2015

Review for Highlands on PC

Highlands is a turn-based strategy game developed and published by Burrito Studio that takes place in a land high up in the sky. While it holds some lovely artwork and interesting design, it ultimately succumbs to poor design choices and a cumbersome combat system, and holds little in the way of replayability. Read on for the full review.

Highlands is the tale of a land high on up in the sky, where the royal family has been overthrown by a swarm of rampaging robots; now, the surviving family members must pool together to try and retake their lands. The game, touting itself as a turn-based strategy RPG, holds some good points, but is weighed down heavily by a clunky combat system that robs it of strategic depth and completely ignores the potential provided to it for seemingly no reason at all.

Highlands is fairly simple and straight-forwards. At the start of each turn, a map of the world is presented, displaying the characters. The aim is to then assign the characters to various locations to perform actions such as building items or launching assaults on enemy lands, and then ending the turn. Yes, it really is that simple, and it really is that disappointing.

Screenshot for Highlands on PC

That's not to say that the game is lacking in strategic depth, just that much of it seems squandered in pointless decisions. For example, when it comes to the actual battles, each character has a certain 'combat strength.' The computer then rolls for a number between that minimum and maximum and automatically deals that damage to opponents, and likewise for the player, except a unit must be designated to receive all of the damage. This is a bad combat system.

In strategy games, one of the key things is predictability. Of course, this does not mean random elements can't exist, but things need to happen with a degree of reliability, and information needs to be fed beforehand to explain that what is being planned out is risky or a gamble. The problem is that this system removes that degree of predictability entirely and replaces it with randomised outcomes. A controlled unit that would have normally overwhelmed an enemy can be outright trounced by a string of low rolls, despite that they should have been more than enough to win, for example.

Screenshot for Highlands on PC

To add to that, the automatic combat also robs the game of a lot of its potential strategic depth, as it removes the chance to single out certain monsters, be provided with the option of dealing with buffs/debuffs, or even simply opting for certain characters to attack and others to not. Instead, Highlands plays out like a version of Risk set up in the clouds with little to none of the diplomacy, reading the opponent, and weighed down by the fact that a high-value levelled unit can be lost simply because of a series of bad rolls, resulting in the entire team losing an important medic as opposed to simply losing a handful of generic units.

The game opts to focus on the various decisions made on the user's turn; things like building up fortifications and activating various abilities to stall out enemies, amongst others. While this could have held a lot of depth, it is also addled by a limitation on what can actually be done. Fortify lands, delay monsters, build items, but little else.

Screenshot for Highlands on PC

Highlands does not even try to take advantage of its unique setting in the clouds, either, which is a huge disappointment. Having such strategic options, such as disconnecting bridges to sever enemy reinforcements, units capable of traversing the sky, or anything of the sort, is a serious missed opportunity. While such aspects may have turned out annoying, sticking to a fairly stock and predictable turn-based strategy system is far more disappointing and results in a game that feels simplistic and shallow in depth.

This isn't to say that Highlands does everything wrong, as the hand-drawn artwork is lovely, the story is fairly decent, and it does show glimmers of strategic depth at times. Indeed, with a better combat/strategy system, the game could have done reasonably well, in fact. It's just disappointing to see so much potential wasted due to poor gameplay design.

Screenshot for Highlands on PC

Cubed3 Rating

5/10
Rated 5 out of 10

Average

To simply put it, Highlands' biggest shortcoming is how it denies itself its own potential. It provides an interesting and unique setting, and does not capitalise on it. It holds the potential for some degree of strategy, and squanders it with a weak combat system. It holds a good notion for above-world combat, and lets it waste away with a lack of options. While it could be argued that having combat comparable to Risk is not a bad point in the least, even if that was allowed without question, there is no way to deny that Highlands could have done much more with a bit more effort, and that is the most frustrating thing of all.

Developer

Burrito

Publisher

Burrito Studio

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  5/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Insanoflex

There are 1 members online at the moment.