Stormgate Reviews

Spent $60 a year ago because I believed in this game and what they were trying to do. Fast forward, 2025. $25 extra for campaigns after everything we've sat through, waiting. Hoping. Reading patch notes that didn't address the real problems. Learn from our mistakes: go back to SC2. EDIT: Okay, I was wrong and misled when the splash page was wanting another $25. I spent more time with it, and while it's not great it's not terrible, either. My bad, FrostGiant.

The game has absolutely nothing to it, and they want to charge more money to play the campaign. Cannot recommend, disgusting cash grab. Avoid at all costs.

Giving a negative as there is no meh option. Note I am only reviewing the campaign as I do not play multiplayer and all other modes are not released as of yet. Campaign: balance feels all over the place on missions. First few are very easy. I am sure to get into the swing of the faction and units. Mission five has a major flaw which they have not fixed in the past year it has been out. You can build up a full base, max out your army, and research all upgrades before beginning the defense part of the mission. This of course makes it extra trivial. Episode six is still not extremely difficult and has a "boss battle", but even on brutal is laughably easy, though at least the team had enough common sense to only take your heroes into the zone. Chapters 2 and 3 have some pretty challenging missions which actually feel brutal defending waves from all sides and then laughably easy and frankly boring missions where you roll around the map with an HQ doing basically nothing until the very end of the mission where you have to hold a point at the end. Heroes are a good idea, but make some of the content trivial such as spheres of doom that get two shot by the sniper character. Now the hub... in concept I like the drop ship between missions you can get extra lore, and switch out your hero's load outs. HOWEVER, I quickly found myself skipping through even the required conversations as they were one note and boring. Even a "final stand" speech at the end of the game which is supposed to be the big ONE LAST CHANCE moment was let down by stale dialogue and (what is beyond me) no music. The equipment system is completed through lockers where you can assign equipment to characters you bring on missions. This is a good idea. However, it becomes very tedious as you have to put the item into the main character's inventory from the stach and put it in the other character's locker. Made even more tedious because she only has 6 item slots which you want to use for her own items. Another system is the research and faction upgrades. This system is pretty solid. You have to choose between using resources you get by completing missions to upgrade individual units or upgrade your faction as a whole making heroes and/or units stronger. The issue is that they give you way too few resources. By the end of the campaign you can upgrade one unit out of twelve in your roster (each unit has 3 upgrades) and get the research upgrades. There is just not enough of the resource, perhaps you should get some amount from completing secondary objectives. Plot is pretty cookie cutter. First two cinematics hit pretty hard and are decent. Unfortunately there are more than one cutscene. By the end of the game the story is all over the place. Characters are introduced in a mission and then never heard from again. There is a betrayal that has no build up or weight. The third faction is mentioned and you occasionally see units/ghost versions of their units. They are mentioned a few times but no depth to who or what they are. You are just expected to know OH YEAH the celestials. The final cut scene in the game is supposed to be a dragonball z/ harry potter and voldemort duel (you know the one) but is done in a very poor rushed way. Over all a less than average experience let down by a very obviously unfinished experience. At the $20 price tag, I would say its ok if you have the expendable income. A few missions were enjoyable and brought back the original Starcraft 2 vibes. But over all I felt disappointed at what could have been. But at least you can pet the dog on the ship.

Pros: 1v1 mode, Map editor, co-op mode. Neutral: Ai-generated imagery/portrait touchups. (some like it, I couldn't care less for it, as long as game runs fine.) Cons: payment modularized for campaign means I'll never pay to see the ending, especially not after their promises for certain starter privelages that were not fulfilled. Campaign is a solid 3 hours of fun at least for the casual gamer. It's good. It's showy. It's got potential. Beyond that, I don't know too much about multiplayer scene aside from the fact I got bum-human-tower-rushed at 1 minute in my 1v1, lost game, then got queued into same master's player in EA. Hopefully the pool of ranked is increased in 1.0 launch. Nope, pool still small. Can't recommend the ranked for new players at all. Overall a "mixed review" 55% recommend only.

the game definitely has potential and has shown improvement but it is still very rough around the edges rn, I would recommend it just to try the pvp but campaign and co-op are a scam I spent 25$ for the early access campaign (3 missions) and now I have to spend another 25$ for the rest? and 10 whole dollars for each co-op commander, and only 1 free one? I understand needing to make money off a f2p game but this is just a complete rip off, especially for a game with such slow and honestly lackluster development

"The Stormgate Deluxe Early Access Pack includes the complete Vanguard campaign with all three chapters, each featuring three story-driven missions, plus exclusive cosmetic items and supporter recognition rewards. By completing campaign missions on Brutal difficulty, players can unlock unique pets: Fuzzy Moth (Mission 6), Terror Byte (Mission 9), and Bobble BOB (Mission 12). The pack also provides access to all three exclusive hero characters. " Well that's was a lie

Aug 05: Bought the $32CAD basic edition to play the campaign, and somehow this only includes 1/3 of 1/3 (missions 4-6 of just the Vanguard race) of the campaign. Literally 3 extra missions for $32. Mistake on my end I guess for not reading the fine print, but when there are multiple axis of paid content (the options in Steam versus In-Game are different) for a game like this.... just wow. For the quality of what you get, I was already considering $32CAD to be generous for one third of campaign, but this is predatory slop. In reality, it's $39CAD for just the Vanguard campaign at a minimum and there are tons of ticky-tack extras that you can pay more for. The 'recommended, basic bundle' is anything but. I expected better from a studio who marketed themselves as making a spiritual successor to StarCraft II. edit (Aug 11, 2025) -- noting that the monetization was completely changed 48h after launch, with no compensation for folks like myself who burned and beta tested the live game with real money. Neato!

I've been a big supporter of this game for a while so it feels sad to write this review. I bought the basic version of this game for 24.99 thinking I was getting all the missions. Instead I got 3 missions and a "hero" for a game mode that isn't even complete. I can't get a refund because of my playtime from early access. Feels like I got scammed.

Pre-release game was promised the campaign, which never happened, now I find out that I paid in order to own a free-to-play version while the campaign costs additional $$? WTF

As a Warcraft III and Starcraft II mapmaker who has tens of thousands of hours in RTS games, I can say that after playing this, I have abandoned all hope in the future of RTS, With so many devs from War3 and SC2 working Stormgate, I thought it would be the next big RTS game, but I couldnt be more wrong. The Devs continue saying "We have left early access now", I dont know what they are thinking. Nothing in this game is complete. Their main focus and the only well developed part of this game seems to be the 1v1, which I couldnt care less about. The editor after 2 years of early access can only make melee maps. Maybe if they released it with the editor there would be hundreds of custom games and a real player base but they still refuse to just complete the editor instead of giving attention to literally every other game mode. The co-op mode has only like 3 maps and the commanders are so uninteresting, especially with the 9 dollar price which is even more expensive than the high quality SC2 commanders. The 3v3 game mode is still not even out so everyone is stuck with the same repetitive 1v1. And worst of all, the campaign is so underwhelming and absolutely not worth the price. Its barely higher quality than most player made SC2 custom campaigns, and I somehow prefer the beta version from months ago. they recycled half the missions from that version but got rid of the best ones (Like why ditch the cool micro mission?). And the story is so dry and uninteresting. If youre a fan of competitive 1v1, trying to make custom games, hoping to enjoying a co-op mission with your friends, or just playing the story mode campaign, this game has a way disappoint you!