INTRO:
War for the Overworld had rocky development and launch phases. However, after its developers have become experienced at working with what they have and what they can have, there had been a myriad of content updates.
After many content updates for the base game package of War for the Overworld, Brightrock Rock has begun experimenting with unique Underlord capabilities – and putting out priced DLC expansions.
PREMISE:
The campaign of the base game package revealed that the “Mentor” character, who is named Mendechaus, is a perfidious entity.
After having his servile Underlord defeat the empire of Emperor Lucius, Mendechaus had somehow gained an incredibly powerful champion from somehow taking control of what remained of Lucius. Goaded by Kyra, who is Mendechaus’s rival, he set Lucius on the player character, with the intention of gaining possession of both relics that empower his two playthings.
However, that did not work out well due to things that he did not know but Kyra did. Both the Underlord and the demigod Lucius are lost to Mendechaus. The player character is revealed to be either an agent of Kyra all along, or had been somehow converted.
The campaign of Heart of Gold takes place after that incident. Mendechaus is still searching for relics of great power; his current target is the eponymous Heart of Gold. It is currently in the possession of a vassal fiefdom of the now-sundered Empire, the dukedom of Phaestus. The dukedom’s incredible wealth already makes it a formidable opponent. More importantly, the Heart of Gold is sealed deep within a volcano, and cannot be accessed without magical means.
To achieve the goal that is the Heart of Gold, Mendechaus has reactivated an Underlord that the player character of the base campaign had defeated earlier. This Underlord is Kasita, the golden queen. As an expert in gold and greed, Kasita is best poised to ravage the rich underbelly of the dukedom.
STILL A SILENT PLAYER CHARACTER:
Mendechaus refers to Kasita by name more than a few times. This is a notable difference from the base campaign, in which he refers to the player with the title of ‘Underlord’ despite the player character being canonically named “Oberon”.
Kasita appears in one of the missions in the base campaign. In that mission, she is depicted as being chatty and mean-spirited. She also remembers many things from a long time ago in the setting of the game, including the beginning of the world.
She exhibits none of that personality in this DLC’s campaign. There are no monologues from her. Even in the cutscenes, she remains silent. Perhaps this could be explained away by the fact that being defeated is not exactly a pleasant ordeal for an Underlord, despite his/her seeming immortality. There is that, and Mendechaus’s capability at messing with lesser entities of the Aether.
Still, it is disappointing that the developers deigned it fit to just have Kasita be another silent protagonist like Oberon was.
SHORT CAMPAIGN:
The base game’s campaign is an extended tutorial for many gameplay elements and factors. The DLC campaign is the same.
However, since this DLC does not actually introduce many gameplay elements, its campaign is consequently quite short. This can make the expansion seem a tad expensive, even at its current price tag.
SIMULTANEOUS CONTENT UPDATES FOR BASE GAME:
Many of the gameplay elements that are introduced in this DLC package had been implemented in the base game too. This preserved parity between the players who only have the base game and the players who have the DLC. However, this does diminish the value of the DLC package further.
UNDERLORD VARIANTS:
Heart of Gold is the sent-to-market prototype for ideas on variations for the capabilities of Underlords. Kasita is the first variant.
As an Underlord, Kasita still functions in the same ways. She needs to gather gold and spend it for various reasons. She has mana reserves and have to manage reductions in capacity, in addition to expenditure of mana for spells. She expands the dungeons and builds facilities to support the raising of an army. Minions come from the usual sources, be they Gateways or the results of coercing the minions of others. To put it simply, Kasita will not function significantly differently from the Underlords in the base game.
However, there are still minor differences. These are “minor”, because they have been intended to be not too significant such that there is divergence from the usual Underlord formula.
The differences are in her economic and military capabilities. The other Underlord variants that would come in a later DLC also have differences in these aspects. Therefore, it is understandable for Kasita to be considered as a “trial” version.
Kasita’s differences will be described in the following sections.
MODIFIED SPELL & POTION COSTS:
Due to Kasita’s specialization in golden alchemy, she needs more mana for most other spells. For example, the Prophecy spell costs a lot more for her, and she is barely able to use the lightning spell. Likewise, most potions are costlier for her Crackpots to brew. The Summon Worker spell still has the same cost, fortunately.
However, gold-oriented magic is cheaper for her to use. For example, Kasita can cast Blood Money rather freely on prisoners. The resulting golden status seem to yield more money too. For another example, Avarice is particularly bounteous for her.
SENTINELS:
Kasita has a unique type of “defence”: the golden sentinels. These are sarcophagus-like pedestals, each of which contains a gleaming golden warrior. When enemies come into the proximity of the pedestals, the sarcophagi release the sentinels. Their owning player can also manually release them.
After their release, they function as minions. They do not eat or sleep, not unlike the undead necromancers. However, they still have to be paid.
They are tough minions and can move at a decent pace, despite their golden bodies. In terms of combat capabilities, they are mainly swordsmen.
Sentinels are supposed to be minions that can be had on demand. To balance this convenience, they have very high wages and a peculiar way of healing. Apparently, they have to consume gold to maintain their forms. If they are damaged, they have to consume gold to heal too. Ostensibly, due to the aforementioned advantage that Kasita has in gathering gold, maintaining them should not be too expensive for the wealth-oriented Kasita.
Unfortunately, they can seem overrated, because of these very setbacks. For all the money that the player would pour into employing them, the player could be investing in other things, like Work-a-Lot and Wisdom potions to improve the experience gain rates of other minions. (On the other hand, these potions are more expensive than usual for Kasita.)
GILD:
The Gild spell is intended for the healing of Sentinels and the Colossus (more on this later). It does not cost mana, but it will take gold from the player’s vaults anyway. This is practically an easier way of using gold to heal these minions.
