Turn based strategy is a genre almost exclusively regulated to the indie scene these days, what with the ever increasing power of available gaming hardware making real-time titles significantly more appealing. So its safe to say that almost any TBS without the Sid mires title attached can immediately be classed as obscure, Dominions 3 being no exception.
Dominions 3, produced and published by shrapnel games, is a 4x title based around a fantasy realm, where you play as a race lead by a pretender god as they fight for dominance and ultimately for the position of supreme ruler. The first thing that really works in the games merit is the massive variety of races available, 50 in total, each sporting a complete set of unique units and play-styles. This is obviously a massive variety that essentially dwarfs its contemporaries, such as Civilization 4. With such a huge breadth of units available, there are obviously balancing issues. Some races are simply uncompetitive, and others seem to play very gimmicky; For example, the Ra'hastan's units all have the ability to see without light and eventually unlock a spell that plunges the whole world into perpetual darkness. But the balanced and fun races outnumber the broken significantly.
Designing your pretender god is also a process worth merit. You're given a number of points to spend on attributes, which include scales that effect your income, random event chances and magic paths. These choices pretty much determine your strategy in-game, and the breadth of strategy available is truly impressive. Unfortunately, the almost complete lack of useful tool-tips will lead to the player referencing the manual a lot, not something unexpected from a strategy title, but something that could still be found frustrating, especially considering the documentation isn't particularly clear.
The main game consists of moving armies and commanders around a map through provinces, first taking them from neutral AI, and then fighting for them against other players. Combat consists of setting orders for your commanders and groups of units outside of battle, and then relinquishing control to the AI and viewing the conflicts on a strangely satisfying 3D map with sprites to represent your units. Again here the game seems to trip up a little, with the AI not being as smart as you'd like it to be, and the order system not always being followed for reasons that aren't particularly transparent. This can lead to losing whole game deciding battles on technicalities, which can obviously be painfully frustrating. But when it does work, seeing the enemies little sprites explode into red mist is fantastically rewarding. The game really comes into its own with the complexity of the magic system and its focus on manipulating Stats of units to make them as effective as possible, this obviously leads to a gameplay experience that can be incredibly deep, and the guides you'd find on the unofficial wiki of spell combinations and pretender god builds really is testiment to that.
One of the largest problems the game has is its reliance on multiplayer, as the enemy race AI is weak, and the lack of a formal diplomacy system leads to games against computer quickly descending into a mad brawl, as alliances can't be made and truces established. The multiplayer lacks a lobby system, relying on direct connect systems and can be very fiddly to get working. But a large community exists, making multiplayer games easy to find, so the poor AI isn't completely crippling.
To summarise, the impressive array of possible strategies combined with the satisfying resolutions of battles pretty much solidifies Dominions 3 as a cult classic. Though not without its flaws, the AI and lack of a multiplayer lobby being the games major flaws, It succeeds at being incredibly enjoyable and suprisingly addictive, testing out new pretender designs and spell combos.
8/10
