| Review entitled 'Perhaps the closest you'll get to Asterix online!' |  | I believe Travian to be one of the most well exposed and advertised Strategy games on the market, while extremely popular with over 50,000 active players the game still manages to keep its active member count high despite the fact the game resets entirely in what seems like a quarterly basis.
Graphics
Art is colorful and bright, bringing a slightly comical and light edge to the game, most units, buildings and actions come with some form of art. There isn't a lot of reuse of any imagery which is welcoming and the somewhat innovative use of the graphics palette to generate your villages and surrounding terrain is surprisingly well done and effective.
Fun
Travian begins you in a weak state with little resources, buildings and a time based protection period and with this it brings a difficult process to build and create enough to give you more options before you are brought out of protection, unfortunately due to the amount of alliances and close proximity of other players this almost guarantees some early defeats bringing with it lose of resources and further struggles. On that note, the game play's time based construction system makes it the perfect game for short periods of sporadic activity, rewarding you for leaving to do something else for a few hours to come back to make further decisions. Once you manage to ascend the beginner lull and voyage out into the world, expanding your villages in the process, the game takes quite a turn for the fun side.
Community
Most players of Travian that take it beyond the intial protection period tend to be more mature and understanding. This usually brings a sensible audience that is interested in expansion and community weeding out the players you usually associate with typical role playing games, thanks to this Travian manages to keep quite a fun and easygoing community going. However, the game lets itself down with the severly underdeveloped community controls, with no adequate chat facility, alliance forums are awkward and take some time to get use to.
Soundtrack
With no soundtrack to speak off, the soundtrack neither improves the game nor worsens it, so an average rate is given.
Tilt
I found myself disappointed in the large beginners struggle and only found a counter-productive construction of crannies and begging to join strong alliances as the only way to succeed. Once a player has earned his second village there is no new content to speak of just ongoing raids, attacks and defenses with the same units, buildings and gameplay.
Customer Service
Customer service is quick with easy to understand explanations of the planed resolutions, there is also a good amount of follow up that comes with this which means the overall experience a lot more gratifying. There are questions about your experience as you play the game as well, hopefully in an attempt to improve the game.
Performance
During the three months of playing i noticed no issues with lag, downtime or bugs not even scheduled downtime like many developers force onto there user base. The graphics used in the game are ideal in size and well optimized with the layout providing little to load and a very quick experience
Roleplaying
Travian does nothing to encourage any type of role playing within the game, a limited amount of players have formed guilds inside the game with role playing as one of there main agenda's fortunately the players saved Travian from getting a disgraceful rating in this regard.
Value
With the entire game being free and many in its field moving to some form of payment system, Travian holds a very good value rating. The game does offer a micro-payment system for advanced UI benefits, instant construction and benefit to attack, defense, production and trading, however these are extremely well priced and excellent value for money.
UI
A simple and precise layout lends itself to Travian's success, different sections are easy to get to and well thought out. Eventually the city map offers a sub-menu of sorts allowing you to access alliances, demolition and micro-management options, the game might have benefited from creating a global menu link upon building these buildings but it is not required. |
| | Reviewer | | 
Valane
Last active : 19/11/2008 7:23pm |
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| | Review Scores | | | Graphics | 9 | | | Soundtrack | 5 | | | Community | 7 | | | Roleplaying | 6 | | | Performance | 10 | | | Customer | 10 | | | Fun | 8 | | | Value | 10 | | | UI | 9 | | | Tilt | 7 | |
Total Score
81 |
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