Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin Review – The Mortal Realms Deserve Better

The Warhammer franchise has captivated fans for decades with its dark fantasy settings and epic tabletop battles. Realms of Ruin marks the video game debut for the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar reboot, bringing the skirmishes and lore of the Mortal Realms to life in RTS form. As the latest PC title set in Games Workshop’s grimdark universe, expectations run high.

At its core, Realms of Ruin is a real-time strategy game focused on squad-based combat. Players take command of one of four Warhammer: Age of Sigmar factions, including angelic Stormcast Eternals and sinister forces like the Nighthaunt. Missions feature familiar RTS objectives like capturing strategic points or constructing defenses. However, the gameplay leans more toward micromanaging small groups of units rather than building sprawling bases.

With a rock-paper-scissors system determining effectiveness between melee, ranged, and armored units, battles require carefully positioning your squads and activating abilities at the right moment. Slow, weighty movement and drawn-out engagements set it apart from more frenetic RTS titles. Between missions, you’ll follow the intertwining stories of each faction’s champions in fully voiced cinematics.

Realms of Ruin also provides multiplayer, a conquest mode with randomized scenarios, and custom map creation to extend its value. However, with only 4 launch factions and a relatively barebones campaign, it risks feeling a bit thin on content for single player RTS veterans.

In this review, we’ll dive deeper into Realms of Ruin’s fusion of MOBA-inspired combat, beloved Warhammer lore, and base tactics. We’ll examine the highs and lows of its gameplay, presentation, and modes to see whether this fateful expedition into the Mortal Realms will live up to fans’ hopes or become just another middling Warhammer adaptation.

Slow, Strategic Warfare

At its core, Realms of Ruin follows a familiar real-time strategy formula – gather resources, build units, capture objectives. Most campaign missions task you with dominating capture points until an enemy’s “tickets” expire. It’s a tug-of-war to control more points than your foe, forcing you to split forces and manage multiple fronts.

Objectives often layer additional goals like protecting caravans or taking down enemy champions. Combined with the need to defend your own resource nodes and watch for ambushes, missions can feel frantic. The size of your army is strictly limited, so losing even a few units is costly. While expansive base building is absent, capturing arcane conduits allows constructing towers that provide faction-specific bonuses.

Where Realms of Ruin differs is its methodical, small-scale combat. With unit caps restricting army sizes to around a dozen squads, micromanaging each one is critical. The rock-paper-scissors system means a ranged unit ambushed by melee fighters or spearmen surrounded by cavalry face instant demise. Unit matchups and smart ability use trumps spamming troops.

Engagements play out more like a MOBA team fight than your typical ham-fisted RTS clash. Units turn slowly and have distinct attack animations, while melee units become locked in one-on-one duels. This weightier feel allows more room for counter-play. Whittle away enemies with bows before they reach your frontline. Disrupt formations with pinpoint area stuns. Peel opponents off your backline by activating taunts.

However, imprecise pathing can undermine unit control. Attempting complex maneuvers often results in a disorganized blob crowding through chokepoints. The added multitasking of production, resources and objectives leaves little time for micromanagement mastery. AI responsiveness also lags at times, demanding spammed commands.

After a while, the limited unit roster for each faction becomes apparent. With only incremental upgrades between basic troops, elites and heroes, there is little specialization or variety to develop creative strategies. The focus narrows instead to optimizing a simple build order that maximizes damage outputs.

Prolonged back-and-forth stalemates can turn tedious as you rebuild fallen squads, awkwardly shuffle them across the map and clash again. Outside story missions, most maps play out as variations on king of the hill. The satisfaction of tactical play is diluted by repetition.

While it modernizes Warhammer warfare, Realms of Ruin lacks innovations to fully deliver on its ambitions. Battles emphasize small squad tactics but are undermined by frustrating AI. A strategic layer of resource and objective control contends with repetitive, narrow mission design. The push and pull between depth and accessibility never fully settles into equilibrium.

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Clashing Forces of Order and Chaos

Realms of Ruin lets players command four of the major Age of Sigmar factions: the valiant Stormcast Eternals, savage Orruk Kruelboyz, deathly Nighthaunt, and sinister Disciples of Tzeentch. Each features distinctive themes and playstyles true to their Warhammer lore.

The noble Stormcast Eternals have a balanced military reflecting their thunderous reforged warriors. Armored Liberators hold the frontline while ranged Judicators and Vindictors deal damage. They can also call on celestial Drakes and raptors for shock and awe. However, their lineup lacks elite units to accentuate their elite reputation.

Leading the Stormcast, Lord-Celestant Gardus Steelsoul and Knight-Vexillor Averon Stormsire bring leadership buffs like inspiring charges and focus fire. Gardus’ chain lightning blast helps damage grouped enemies. Their armor-clad heavy infantry style promotes a straightforward combat flow.

