So I Tried… Frozen Hearth

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Frozen Hearth.

What I thought it was

It’s a real-time strategy game with RPG elements. At least, that’s what I saw of it before deciding “that’s enough information!”... I like to go into these things completely blind, as it makes them more interesting. After all, if I had gone into Saints Row: The Third without any idea of what it might entail, I would have had my socks blown off! It became my favourite game even though I knew loads about it before playing -- if I knew nothing, I imagine I would have enjoyed it more! But that’s enough about Saints Row -- I don’t think that Frozen Hearth has anything like that. I’m hoping that it’s a lot more frozen than most RPGs. It’s Christmas time, which is why I had to play it.

What it actually is

An isometric real-time strategy with RPG elements, which happens to be boring as heck. I got through the tutorial and one mission, and spent most of it wishing I was playing anything else. You click on your guy, click on where he needs to go or who to kill… You get experience points which can be used to upgrade your bloke, with spells and stronger attacks, but you get a limited amount per level, and the upgrades only last until the end of the level. There is limited base building and resource gathering, but it’s hardly Command & Conquer...

Will I keep playing

No, I definitely won’t. Creating units to accompany your Avatar is like an RTS, but they feel more like cannon fodder than useful units. The storyline is basic, with some generic evil to overcome with your Avatar who has powers above their mortal kin… It was all kind of glossed over by the opening voiceover, but there are a lot of Avatars because evil… The gameplay is slow, and not because it has insanely high system requirements. It does, but that’s not the only reason. Seriously, the minimum specs is “Intel Pentium”, and the recommended is an i7. The graphics on show do not warrant that at all… Not fun, not worth my time, and not even nice to look at.