Empire of the Ants from Microids and Tower Five brings us a photorealistic, third-person, real-time strategy game in which you command your insect legions in epic battles. Check our Empire of the Ants review!
Empire of the Ants from Microids and Tower Five brings us a photorealistic, third-person, real-time strategy game in which you command your insect legions in epic battles. The game is based on Les Formuis, the 1991 science fiction novel by French author Bernard Weber. The book is known as Empire of the Ants in English. It was followed by Le Jour des Fourmis (The Day of the Ants) in 1992 and then by La Révolution des Fourmis (The Revolution of the Ants) in 1996, which closes the series. You’ll be taking on the role of the 103,683rd ant, and your task will be to do whatever it takes to defend your colony.
The game offers three mission types: Exploration, Tactical, and Strategic. As the name suggests, Exploration will have you exploring the environment in order to locate items and meet NPCs. Tactical missions will have you using the available legions and abilities to complete specific tasks. As for Strategic missions, they will test your abilities every step of the way! You’ll need to not only work on defending your territory and conquering new areas, but you’ll also have to consider nest management, review your units, as well as unlock upgrades that will hopefully tilt the tide of battle in your favor.
You’ll move with the left analog stick as you use the right one to control the camera. Jump by pressing and holding down the Triangle button. The longer you hold it down, the more powerful of a jump you’ll perform. Interact as needed by pressing the X button. You can spring by pressing and holding down the Circle button. Aim with the L2 button and give an order with the R2 button. You can select a legion by pressing the L1 and R1 buttons. If you press both buttons at the same time, you’ll then select all legions. Pheromones are your special abilities, and they will be mapped to the up, down, left, and right directions on the D-Pad. These include a dash pheromone that can make a legion move extra fast for a short period of time or a rage pheromone that will boost a legion’s damage output for a bit.
You’ll have to be careful as you explore each area since there are hazards and enemies for you to keep in mind. For example, ants and water most certainly don’t mix, so if you find yourself in water, you better hope there’s a way out, or else you’ll drown! The legions that you’ll command will be split into types. Each type will have some strengths and weaknesses for you to consider. For instance, Warriors will be strong against workers but weak against Gunners. Gunners will be strong against Warriors but weak against Workers. Workers will be strong against Gunners, but weak against Warriors.
You’ll have to collect valuable resources to be able to create more units for your legions, as well as to build upgrades. You can spend some of your food to speed up the process of creating units. Get yourself some Workers so that you can send them to gather wood for your cause. You can then quickly use the wood to build a barrier around the nest, which your enemies will need to destroy before they’re able to deal damage to the nest. Another good option to protect the nest is to mobilize some Gunners to act as acid turrets that will defend the nest as they attack enemies from a distance.
What else can you do with a nest? You can build a Chemical Laboratory to boost your tier and unlock new upgrades for you to spend your resources on. Perhaps you should build a Cartographer to display a minimap that will show your nests, legions, and any points of interest that have been located. You’ll also have to consider building a Mushroom Farm and a Woodyard so that you can improve your resource production so that you can keep your upgrade cycles going strong. Do know that nests have a limited number of chambers, so you’ll have to diversify your building tactics. Oh, and you can’t have a Woodyard and a Mushroom Farm on the same nest!
There are some accessibility options for you to consider so that you can tailor your experience. Along with changing the vibration intensity for the DualSense, you can change the UI scaling, change the legion card icons, change the size of combat lines and outlines, activate and choose the intensity of a low pass filter for those of you that might have hypersensitive hearing (hyperacusis), or activate and choose the intensity of a high pass filter for those of you that might have hypersensitive hearing (hyperacusis). On top of all that, there’s also a special Arachnophobia Mode. Thanks to this, you’ll be able to enable or disable spiders in Empire of the Ants. Do know that this could make some trophies unobtainable.
If you want to 100% the game, then you’ll need to complete all entries in the Bestiary, Memory Pheromones, Scans, Monarch Butterflies, and Golden Tortoise Bettles. There are more than 100 entries in total, and yes, these will be tied to the game’s trophies! This release has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to work on. The list is split into 24 Bronze trophies, 14 Silver trophies, and 3 Gold trophies. What will you need to do to add that shiny Platinum trophy to your collection? Some of the objectives to complete include adding your first entry to the Bestiary, drowning, winning a Strategic mission without losing a single legion, using every power in the game once, running for a total of 400 meters, winning a Strategic mission without taking any damage yourself, completing all Exploration, Tactical, and Strategic missions, getting out of the water with 10% health or less, and scanning all structures, to name some examples.
Empire of the Ants brings us a photorealistic, third-person, real-time strategy game in which you command your insect legions in epic battles. The game is based on Les Formuis, the 1991 science fiction novel by French author Bernard Weber. The book is known as Empire of the Ants in English. It was followed by Le Jour des Fourmis (The Day of the Ants) in 1992 and then by La Révolution des Fourmis (The Revolution of the Ants) in 1996, which closes the series. You’ll be taking on the role of the 103,683rd ant, and your task will be to do whatever it takes to defend your colony. This release is also PlayStation 5 Pro enhanced. It will run at 30 frames per second when played on a PlayStation 5 console, and it will run at twice that at 60 frames per second if you take it for a spin on a PlayStation 5 Pro console. Empire of the Ants launches today on PlayStation 5 with a $39.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Empire of the Ants review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Microids.