In contrast, the gnarled Kruelboyz rely on mobs of stab-happy goblins backed by the monstrous “Big Yellers” like Rogue Idol Grozgob and Swampcalla Shaman Skragrott. Their hit-and-run tactics aim to harass and overwhelm before victims can react. Unfortunately, the lack of late-game scaling or high damage output limits their strategic options.

The Nighthaunt excel at ambush and disruption with fast-moving specters. Grimghast Reapers phase through enemies while Spirit Hosts sap lifeforce. Krulghast Cruciators provide ranged support as Nighthaunt lack conventional archers. However, their glass cannon units can crumble quickly in head-on engagements, making them difficult for newcomers.

Most intricate are the Disciples of Tzeentch, where every unit has an array of psychic tricks. Flamers of Tzeentch spray multi-colored flames as Horrors of Tzeentch split and multiply when destroyed. Backed by the shifting magic of Lord of Change Kairos Fateweaver, they specialize in controlling the flow of battle from range then exploiting chaos.

Visually, the game brings Age of Sigmar’s miniatures to life in vivid detail. Lumbering Ogors swagger as cackling Pink Horrors dance around opponents. The Stormcast’s gleaming armor and weapons make their superhuman status clear. Each faction sports varied looks and fighting styles ideal for their lore.

However, the trimmed unit rosters don’t fully capture the diversity of the tabletop armies. Each faction only has around a dozen unit types to choose from. The lack of asymmetry between factions also leads to similar late-game compositions. After initial experimentation, you’ll likely find an optimal build order and repeat it for every match.

With only four launch warbands, the potential variety between factions and playstyles feels limited. Having twice as many options would better suit the game’s multiplayer focus and army customization draw. Realms of Ruin’s robust visuals evoke Warhammer, but its simplified take on unit roles doesn’t leverage their lore-rich creative possibilities.

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A Standard Quest in the Mortal Realms

Realms of Ruin’s campaign aims to showcase the diverse factions and threats of the Age of Sigmar setting across 15 story missions. You’ll battle through the unraveling Shyish Necroquake as your chosen champion with fully-voiced cutscenes guiding the journey. Unfortunately, neither the narrative nor mission design ever ascends beyond serviceable.

Structurally, the campaign functions as a drawn-out tutorial, introducing one new mechanic or unit type per mission. Objectives like defending caravans or destroying monoliths provide some variations, but most still boil down to capturing points. Pacing feels sluggish at times as you re-tread similar ground across sprawling maps.

The central plot follows Stormcast commander Sigrun searching for a mysterious weapon amidst the Necroquake cataclysm. It’s a passable premise to drive conflict, but the writing lacks finesse or surprises. Dialogue is merely functional with characters flatly swapping exposition. Even as the world is ending, there’s a lacking sense of tension or urgency.

Worse, the tone is wildly inconsistent with Warhammer’s signature grim darkness. Whether battling armies of the dead or the vile forces of Chaos, characters quip one-liners mismatching the dire stakes. It comes across as a superficial interpretation of the setting that fails to capture its gravitas.

The voice acting and cutscene rendering are competent on a technical level. However, the stilted writing undermines the dramatic delivery. Apart from the chunky unit animations, the subdued orchestral soundtrack also lacks the bombastic audio expected from Warhammer. It simply sounds generic.

Bright spots come when controlling other factions like the savage Kruelboyz and cunning Disciples of Tzeentch. Their alternate perspectives on the conflict add shades of gray against the Stormcast’s black-and-white heroism. Each faction sports signature visuals and gameplay that makes their missions feel distinct.

Still, even these end up as one-off diversions before returning to the Stormcast. There could have been richer storytelling weaving the narratives together rather than keeping them partitioned. In the end, Realms of Ruin’s campaign doesn’t build immersion in Age of Sigmar so much as check the box for an obligatory story mode.

While it nails the looks of the Mortal Realms and new Warhammer lore, the campaign writing lacks subtlety and soul. With only minor variations between similar missions, it becomes a repetitive grind. Realms of Ruin misses the opportunity to deliver an epic worthy of the Warhammer franchise. The story ends up as uninspired as the Stormcast themselves.

Battling Other Warlords Across the Mortal Realms

Beyond the campaign, Realms of Ruin offers both PVP and co-op modes for multiplayer Warhammer warfare. Players can face off or team up as any of the four factions online. Matches feature the same territory control format as campaign missions, with the typical frustrations of latency and disconnects.

The deliberate combat pace makes tactical coordination viable in 2v2 or 3v3 matches. Communicating target priorities, ability timing, and flanking moves can overcome disorganized opponents. Hero abilities that buff allies also prove impactful when stacked, such as the Stormcast’s inspiring leadership or Nighthaunt’s life-draining auras.

