Review

The rigid setup of the Army Controller brilliantly dodges the possibility of camping out for hours in the name of amassing an endless blob of units to (eventually) sweep the map of all life as we know it. It doesn't, however, perform as hoped when glass ceilings are imposed by the designers on certain scenarios. 

 

Example: When I was first introduced into the Dragon Clan, the undisputed feng shui architects and steam-powered Far Eastern tribe, the scenario dropped me in the middle of a village with units that overextended their housing capabilities (I had 25 units but only enough housing for 20). The designers thought it would be an appropriate challenge if my workers couldn't build anymore housing, keeping my units capped at 20. Very well. But I wasn't going down without a fight either, and the ceaseless waves of barbarian raiders were testing my mettle. I built insurmountable rows of spike traps along the beaches and plenty of defensive towers in hard-to-reach locales. I used my sparse fighting units to engage in calculated, focused-fire tactics.  I pulled near-death units out of the fray (using the Army Controller) and retreated them to the temple for some healing before shipping them back to the frontlines. And before I knew it, the Norsemen were consistently incapable of killing off any of my fighters. I'd fortified my position so well that I still had every one of my 25 without-a-home units.

 

I was prepared to press on, but the beach was as far as I could go. I needed at least one transport ship (taking up one space on my Army Controller) to cross the channel to the enemy isle, but I still had to kill off six of my units in order to make room. Alas, no self-destruct button for any of them. So I spread out six of my people on the beach (four of them workers!), hoping they'd die a quick death at the hands of the barbarians. Long story short, this took over 45 minutes and more than a dozen waves of invaders. I've never been so frustrated with the efficiency of my own defensive structures. And I've never shook my fist at the sky more, begging in vain for that self-destruct button. Even my samurai refused to do the honorable thing by committing seppuku.

 

So while resources (wood, stone, and food, you know the drill) typically fill your storehouses to overflowing, building an army is an exercise in restraint. Since you also want to leave high-ranked positions open for building those larger dino units -- and Titans! -- you often have to hold off that promotion your first-tier archer has been itching for during the last few hours. The plodding pace of your units (dinosaurs and foot soldiers alike) keep the game moving at a leisurely speed, especially for the breakneck pacing most RTSes employ nowadays. And for the sheer sense of accomplishment, it's not unreasonable to want to set up a self-sufficient camp advanced enough to build those bigger units. But without a visible tech tree, not to mention plenty of never-explained barriers erected by the level designers, who knows whether your time investment will pay off?

 

The entire Jurassic-Modern theme will, no doubt, succeed for the entirety of your visit to Paraworld. It's guns. It's dinosaurs. 'Nuff said, as far as thematic elements are concerned. But there are risks to taking the sexy route: You've got to ensure that the basic, tried-and-true, bread-and-butter elements of a solidly-functioning RTS are in place. Instead, Paraworld takes some (solidly-functioning) whimsy, some dramatically ironic storytelling, some camp style direction, some delightfully simple-to-grasp scientific theory … and treats game mechanics like an after-dinner mint. Much like archeologists project entire dinosaur skeletons from tiny bone fragments, Paraworld projects a lush dino-infested Earth from tiny, poorly-constructed RTS fragments. 

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