WAR PARTY

What it is

WAR PARTY sends players to lead a tribe of cavemen and tamed dinosaurs across a prehistoric, magic- touched world, gathering resources and building bases to command armies against rival tribes and wildlife across a three-faction campaign, each ending differently depending on which faction — Life, Death or Balance — the player chooses. Developed and published by Rogueside, it's deliberately built in the mold of classic real-time strategy games like Warcraft and Age of Empires, released on 28 March 2019 at NZD 12.39.

Its review corpus, 210 in English, sits at a genuinely divided Mixed 66.7% (140 to 70), and reading through it in depth reveals a corpus that agrees closely on the game's distinctive appeal while raising specific, checkable complaints about its execution — particularly in the single-player campaign.

A distinctive setting that earns real nostalgic praise

Genre veterans consistently credit WAR PARTY with delivering a solid classic-RTS experience wrapped in an unusual setting. "Solid indie RTS Game, similar to Warcraft and Age of Empires, with Dinosaurs and Stone Age. You have 3 factions, several challenging game mods and good AI," writes one reviewer. Another frames the appeal directly: "it feels like a Warcraft 3 with Dinosaurs," while a separate reviewer situates the game within a specific, sympathetic context: "are you desperately waiting for Warcraft 3: Reforged or Age of Empires 4? Then this game is for you." A particularly detailed, competitively-minded review praises the skirmish design specifically: "games are won in similar fashion to Brood War. The maps are big... so positioning is key, since you can't instantly reinforce an area" — a genuinely favorable comparison to one of the genre's most respected competitive titles.

A persistent, confirmed campaign save problem

The single most consistent, specific complaint in this corpus concerns basic campaign functionality. "NO SAVE GAME: This is a basic feature in all RTS, but this game has none in the campaign, so imagine building a nice base and then you cannot save and wasted an hour... the developers and designers have been trying to fix this for a few months now," writes one detailed reviewer, describing this as a persistent, developer-acknowledged issue rather than a one-off bug. A separate reviewer corroborates the same specific complaint independently: "no possibility to save during the Campaign... very monoton [sic] + boring" as a direct consequence. That's a concrete, checkable functionality gap for a genre where campaign missions routinely run 30-60 minutes or longer — its absence turns any late- mission failure into a full replay rather than a minor setback.

Widely reported unfair AI in the campaign

A separate, equally consistent thread concerns AI behavior specifically in single-player content. "So I'm more of a casual rts player... I jumped straight in to the campaign and, man is this game's AI bad. It's really bad. It's the worst I can remember," writes one detailed reviewer, describing enemy waves that snowball unfairly. A separate reviewer independently corroborates: "no balance. Always tank rush by AI." That said, at least one detailed reviewer pushes back specifically against this framing: "the opponent having infinite resources... makes no sense as a complaint, as the player also has infinite resources with farms+caravans," arguing the real issue lies elsewhere — in bland, low-variance mission design rather than resource asymmetry specifically. That's a fair, worth-noting counterpoint: the "unfair AI" complaint may partly reflect frustration with generally difficult, repetitive missions rather than literally unbalanced resource rules.

A separate reviewer's specific breakdown supports that reading: after finishing the full campaign in 18 hours, they conclude the units are "good" but "lack character," and that every faction's buildings are functionally interchangeable beneath surface-level reskinning — a complaint about mission and faction design depth rather than a literal claim that the AI cheats.

A real contingent finds the core gameplay too shallow

Beyond the campaign-specific issues, several detailed reviewers raise a more fundamental complaint about depth. "I love the setting but unfortunately, the gameplay is so RTS-basic that it's just not interesting. It probably does not even reach the complexity of Warcraft 2," writes one reviewer. A separate, especially candid review agrees: "the buildings are also the same on every faction but they changed the name [and] the units they produce," describing factions as functionally similar beneath cosmetic differences rather than genuinely distinct strategic options. That's a specific, structural critique distinct from the campaign-functionality complaints — even players who can work around the missing save feature and difficult AI may find the underlying strategic depth thinner than genre veterans typically expect.

What the achievement data confirms

WAR PARTY's achievement curve shows a notably low ceiling even at the very first milestone — the most-earned achievement sits at just 14.6%, an unusually weak figure for a basic early achievement compared to other RTS games this lane has covered, and completion-related achievements fall to 2-3% for beating the campaign at all, let alone on higher difficulties. That's consistent with the save-system and difficulty complaints documented above — a substantial share of buyers appear to bounce off the campaign relatively early, likely tied to the frustration of losing significant progress to unsaved failures.

Verdict

WAR PARTY delivers a genuinely distinctive prehistoric RTS setting with solid classic-genre fundamentals that a real contingent of nostalgic players enjoys, particularly in skirmish and competitive play. But a persistent, confirmed lack of mid-mission saving and widely reported unfair campaign AI are concrete, checkable problems that go beyond ordinary difficulty complaints, compounded by a real critical case that the underlying strategic depth doesn't match genre benchmarks. Worth its modest price for skirmish-focused RTS fans; approach the campaign with real patience.