14 DAY TRIAL // Ancestors Legacy is Destructive Creations' surprisingly good real-time strategy game that made its debut exactly one year ago. With several campaigns available to the players, each with two scenarios, Ancestors Legacy will keep you occupied for at least 20 hours. Even though the game has no replay value, the multiplayer aspect of the game makes up for it.
Earlier this year, Ancestors Legacy got its first DLC called Saladin's Conquest, which takes players to the Middle East during the Crusades. The new expansion introduces a new faction, the Saracens, which players will discover and learn to play over the course of five campaign missions.
Just like the other factions in the game, the Saracens have their own unique units that dictate the strategy by which you should approach every mission: hassassins, grenadiers and scorpion. The grenadiers are by far the most powerful ranged unit in the game, but they're not perfect.
Since they drop grenades that do high splash damage, the grenadiers kill indiscriminately loyal and enemy troops when they're engaged in melee. On the bright side, they can eliminate just about any other type of unit before they even reach them in melee, except cavalry units.
Saladin's Conquest campaign scenario starts quite brutal, as both the Saracens and the Crusaders are shown massacring innocents just to tease each other. The religious war theme is strong in this expansion and is seen from the eyes of Saladin, a leader who tries to protect the deserts lands from the Crusaders.
The main objective of the campaign is to retake Jerusalem, but even before attempting to lay siege on the fortress, you'll have to weaken the Crusaders army and conquer a couple of smaller strongholds. The campaign has five missions that end with the siege of Jerusalem, and based on my experience, it will take at least 6 hours to finish.
The folks at Destructive Creations made sure that they appropriately introduce each of the new units that make the Saracens unique by adding objectives that can only be achieved using these units. The hassassins are probably the precursor of the commando units. They use a special Camouflage ability that allows them to move freely on the map as long as they don't get very close to enemy units.
The horse-mounted archers and the Saracens cavalry are two other type of units that define the new faction. Saracens heavily rely on harass tactic, they attack from afar with their horse-mounted archers and quickly retreat when the enemy tries to engage them in melee.
The cavalry units are meant to pick up the pieces after the archers are doing their job, or simply kill isolated units. It's a great change from the usual strategy where you had to include a wide array of units just to counter the enemy.
Ancestors Legacy – Saladin's Conquest includes just one campaign, not two as the other factions, and costs $10/€10 on Steam. If you played the original game and liked it, Saladin's Conquest is clearly a must buy, not just because it adds a new faction. The new campaign is quite interesting, while the new units introduce new tactics to destroy your opponent, which involve a different approach in each scenario. If more variation is what you're looking for, Saladin's Conquest delivers on that and then some.
