Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance Review: We’ll Be Back

The Terminator franchise has enthralled audiences for decades with its thrilling depiction of the inevitable machine uprising against humanity. Who hasn’t imagined what it would be like to join the resistance and battle killer robots in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance aims to let players live out that fantasy in an immersive real-time strategy experience.

Developed as a tie-in with the recent film Terminator: Dark Fate, this gritty RTS puts you in the boots of a military officer trying to lead human forces against the machine intelligence Legion in the months after Judgment Day. You’ll control squads of infantry, armored vehicles, and aircraft across sweeping battlefields straight out of your favorite Terminator scenes. Between missions, you’ll manage resources and upgrades to prep for the next fight in humanity’s desperate war against extinction.

With its fusion of Terminator’s iconic man versus machine conflict with hardcore tactical gameplay, Defiance seems positioned to satisfy franchise fans and strategy gamers alike. But does it live up to the promise of its exhilarating premise? Let’s gear up and dive in to find out!

Guerilla Warfare Against the Machines

When the lasers start flying and metal feet hit the ground, the core combat gameplay in Defiance delivers the goods. As commander of the human forces, you view battles from a bird’s-eye perspective, directing squads of infantry, armor, aircraft, and more against hordes of Terminator units.

The tactical gameplay feels gritty and realistic. You’ve got to micromanage details like ammunition supplies, fuel usage, and component damage. Lose a critical soldier early on? Sorry, no replacements within missions. Botch a key maneuver? Better hope you saved recently so you can replay it right. This granular control and punishing difficulty really puts you in the boots of a resistance leader desperately struggling against a merciless robotic onslaught.

The asymmetric warfare theme shines through in the cunning tactics needed to survive. Direct assaults on enemy strongholds require perfect execution – more likely, you’ll need to outflank and ambush your foes. Garrison buildings to create fortified firebases. Use surprise and mobility to isolate and overwhelm components of the mechanized force. Conserve missiles to take out priority targets. This scrappy, high-stakes gameplay captures the relentless challenge of battling Skynet.

While the missions immerse you in skirmishes with Terminators, the broader campaign also embroils you in conflicts with human factions. Sadly, these enemies often feel more frustrating than the actual killer robots, with their abundant troops and uncanny aim making some missions painfully tedious.

Between story operations, you’ll manage your army by acquiring gear and upgrading units. But clunky mechanics like supply limits and enforced roster downsizing between missions make this aspect feel more like box-checking than engaging strategy.

By channeling the man vs machine drama into dynamic tactical fights, Defiance’s combat gameplay mostly delivers. But questionable design choices and wildly uneven difficulty undermine the strong core gameplay and keep this RTS tied to its roots instead of evolving into a sci-fi strategy masterpiece.

A Cinematic Sight and Sound

Visually, Defiance aims for a detailed, gritty look befitting its post-apocalyptic setting. The environments convey the devastated urban and rural landscapes left in the wake of Judgment Day. Billowing smoke, flickering fires, and crumbling buildings set the mood. Detailed vehicle models and effects like tracers and explosions capture the hardware and chaos of battle.

Infantry animations feel more rudimentary, making individual soldiers hard to distinguish. And while the graphics hold up well when zoomed out, don’t expect the cinematic flair of the films. Still, the visuals check the boxes for a serviceable strategy game rendition of Terminator’s distinctive future war aesthetic.

The excellent sound design significantly enhances immersion. Weapons chatter with realistic fidelity across blasted cityscapes. Synthetics chatter ominously in machine code. The voice acting convincingly portrays the tension between your battle-hardened officers. An urgent, militaristic soundtrack kicks in to underscore key moments, conveying the momentum of the conflict.

While the presentation can’t match the production values of the movies that inspired it, the moody visuals and emotive audio do effectively evoke Terminator’s nightmarish Robot War setting. The sensation of being embroiled in a tense battle across scarred territory lends some cinematic spirit if not Hollywood polish. Defiance may fall short of visual splendor, but its gritty, affecting sights and sounds still shine.

The Resistance Rises

Defiance builds its campaign around a new set of resistance fighters – your Founders unit – battling the robotic Legion in the post-Judgment Day southwestern US. The story hits the expected narrative beats, like run-ins with desperate survivors, clashes with factions like the cartel collaborators, and securing a source of hope against the genocide machines.

The characters fit archetypal roles – cynical commander Church, idealistic Mason, various stock villains. They keep the plot moving adequately if not originally. Ultimately the narrative provides functional justification and context for the operations without leaving a lasting impression.

Where the setting and theme deliver is in capturing Terminator’s essential man vs machine drama. As your Founders struggle to rally scattered human remnants against the relentless Legion, you face the same stark choices that have defined the saga: ally with dubious factions for assets or preserve principles at catastrophic risk? Save civilian lives or conserve resources for the long fight ahead? The campaign’s branching objectives and consequence system lend weight to these decisions.

By putting you in command of tech-savvy freedom fighters trying to spark a global resistance movement, Defiance’s campaign taps directly into a fantasy that gives Terminator its long-lasting appeal. Roaming the wastelands while confronting moral dilemmas offers players agency in this beloved sci-fi universe even if the presentation remains workmanlike. If you crave the chance to shape your own future war against the coming machine takeover, Defiance’s setting and strategic choices deliver.

Builder of the Resistance

Defiance offers some solid progression systems to develop your personal resistance army between story operations. You earn resources to spend on recruiting new infantry, vehicles, and aircraft as well as upgrading their gear and components. The aircraft and exotic munitions like laser rifles bring welcome sci-fi flavor.

Making the most of these systems, however, often feels more like box-checking progression than engaging customization. Strict limits on resources and roster size between missions constrain strategic choice instead of enhancing it. The resulting progression offers depth in theory but not fully in practice.

On the bright side, optional side objectives during campaign missions provide some replay incentive. Choosing different routes and alliances alters the resources you acquire and units you interact with, lending modest variety across playthroughs. The presence of single player skirmishes and competitive multiplayer provides further mileage, although limited map selection hampers the latter’s staying power.

Overall, while Defiance brings staple strategy game elements of progression and replayability, they feel included more out of obligation than inspiration. This is one resistance builder that has potential but fails to fully empower players’ dreams of taking the fight back to Skynet. More imagination could have gone a long way.

The Resistance Shows Promise

Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance deserves credit for ambitiously trying to translate the franchise’s signature man vs machine drama into a formidable real-time strategy package. The asymmetric warfare gameplay delivers flashes of guerrilla command glory in hectic battles against Legion. Upgrading and commanding your resistance forces across a sprawling mechanized battlefield creates pockets of genuine strategic euphoria for fans.

But questionable design decisions like repetitive mission structures, steep difficulty spikes, and constrained progression undermine the experience. The campaign ends up feeling more like a grindy chore than a heroic crusade at times. With some more thoughtful difficulty tuning and strategic depth to core systems, Defiance could have achieved its ambitious vision.

As is, only Terminator fanatics with an appetite for punishment are likely to see this RTS through to the end of its campaign. The strong thematic appeal and explosive tactical battles should resonate with that niche. But more casual players will probably find themselves quickly frustrated and terminated.

The ingredients are here for the Terminator real-time strategy game we’ve waited years for. But half-baked execution leaves Defiance feeling like a prototype resistance rather than the polished product fans deserve. Give us more resources to fight back with, and we may stand a chance. As the franchise says – there’s no fate but what we make. Perhaps some continued patches and content expansions could forge a brighter fate for this battered but still breathing resistance.

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