1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (45 votes, average: 3.04 / 5)
Loading...

Tribal Wars 2

Tribal Wars 2 is the sequel to the classic city-building strategy game, Tribal Wars. The game features the same core gameplay as the original game with overhauled graphics and interface, as well as few new gameplay elements.

Publisher: InnoGames
Playerbase: High
Type: Strategy MMO
Release Date: September 2, 2014 (Open Beta)
Pros: +Multiple improvements over the original. +More challenging gameplay elements. +New Tribe quest system.
Cons: -Slow-paced progression. -Repetitive Gameplay. -Established players can bully beginners.

x

google-play-button app-store-button

Overview

Tribal Wars 2 Overview

Rule over a castle in a war-torn medieval kingdom filled with knights and barbarians in Tribal Wars 2, the sequel to the iconic Tribal Wars online game. Expand and defend your kingdom from other players in a persistent PvP world. Decide on a strategy and play the game your way by recruiting units that suit your playing style. Use diplomacy and forge, or even break alliances to survive the hostilities, conquer other players, and ultimately claim world domination.

Tribal Wars 2 Key Features:

  • Real-time PvP – enter a world where your kingdom is in constant threat from attack that can arrive any time of the day whether you’re logged-in or not.
  • Forge Alliances – use your powers of diplomacy to forge alliances that will help you survive the unforgiving world.
  • Strategic Battles – choose the right type of units to recruit in order to crush your opponent, defend from attacks, or even send your own counter-attacks.
  • New Spy System – recruit spies to take a peek at your enemy’s units or defenses or employ countermeasures to protect yourself from other spies and trick your enemies.
  • Cash Shop – contains boosts that can be purchased using Crowns, the game’s premium currency.

Tribal Wars 2 Screenshots

no images were found

Tribal Wars 2 Featured Video

Tribal Wars 2 - Open Beta Release Trailer

Full Review

Tribal Wars 2 Review

By Marc Marasigan

Tribal Wars 2, or TW2, is a free-to-play 2D browser-based city-building strategy game developed and published by InnoGames. The game went into open-beta on September 2, 2014 and is available for the PC, iOS, and Android.

TW2 is the sequel to Innogames’ highly successful strategy game, Tribal Wars. Like the original game, TW2 is set in a war-torn medieval kingdom where players rule over a castle and must grow their cities, conquer others, and expand their territories while fighting to survive in a hostile persistent PVP world. The game’s core gameplay remains the same as its predecessor but with an extensive graphics overhaul, a revamped interface, a new map screen, as well as a few new gameplay elements added in. And like the original game, once a player loses all his villages, it's game over.

Starting From Scratch

Upon entering the game, players are asked to choose from one of the available realms. A word of warning, since TW2 is a persistent PVP world, it’s usually best to choose recently opened realms since world pioneers tend to give new players a hard time, especially in worlds that have been live for a while. Although new players are given seven days of beginner protection, there’s nothing stopping stronger players from farming you once protection ends. After choosing their realms, players are then asked to choose their preferred location, any location will do unless you want your village, a.k.a. villa, to spawn close to another village. Villages are spawned in a circle with older players near the center and newer players spawning in the outer edges. This benefits new players since wars tend to start near the center, where the stronger players, are before moving outward, but again, there’s nothing to stop a stronger player from conquering your village just because he needs a safe haven away from all the fighting. This early on, you can see how strategy plays a really big part in this game, having strong allies also helps a lot.

Now, back to the village. Players start the game with a level 1 Headquarters, which is where all the building and upgrading takes place. A quick tutorial guides new players through the basics of constructing and upgrading buildings, recruiting units, as well as attacking and looting barbarian villages. After which, the game’s quest system will take over in guiding players through the game. Completing the quests rewards players with resources, free units, as well as a variety of boosts, and items that they can use in-game. While the quest rewards are a big help early in the game, keep in mind that the quests only serve as a guide, so if you have a better strategy in mind, by all means go try it out.

Looting Is The Key

Like most city-building games, villages in TW2 generate resources over time. How much depends on the resource buildings’ levels. Let’s face it, waiting for resources to fill up can be rather dull, looting from neighboring villages, on the other hand, is much faster, not to mention more profitable. During the tutorial, players are asked to attack a nearby barbarian village, or barb. Attacking other villages aside from barbarians will stop beginner protection regardless of how much time is left. This makes barbarian villages a player’s bread and butter until his protection ends or he decides that he’s strong enough without it.

