Driftland: The Magic Revival from Ultimate Games and Star Drifters is a mix of RTS, 4X, and sim elements on PlayStation 5. Learn more in our Driftland: The Magic Revival review!
Driftland: The Magic Revival from Ultimate Games and Star Drifters is a mix of RTS, 4X, and sim elements on PlayStation 5. Due to the damage it suffered during a war between ancient mages, the titular planet of Driftland was being held together by a special and mighty spell. This made the warring factions enter a truce in order to try and save the planet. It was, unfortunately, too late. All they could manage to do was pool their magical power to cast one last spell to keep what little balance remained in check. The world was sent into one dark age after another, but when all seemed lost, one last ray of hope shone through. New sources of magic appeared, and new mages were born throughout the land, heralding a new era in which restoring Driftland to its former glory might be more than a dream. And just as it all started to take shape, the old war started to rear its ugly head.
You’ll be placed in the role of a Mage Overlord with a small realm, a castle, and a tower that you must protect with your unique powers. You’ll have to explore a procedurally generated world as you connect the floating lands that surround your starting area so that you can aim to expand your kingdom.
You can either take on this one by playing in Free Game Mode or the Campaigns Mode. The Free Game Mode allows you to create a random map based on your own rules, so you’ll be able to mix and match elements as needed. The Campaigns Mode is going to be the main attraction, since it’s the main story option in which you’ll learn more about the conflict between the races in Driftland. There are the Humans, the Dark Elves, and the Dwarves… as well as another campaign that I won’t be spoiling here!
The game will kindly send you into a tutorial right away so that you can learn all of the basics. You’ll need to fulfill the victory conditions and their completion rate for each mission that you take on, which can include, for example, capturing and controlling a set number of structures, such as Ancient Tellurions or Ravaged Mausoleums. Since you start with a fog of war covering the areas around your starting location, it might be a good idea to cast Magic Eye to reveal new spots.
Just press down on the D-Pad to access the bottom center menu and then use the left or right analog stick to pick the right one. Another useful spell is Arcane Currents, which can be used to draw a piece of territory closer to your commanding area. Each spell will have a Mana cost associated with it, as well as a cooldown period before it can be cast again. Oh, and you should use the L2 and R2 buttons to zoom in and out so that you can get a better view of everything.
Remember how you moved an island closer to your empire? Well, the next step will be to build a bridge so that your units can reach it. You can access the building menu by pressing left on the D-Pad and then picking the right one. As expected, building something will have a cost associated with it, so you’ll need to have enough gold as well as enough resources to cover said cost. There’s also an upkeep cost to cover for your buildings, which will increase on each consecutive island of your empire. On top of being able to connect islands with bridges, you can also cast the Gates of Thyr spell to connect islands to your empire for a limited time.
Population is going to be a very important element for you to work on boosting by building a Cottage or two. Doing so will increase your population limit, and the citizens assigned to it will increase your gold income. The more people you have, the more you can assign to working on buildings or to explore new areas. For that one, just press the Square button and select the right option to place an exploration flag to signal to your units that you want them to go there. This will also have a gold cost to consider.
Having a large population is all fine and well, but you’ll also need to feed the people if you want them to be ready to work. This is why you should build a farm that can produce food. A farm will have an adjacent field that will be used to protect your empire from hunger. Just be sure to assign workers to the farm, or else it will be useless for your cause! Another building you will need is a lumberjack, so that you can get some extra wood for building subsequent structures. A stonemason for collecting stone will also be a must.
Structures are handled in a peculiar way. The stuff that you build will technically have hit points (HP), which will be lowered as the resources on an island are secured. Once there are no more resources, the building’s HP will be depleted, and it will eventually be removed from play. The more workers you have collecting resources, the faster you’ll obtain more of it, but the quicker a building’s HP will be depleted. HP also comes into play when your opponents decide to attack a structure, so be sure to keep that in mind!
Once you have enough resources, you should definitely upgrade your castle and increase its tier. That way, you’ll gain access to new structures to build, as well as being able to upgrade structures to improve their performance. Say you upgrade a farm after upgrading your castle. Doing so will allow you to boost how many workers you can assign to it, so that you can continue to keep hunger in check.
Since regular workers are no match against enemy units, you should definitely build a structure that can allow you to recruit heroes, such as a Knight’s Garrison. That way, you’ll be able to recruit an army of heroes that will be ready to defend your empire at all costs. Be sure to command them to attack new islands as you group up your forces, so that you can keep them from destroying your structures.
Trophy-wise, this one features a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to add to your collection. The list is split into 24 Bronze trophies, 11 Silver trophies, and 4 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do for this shiny Platinum trophy? Some of the objectives to complete include finishing the tutorial, opening 800 treasures, recruiting 400 heroes, making your heroes tame 200 flying beasts, building 300 bridges, discovering 400 resources with geology, building 500 structures (not counting bridges), defeating 100 enemy heroes, creating an empire of at least 20 islands, and winning your first single-player game, to name some examples.
Driftland: The Magic Revival is a mix of RTS, 4X, and sim elements on PlayStation 5. Due to the damage it suffered during a war between ancient mages, the titular planet of Driftland was being held together by a special and mighty spell. This made the warring factions enter a truce in order to try and save the planet. It was, unfortunately, too late. All they could manage to do was pool their magical power to cast one last spell to keep what little balance remained in check. The world was sent into one dark age after another, but when all seemed lost, one last ray of hope shone through.
New sources of magic appeared, and new mages were born throughout the land, heralding a new era in which restoring Driftland to its former glory might be more than a dream. And just as it all started to take shape, the old war started to rear its ugly head. Will you be able to aid in the reconstruction of the world?
The jump from PC to PlayStation 5 means that there’s no mouse and keyboard to take advantage of when issuing orders to units or building new structures, and the way that everything is done with the PS5’s DualSense feels, at times, that the game is asking you to Pat your head and rub your tummy while speaking backwards, which is far from ideal. Driftland: The Magic Revival is out on PlayStation 5 with a $19.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Driftland: The Magic Revival review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Ultimate Games.
