We are back with some more ‘Solium Infernum’, but now League of Geeks has brought us a sneak peek at the ‘Multiplayer’ function. Now, for all you newcomers who have not read my first preview of this fantastic game please go to this link provided HERE to catch up so you know what is going on as to gameplay, visuals and sound as not much has changed. For all you lovely people who have or have now read the review, we can begin.

At first, I was slightly worried about going in and creating a multiplayer game as the minimum number of players is four, however, nowhere did I see it say that you could use A.I. players. Once you get a little further on in the multiplayer game creation though you will discover not to jump the gun so quickly. It’s not a minimum of four, it is a minimum of two players with two A.I, all the way up to six players. Any more than that and I think it truly would become a nightmare; purely on the diplomacy side there would just be too much going on.

With me, on this multiplayer outing, I had the amazing TypicalCambie another of our fantastic reviewing crew, who came along for the ride. We got pretty far into the match with roughly over a hundred turns and that was only roughly in a two-hour session.

I know for a fact that both of us over the weekend also spent time solo queuing and playing and put in more than double that time.

As this game is still in active development, it came as no surprise that we would run into issues. For example, TypicalCambie experienced some game crashes, and when loading back into his saved game he could no longer do anything since the HUD was gone. I also eventually got the HUD glitch out minus the crashing. At first, I thought it might have been a bug, which is entirely possible but on deeper reflection, this is a preview you’re not meant to keep anything so hopefully it’s not a bug and won’t carry over to the completed game.

Only two other instances did the game waver and that was when we tried to end our turns and it kept failing several times until we restarted the game. TypicalCambie said that his game had to update so that could have been the cause, however, my game didn’t need an update, but it also happened to me. Now, I am no tech wiz, so I will not try to diagnose the issue I just hope it was something as simple as an update was needed.

The other issue we had only happened once but again when we finished our turns the A.I. didn’t and we were stuck waiting for the timer to run out, not a huge issue, only a few minutes wait time but could cause issues if it constantly happens in the future.

Being able to play longer than twenty rounds was nice as it allowed me to get more familiar with some of the game aspects I didn’t get to in my original playtest. I learned more about ‘schemes’ and ‘relics’ and I even started using more rituals and grew quite formidable towards the end, enough so that I was ousted by the A.I. allowing for a more free-for-all ‘don’t have to worry so much about diplomacy’ tactics. When we called it quits, I did see that there was no save game choice which again I am hoping because it is just a test play is the reason it is not there.

I can see these games going for a huge number of hours so definitely worth it if you are into long-running strategy games. Hell, I would watch a professional tournament game if it ever entered the Esports circles, bring on the full game. I’ll be there!

Written by: Adam Brasher