STONE KNIGHTS & ARTEFACT SHRINES:
The Overworld forces have been depicted as a mirror of the Underworld’s in the base game. They remain so in this expansion.
There are Stone Knights, which are practically stone versions of the Sentinels. They appear as the innate defences of a type of shrine that is introduced in this expansion, the “Artefact Shrine”. Like the Sentinels, the Stone Knights deploy from their pedestals to engage any foe that comes into proximity and prevent the shrine from being captured. They otherwise have no other appreciable differences.
The Artefact Shrines provide one-off bonuses – or an unpleasant surprise, if they have been coded to give that. They have to be captured and after that, a studious minion has to study them before they can be unlocked. Even so, the player does not know their contents, at least not before having already opened them in a previous play session.
The main contribution of these pieces of content is to the options that are in the map editor. Specifically, the map-maker can make exploration rewards that are more complex than the floating dodecahedron artefacts and wandering “neutral” units, which are found by digging around. The shrines have more versatility too, due to their more flexible coding.
AUREATE MONOLITH:
The Aureate Monolith is a drastic and economically inefficient way to gather gold, but it can do so with incredible speed.
When built, the monolith automatically sucks in nearby corpses to generate gold. As macabrely amusing as this is, this has little strategic value, because the Monolith does not contribute much in defensive battles. Setting it up at the frontlines is a lot of micromanagement too. The cost of the Monolith also dissuades its use for such purposes.
Rather, its main value is its alternate function. The Monolith can be “activated”, after which it sucks in any source of gold in a considerable radius, in addition to any corpses within range. It can drain gold chunks from ground squares that have gold, even if there are interposing walls in between. It can even steal the gold from the vaults of enemies.
The cost of this powerful function is the destruction of the monolith. Hence, the player must learn to gauge the profits that can be had from using the monolith to harvest or steal gold.
GOLDEN COLOSSUS:
The Colossus is a Titan that is unique to Kasita. Its origin is introduced in this DLC’s campaign, together with a seemingly daunting mission objective that can be achieved quicker than the player would think. In multiplayer matches, Kasita can summon the Colossus like any other Titan.
The main value of the Colossus is that it is practically a mobile version of the activated Aureate Monolith. It will suck up corpses, and drain gold wherever it goes. This can be helpful in robbing the enemy’s wealth, if the Colossus is included in the attacking force.
Otherwise, the Colossus fights a lot like the Eternal, e.g. a floating giant golem smashing things with its metal arms. The Colossus has to be healed by spending gold on it, however.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The most obvious difference that the DLC has from the base package is Kasita’s visual theme. Gold inlays and trims are in the floor tiles and the walls. Indeed, if it can be gilded, it is gilded. The only exception are the walls that contribute to the functions of facilities; the visual assets for these are retained.
There are also aesthetic variants of pre-existing content. For example, there is molten gold, which functions like lava. Disappointingly, there are no means of gaining wealth from the molten gold.
Incidentally, the effects of the Blood Money spell have had their visuals updated at the time of the debut of this DLC. This resulted in better looking golden statues. They even have bases.
Speaking of golden statues, there are also the Sentinels, which have been given models of their own to differentiate them from the Disciples that the Imperial Matriarch can summon. Previously, the Sentinels are practically palette-swapped Disciples. Likewise, the Colossus has been given unique polygons for its model, to differentiate it from the Eternal. Both units still have animations that resemble their templates of origin, however.
Perhaps the most impressive visual design of this expansion is the sight of gold being sucked out of ground squares and vaults and going into the Aureate Monolith or the Colossus. This is a gleeful sight, especially if the player is robbing enemies of their wealth.
SOUND DESIGNS:
As mentioned earlier, Kasita does not have any verbal expressions. There are also not a lot of new sound effects, because most of the aesthetic assets that come with this DLC are visual. The Sentinels and Colossus practically use the audio assets of the Disciples and the Eternal in the base game, albeit with some extra sound clips such as the exaggerated tinkling of gems on each other. There are additional music tracks, but they do not sound that much different from the pre-existing ones.
The most appreciable sounds that the DLC introduces are the voice-overs. Brightrock continues to make use of the best assets that they have managed to get from the remnants of the Dungeon Keeper IP.
Richard Ridings has recorded even more lines as Mendechaus. In particular, he acknowledges that the player character of the base campaign is Oberon, and will refer to the player as “Kasita” in most of his voice-overs. This is a one-way conversation, of course, as mentioned earlier.
The Overworld forces that protect the Dukedom of Phaestus have voice-overs in the DLC’s campaign too. There are the remarks that they utter during the second mission of the campaign; these remarks indicate to the player that the optional mission objective of maintaining stealth is still in force. The player’s reward is a slightly snarky compliment from Mendechaus.
In particular, there are the voice-overs for the members in the ruling family of the Dukedom. All of them sound entertainingly clueless about the doom that is coming to them. They also sound peculiarly different from each other. For example, one of the sons has an exaggerated French accent that no other member has.
Their quips can eventually become tiresome (especially after they repeat), but the player would soon be silencing them anyway. The family members’ response to their demise can be gratuitously entertaining.
SUMMARY:
As an expansion pack, Heart of Gold does not really do more than adding extended tutorials. Specifically, these are tutorials for gameplay elements that are associated with the DLC but have been implemented in the base game anyway. In terms of narrative, its campaign only highlights the existence of other regions in the world of Kairos, but there is no further exposition on the intrigue that was revealed in the end of the base game’s campaign. Even for a price tag that is the equivalent of about four euros, this can seem to be too little.
Still, the price tag is there, if the player wants to reward Brightrock Games for having persevered with the development of War for the Overlord, despite their rough and disheartening beginnings.