Perimeter: Emperor's Testament Demo

While titles like Warcraft, Dune and Command & Conquer set the pace for the RTS genre, that doesn't mean everyone out there adheres to the same concepts and ideas. Moreover, original mechanics are often very successful and praised by strategy fans, even if they ignore the basic rules created by the aforementioned giants and they stray pretty far away in terms of gameplay.

Perimeter: Emperor's Testament is an expansion pack for the highly acclaimed strategy title, which aims to improve the experience and add a few things that were missing from the original release. Beside that, a whole new story has been included as well, one that continues the events you witnessed in the first part of the game and introduces a lot more action, intrigue and mystery along the way.

Thus, it all starts when a super mind makes its appearance in the universe, called the Mechanical Messiah. The three factions are engaged in a gruesome war for supremacy, while also arguing about the Emperor's influence and some mysterious traces of a powerful alien race. Naturally, the matter can only be solved through war and there is no convincing them otherwise, which is why rockets start flying in every direction. The plot is rather convoluted and heavy at times, but it should all make some sort of sense in the end.

The same can be said about the gameplay as well, since the goal certainly isn't obvious when you first enter the game and the tutorial is vital, for a change. Hence, it everything revolves around energy, which is the resource every faction needs to gather in order to build more stuff and take advantage of more potent technology. However, the constructions that generate this energy need to be connected together and ultimately to your main base in order to function, which can be a severe headache at times, especially since every broken link can damage the whole system and the transmitters themselves can be captured by the enemy.

Another interesting aspect is the fact that you need to expand to new territory in order to harness energy, but that said territory is not always viable for construction. In those situations, terraforming comes into play, which is basically the process of destroying everything on the desired patch of land and leveling it to the lowest altitude. In the end, you must the destroy the enemy's main building, by gradually advancing with your network around the map.

Due to the unusual mechanics and the large number of options you can employ during the matches, Perimeter: Emperor's Testament definitely takes advantage of the high replay value. On the other hand, it can be very difficult to get into it in the beginning, because although the tutorial helps a lot, it still leaves some things answered.