However, the limitations of unit control, simple upgrade options, and small starting roster depth becomes more evident against humans. Advanced techniques like micromanagement or early harassment struggle to find purchase. Stomping AI is one thing, but repeat multiplayer matches quickly expose the game’s rudimentary core.

The standalone Conquest mode provides some PVE variety through a Risk-like campaign map. You battle with randomized modifiers in self-contained missions to expand your faction’s territory. With options to tune unit abilities and stats, it allows more customization. But the content remains repetitive skirmishes at heart.

User-created custom maps could potentially enhance longevity by tailoring gameplay variants and lore-friendly scenarios. There are solid tools to edit the terrain, place structures, and design original setups. But poor documentation hinders the learning curve for aspiring architects.

While PVP multiplayer is likely the chief draw for Warhammer fans seeking to test their mettle, the dated design shows cracks under pressure. The orcs, ghosts, and knights of Age of Sigmar deserve a more polished and tactical battleground. Once the nostalgic novelty fades, Realms of Ruin doesn’t present enough depth to sustain most warlords through a long campaign of conquest.

The foundations seem strong for a AAA adaptation of Age of Sigmar, but this maiden voyage into the Mortal Realms doesn’t fully deliver on the potential. Beyond admiring the visuals, Realms of Ruin’s limited tactical scope provides fleeting monster-bashing entertainment but fails to capture the grandeur and strategy of Warhammer fantasy warfare.

A Visually Impressive Adaptation

One clear achievement of Realms of Ruin is successfully bringing the miniatures and lore of Age of Sigmar to life visually. The fidelity of the models, animations, effects, and environments immerse you in the Warhammer fantasy world.

Each unit sports lavish details from ornate engravings on Stormcast armor to the spectral flames wreathing Nighthaunt warriors. Their attack animations capture the weight and power described on the tabletop, like the mighty swing of a Liberator’s warhammer crushing zombies. The rippling magical spells from Tzeentch daemons and undead phantasms provide spectacular pyrotechnics.

The backgrounds match the epic scale of Age of Sigmar’s realms. Barren badlands, teeming jungles and haunted crypts sprawl into the horizon. Zooming out reveals just how miniscule your champions and armies are relative to this world. Little touches like flickering torches and ruins poking from lava add to the atmosphere.

Clean interface menus and icons make navigating your forces uncomplicated. Icons clearly summarize unit details for easy parsing in the heat of battle. The detailed unit inspector allows zooming in and out to admire the assets. Their quality shines best in close-ups.

The orchestral soundtrack hits the right uplifting notes for noble factions like Stormcast, while industrial metal chugs underscore the vicious Kruelboyz. Spell effects and clashes have meaty impacts. Voice acting is passable, though writing limits the drama. Overall, the audiovisual presentation has all the hallmarks of a big-budget Warhammer adaptation.

Unfortunately, occasional performance issues mar the experience. Extended sessions lead to framerate drops, stutters, and crashes. Load times also drag between missions. Given the smaller scale skirmishes, the optimizations lag behind the pretty facade. Still, Realms of Ruin remains one of the most visually polished Warhammer titles to date. It’s just not as smooth or stable behind the scenes.

March Cautiously Into the Age of Sigmar

Realms of Ruin delivers a beautifully rendered take on the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar universe that falls short of realizing its strong tactical potential. Under the detailed models and slick effects lies a real-time strategy experience that feels restricted.

On the positive side, micromanaging small squads and timing abilities provides satisfying Warhammer combat on a miniature scale. Support for competitive multiplayer and custom maps also offers avenues for engaged players to drive their own fun. Spectacular visuals and sounds fully immerse you into the Mortal Realms.

However, repetitive mission design, frustrating pathfinding, and limited early content undermine the experience. The story fails to do justice to the rich lore. Basic technical issues like crashes and performance dips feel unacceptable for a modern RTS. There is a solid foundation here, but it needed more time in the forge.

Given the middling critical reception and lack of buzz since launch, Realms of Ruin seems destined to become just another footnote in Games Workshop’s spotty video game history rather than a breakthrough hit. Developer Carbonated Games will likely shift focus to bolstering the existing player base through balance tweaks, additional maps, and expanding to new platforms like consoles.

But with little post-launch content roadmapped so far, it’s uncertain whether Realms of Ruin will receive the investment needed to polish its rough edges and deepen gameplay. New factions, better campaigns, and revamped progression systems could redeem it, but may never come to pass.

For now, only the most fervent Warhammer fans should enlist for Realms of Ruin’s messy skirmishes. More casual RTS enthusiasts will likely wish to observe from a distance until the Mortal Realms become worth conquering. Like the Stormcast themselves, this first sortie shows promise, but the war to create a killer Age of Sigmar adaptation is far from over.

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