As a kid, I read way too many fantasy novels. I constantly had a book by Tolkien in my hands, and was reading about elves battling ogres or something as equally outlandish. This fascination carried over to playing D&D and Warhammer, so I’ve always loved exploring fantasy realms. That’s exactly why I was excited to give The Dwarves a try, a real-time strategy game based off a beloved German fantasy series of the same name.
Real-time strategy games aren’t exactly known for being suited for consoles, but The Dwarves has a pretty decent control scheme here for a controller. Characters are switched by pressing the left and right bumpers, while different special abilities are mapped to the directional pad. Each warrior does a standard attack automatically (similar to an MMO), so the player only really has to worry about watching cool-downs and moving each character. Movement can be done either manually with the left stick, or the player can pause the game with the square button and then tell a unit where to move. Despite being very complicated, the control scheme does work decently well ? at least in theory. The issue is that every part of the game feels super rough. The camera, which is moved by the right stick, is extremely difficult to use, and I often found myself staring at tree branches instead of the action. The movement of the characters feel floaty, and they have a penchant on getting caught up on the in-game geometry. Sometimes, debris from ...