After a rough start on the planet, are things going better this week on Brimstone. Join me and find out how the adventure continues and how the away team does. ISS Vanguard is certainly throwing some challenges at me early and often, so let’s dive into what’s going on and see if we can complete our mission or if we need to get out of there.

ISS Vanguard Difficulty Level

Let’s talk about how hard or not the game is. Because I think that this time might suggest something different than it actually is. And with this, let’s also talk about the other Awaken Realms games that I’ve played. Because I think that people often place them into the category of difficult games. I am less convinced that they are too hard, but more aren’t always what people are looking for.

Previous Games

Lords of Hellas as a one of game has a lot of rules to learn. But the core loop of the game play is not that complicated. It’s just a matter of holding enough information in your head to make it work. And even then it is less than it’d seem because they give solid player aids. Then there’s Tainted Grail, which is difficult. But that’s what it was advertised as, so when people were complaining about getting what they signed up for, that confused me. And Awaken Realms gave easy ways to balance it that kept some of the core difficulty, and really it’s the grind, while streamlining it for more adventure.

ISS Vanguard

So that takes us to ISS Vanguard. I do own Etherfields, I need to play that one still. But ISS Vanguard, is it too hard. No. But I think for some people they aren’t going to appreciate the balancing act that which the game gives. Right now I’m in a ship phase. I’m looking to deal with situations. My plan is to recruit more crew. Plus then I’ll be able to spend some effort on building something, or researching something, hopefully.

I think that this is where people are going to get tripped up with this game. The ship phase is about managing everything. It is not just getting cool toys. Yes, you get cool toys. But you need to make sure you have enough alive and healthy crew to be able to continue. You balance the new stuff with making sure the morale is high enough. And it isn’t a situation where there are no benefits. They all provide benefits to you. But sometimes it’s hard to see that because you don’t get the flashy.

Now, I write this and ISS Vanguard is the one that I’ve seen complaints the least on. So that is good, I think that Awaken Realms is doing a better job of balancing. And throughout the ISS Vanguard development process, like with Tainted Grail, they keep saying what the game is. So if you don’t like what the game promised it was going to be, is it really their fault?

Upcoming Streams

Next Monday I am going to be playing a lane battling tower defense game. I have played it a few times multi-player cooperative, but now I want to try it solo. What game is that? Skytear Horde from Skytear Games. The gaming will start at 8:30 PM Central time on Monday.

And then next Wednesday, it is down to the planet in ISS Vanguard again. You can click the notification bell for the stream here. That is at 8 PM Central like normal. We will pick-up where we left off. If things move smoothly enough, we will start on the planetary phase as well, though, I think we’ll have some interesting situations in the ship phase.

And if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

Send an Email
Message me on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here