The Beginning Of The End
HIGH What a journey!
LOW Rough edges during gameplay.
WTF Performance issues? Seriously!?
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is a real-time strategy game from Slitherine, the publisher behind recent RTS titles Starship Troopers: Terran Command and turn-based Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector.
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance begins where everything is about to end; in the wake of Judgment Day. Players assume the role of Lieutenant Alex Church, a commander of a unit falsely marked as deserters by superiors called the Founders. The Founders are what remains of the U.S military after the events of Judgment Day and the story follows Church in his attempt to gather scattered human resistance groups under a single banner while trying to clear his name, with the ultimate goal of getting back to fighting the real enemy.
The story is the most rooted and well-worked part of the game. Not only is the setting — the very first days of resistance against the machines’ takeover — something never experienced before in the Terminator franchise, but Defiance also sheds light on the events that led to the creation of the resistance forces and other factions that were never previously explored. Players’ decisions to make allies or enemies of these factions will also have lasting effects in the story during later missions.
In terms of gameplay, Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance plays more like a real-time tactics game than a Real-Time Strategy, as there are two phases: preparation and deployment.
During the preparation phase, there’s a map of the world with various cities and faction bases to visit. From here, players manage their army or choose the next mission via two main resources. The first, “Provisions”, is consumed by the army when it moves around the world. The bigger the army, the more provisions it consumes daily. The other resource is “Goodwill” which acts as in-game currency to be spent on weapons, equipment, machinery, or hiring new military personnel.
With this in mind, the economy of Defiance is based on finding a balance between having enough provisions to keep the army supplied and then acquiring more advanced units to keep up with the pace of combat. While provisions can be bought with Goodwill Points, Goodwill Points can only be acquired by completing missions. This is where the economy gets flatlined because there’s no way for the player to calculate the income of Goodwill Points or maintain a constant influx of this vital resource.
In most RTS-likes, the main currency can be acquired through generation points (mines, etc.) or a trading system (selling harvested resources, and so on) but in Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance, if all the Goodwill Points are spent at some point, players can’t expand the army and must either finish the next mission with the same units and equipment or return to the beginning of the preparation phase and work a solution out with what little Goodwill Points they’ve got at that time. The lack of a base building/unit production mechanism coupled with the problematic economic cycle is the greatest enemy of the game, far deadlier than a swarm of T-800s.
In the deployment phase, players can control ranged units and vehicles. Some units, like snipers, are best at dealing with infantry while others such as rocket launcher squads are great at taking care of armored vehicles. Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance tries to have a realistic approach toward combat in that all units and vehicles have a limited supply of ammo and fuel, requiring players to manage their supplies even behind enemy lines. When the ammo or fuel of a unit is depleted, they can no longer engage with the enemy or move until they’re resupplied by ammo/fuel trucks. In contrast to the problematic economy, this feature is clever, and adds a deeper strategic layer by requiring constant awareness of not only the threats imposed by the enemy, but potential disruptions caused by mismanagement of supplies.
On the other hand, Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance trips up again, this time on a smaller scale. The player is able to issue commands to units. For example, infantry can go to prone for reduced visibility, and most units are equipped with kit like smoke bombs or EMP grenades. While the idea behind these mechanisms is a nice one, the execution is confusing.
For example, selecting a specific squad in the heat of the battle and giving them special orders is difficult because of how packed the friendly infantry units are, as they tend to stand next to each other. Even if a specific formation is selected for a group, that formation is lost when the units move to a new location.
Other problems I had during my time with Defiance were in regards to its technical side. Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance suffers heavily from performance issues, especially in the final mission. Aside from long loading screens, even my RTX 4080 couldn’t run it in constant 60FPS, and it frequently dropped below 30FPS in more populated areas. Unit pathfinding is also troublesome. In some instances, single individuals from a unit fail to follow the same path as their fellow squad members and fall behind. In other instances, units are obscured by landmarks such as bridges or skyscrapers, and can’t be directly selected.
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is Slitherine studio’s first foray into developing an RTS-style title, so keeping that in mind (while hoping for future patches) does make me inclined towards giving them some leeway on the irritations. So, while it definitely has some rough edges in terms of gameplay, the narrative foundations and concepts are strong — on that basis alone, I think this is an easy recommend to Terminator fans and those looking for an RTS campaign with a few twists.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Slitherine. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via Publisher and 25 hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign. The game was completed. There are multiplayer options available.
Parents: This game has no ESRB rating. It contains mild language. It contains mild language and some violence. Robots and humans fight and kill each other in the game, but there’s no blood or gore.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can’t be altered or resized. There are some necessary audio cues in the game such as sounds made by each enemy unit that are not subtitled. The game is not fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Controls can be remapped.
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