The Right Men for the Job

In TW2, different units have different movement speeds, offensive and defensive stats, as well as loot or resource carrying capacity. Light Cavalry are the fastest in the game, with Spearmen coming in second. Axemen have high offensive stats but low defense and movement speed while archers are great against most units but weak against other archers. Spies are also an important unit that can be used to spy on potential targets. Choosing the right unit types for the job is the key to winning battles in the game. Effectively looting an undefended village, like a barb for example, requires a large carrying capacity coupled with high movement speed which makes Spearmen and Light Cavalry a good choice. Wiping out a heavily defended village is a whole different matter. Plus, there are tons of strategies that players use in combat, from basic maneuvers such as dodging (sending out all units at the time of attack to avoid being wiped out), to more advanced ones like trains (timing different types of unit attacks to land a second even microseconds after each other).

Who Ever Said Ruling Was Easy?

As the ruler of a village in TW2, a player’s most important task is to ensure the survival of his village up until the end of the game. To accomplish this, players must juggle a variety of tasks such as, upgrading and building structures, keeping resources flowing, maintaining provisions for his army by constantly upgrading farms, amassing an army to attack or defend against other players, rebuilding structures and walls destroyed by attacks, looting neighboring players for resources and to keep them in check, as well as conquering other villages. After finishing these tasks, players repeat the cycle all over again. This is why the game can be addicting and tedious at the same time. It requires a lot of time and effort to be able to last until the end. Luckily, the developers finally decided to release the game with a mobile counterpart which was a feature lacking, although frequently requested, in the original Tribal Wars game.

Forging Alliances

Unlike most strategy games, TW2 forces players to work with each other, because let’s face it, one man isn’t going to last in a world where hundreds, if not thousands of players are vying for supremacy. To survive, players must join tribes with their own hierarchies, leadership, as well as their own strategies and tactics which is actually why the game was called Tribal Wars in the first place. Politics, diplomacy, and negotiations are a standard part of life in a tribe since all tribes can form, or break, alliances with other tribes, as well as negotiate Non-Aggression Pacts, which, if I may add, is not binding and makes backstabbing and treachery a normal occurrence in the game. Keep in mind that your tribemates are your go-to guys for help and support so finding a tribe that you can rely on and work well with is fairly important.

Counting Crowns

TW2 features a cash shop that mostly contains boosts that can be purchased using Crowns, the game’s premium currency. However, unlike other free-to-play games in the genre, these boosts can be acquired by completing quests and it’s entirely possible to have more than a handful stocked up with just a few days into the game. The downside is that Crowns can also be used to instantly finish building construction or unit recruitment. While this is a definite advantage, the fact that strong players can still be taken down by a number of weaker players working together balances it all out in the end.

Final Verdict: Great

As a fan of the original game, I can say that this game brings everything that made its predecessor a hit, back to the table, and then some. The graphics are great for a browser-based game and the interface was given the polish that the original game lacked. Some new gameplay elements, like the spy system, still need a bit of work, but overall the game is pretty solid and can definitely look forward to a bright future in the gaming industry.

Screenshots

Tribal Wars 2 Screenshots

Videos

Tribal Wars 2 Videos

Playlist: Tribal Wars 2 (Browser)

System Requirements

Tribal Wars 2 Requirements

Operating System: XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Equivalent
Video Card: Any Graphics Card (Integrated works well too)
RAM: 512 MB
Hard Disk Space: 100 MB (Cache)

Tribal Wars 2 is a browser based MMO and will run smoothly on practically any PC. The game was tested and works well on Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Chrome. Any modern web-browser should run the game smoothly.

Music

Tribal Wars 2 Music & Soundtrack


Additional Info

Tribal Wars 2 Additional Information

Developer: InnoGames

Closed Beta Date: June 24, 2014
Open Beta Date: September 2, 2014

Development History / Background:

First announced in December of 2013, Tribal Wars 2 is the sequel to the original browser-based strategy game by German studio InnoGames. Tribal Wars was first released in 2003 and was one of the first browser strategy games in a now burgeoning genre. InnoGames has continuously updated Tribal Wars and ported it to new platforms as they were released. The game is now available on Facebook, Android, and iOS devices.

Tribal Wars has enjoyed success both in its home market and across the world with over 32 million registered users. It joins a roster of browser strategy games in InnoGames portfolio along with Forge of Empires, Grepolis, and Elvenar.