The result is Lux Delux, a highly customizable, open experience in which players can lead their virtual armies across various maps, against AI-controlled or human opponents, all in the quest of glory and total domination.
- FreeRide Club members only. Lines Deluxe is a terrific colorful remake of the old classic Lines game. This new version is literally full of life! The balls on the field interact with the player while numerous cool bonus features make the playing experience exciting and fun.
- The game has a total of 58 ancient nations for you to control. You can play as just the strongest, or work cleverly to achieve victory from the humblest of starts. Hours and hours of fun are yours to be had in Ancient Empires Lux. Ancient Empires Lux is a DLC expansion campaign for Lux Delux.
Does Lux Delux manage to deliver on its lofty goals or should we just head back to the old board game? Let's find out.
Story
Lux Delux doesn't have a story campaign or anything like that but, as I'm sure many Risk veterans know, every single match can deliver high and low points worthy of an Oscar-winning plot.
However, the Steam version does come with the two DLC expansion campaigns called American History Lux and Ancient Empires Lux, which offers a loose story experience using historical references.
Lux Delux is a rich turn-based strategy experience that allows for deep customization, intense battles, and lots of replayability. Bear in mind that the learning curve is steep and the visual.
Gameplay and Multiplayer
Even if there's no concrete story, the game makes up for its lack through the mechanics. It does that quite well, as right when you start the game, you're met with a huge amount of customizable features.From picking between many different maps, to choosing how many foes you go up against, their difficulty, and their specific behavior, to all sorts of extra options, Lux Delux spoils fans with an extremely customizable front end.
First up, the maps are quite varied, ranging from the traditional Risk-like world map, to fictional levels or historical ones. Want to conquer ancient Rome? Sure. Want to take over the whole solar system? There's a map of that as well. What's more, you can create your own environments quite easily or download existing ones from others right from the game.
Secondly, the opposition. You can pick various AI difficulty levels, including easy, medium or hard, not to mention different behavior types. There are settings like Communist, Angry, Killbot, and so on, each with distinct patterns and strategies. Of course, you can also build or download new ones from the game.
Besides the AI opponents, you can play against others online and earn a spot on the rankings, just as easily as you compete with the computer foes. You can also leave slots open for others to join via the Network Games option.
You can also pick various starting conditions to promote or dissuade strategic thinking, as well as the Biohazard setting that makes some zones impossible to occupy. These add even other unpredictable elements to the game, which couple quite well with the various maps, leading to a huge amount of replayability.
Many levels also feature specific mechanics regarding access to other zones, and all of them reward careful thinking and clever unit placement.
Lux Deluxe 572 Strategy Games
One other element that can be turned on, off, or tweaked extensively is the Card system, which adds another layer of unpredictability and can often cause huge rampages throughout the map, much to the joy of the attacking player and the frustration of the defenders.
While Lux Delux certainly allows for lots of customization, it's not that forthcoming with information about the actual things that you are tweaking. A lot of trial and error is required to fully comprehend the most important things and the brief instructions featured inside the title aren't that great at covering the common elements in the game.
This can get especially confusing when the randomness of enemy battles comes into play, as even if you have lots of soldiers going up against a handful of opponents, you can sometimes lose a lot of forces. Fortifying units, so that you can move them around, is also a bit confusing at first, until you figure out its main rules.
Lux Delux also throws up quite a few display errors when using the Steam overlay, so achievement pop-ups or notifications from friends can mess up, albeit temporarily, the whole screen. As such, at least for now, disable the overlay to avoid these technical problems.
Visuals and Sound
Lux Delux shows its age in terms of visuals, as the graphics effects are a bit Spartan. What's worse, there aren't any actual settings relating to the visuals, not even the resolution, besides the fullscreen toggle.The soundtrack, however, is very impressive, managing to complement the strategic action on the screen and keep players on the edge of their seat. The sound effects can wear on your nerves, especially in lengthy matches, but you can at least turn down their volume.
The Good
- Huge amount of customization
- Lots of different maps and plugins made by the fans
- Varied AI behaviors
- Thrilling soundtrack
The Bad
- Dated visuals
- Issues with Steam Overlay
- Hard to comprehend for beginners