Sometimes, games stay stuck in early-access hell; other times, they finally get released, only to not meet expectations and underperform. This is neither of those cases. Diplomacy is Not an Option saw its initial release into early access around February 9, 2022.

More than two and half years later, you can get back at it, defending your castle from hordes of peasants, undead, or shiny knights while you bombard them with magic lasers from the sky or poke them full of arrows.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

Diplomacy is Not an Option received a lot of praise and some criticism upon its early-access release and strode through it like a well-oiled machine. The developer and publisher, Door 407, have put out a great product, answering player feedback and giving consistent and constant news and updates. With the game’s release, the developers still promise to add more content. So, not having fun here is not an option.

Part City-builder, part RTS. Diplomacy is Not an Option hooked many back in 2022 with its addictive gameplay. With a very dynamic combat system and resource management elements, Diplomacy is Not an Option does a good job of doing both. While the city-building elements are fairly fleshed out, the game still focuses more on the warfare aspect, having the aforementioned dynamic combat system, along with many units to play around with and many more strategies to utilize.

Diplomacy is Not an Option comes in four modes, alongside a tutorial, which is quick and simple, just teaching you the very basics of the game. The campaign, on the other hand, is pretty long, with immense amounts of replayability. Your choices shape the story, even though some of these choices don’t end up meaning anything. The parts that do allow you to obtain one of six different endings and play as three factions.

These factions are not too distinct, offering little differences here and there, but they still have their charm. They are the Rebels, the Royals, the Tribes, and the Undead. Each scenario is pretty much built on the same basis.

In Diplomacy is Not an Option, you start with your castle and a small but thematic army and have to tackle a few objectives. The most common and usual one is something many early-access players are used to. This is where you defend your castle against waves of enemies. Now, there are also scenarios and missions that require you to build monuments, defeat bosses, and escort and defend characters.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

Diplomacy is Not an Option’s Endless mode is exactly what you would expect from the name; you build and expand normally and survive through waves of enemies that attack periodically. These waves get progressively stronger and more numerous every day. There are several scenarios available in Endless Mode, 12 in total.

You also have access to a sandbox mode, where you can select from various maps and tailor the game’s settings to your liking. It is a great option for those who want to turn off the game’s combat or fast-track the early game.

Challenge mode offers seven different stories with humorous challenges that, well, are challenging. There are three missions to each challenge, and as always, you have three difficulty modes, as if it wasn’t hard enough already. They aren’t grueling or tiring, either. Each one is fresh and keeps you engaged while being extremely tough and unforgiving.

Returning to the campaign, you start as a noble, dealing with some angry peasants, and progress into a cascading branching story. Each mission has a fun little cutscene preceding it, done in the simplistic voxel art style of the game. These cutscenes are pretty hilarious, but sometimes they are quite laggy, and the jump-cuts make things a bit jarring.

Often, you will find you are not exactly on the right side of things, but that doesn’t matter; diplomacy was not an option anyway. Each mission starts you off with a relatively similar position; however, there are some outliers.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

You start Diplomacy is Not an Option with only a handful of troops, people, and workers. You immediately have to start gathering resources and exploring the map with your troops. You constantly have to switch between the two tasks, as time is really of the essence.

Your primary resources in Diplomacy is Not an Option are Food, Wood, Stone, and Iron. You get food from natural resources like fish and berries through the fisherman’s hut and berry picker’s house, respectively. Later on, you can build farms as you exhaust the fish and berries.

You find wood throughout the map, and stone and Iron are found along mountains. Each resource building except the berry picker’s house and fisherman’s hut can be upgraded as you upgrade your Town Hall. You eventually need to start building storage as well, as you will run out of space to keep all your resources.

Each time you build a production building or train a unit, it will take people from the workers. To get more, you have to increase your population by building houses. You have to carefully manage how many houses you have and where you place them, as you don’t want to get too spread out.

Buildings like the city fountain and Tavern help to increase the population without requiring more houses. As you build, you will also need more Builder’s Houses; these turn 2 or 4 workers into builders, making your construction go faster. Your population grows by a set amount daily, affecting the amount of food they consume daily.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

You will also eventually lose soldiers or citizens, who will lie there until you build a gravedigger’s house and graveyard to get them buried. If left untended, people within your town will get sick. This will happen sometimes anyway, especially if you lack food. You need to build a hospital during these cases to ensure they don’t get sick.

Once you have enough resources, you can upgrade your town hall to level 2 or 3, unlocking newer buildings and technologies. At level 3, you will get to build advanced resource structures, such as the workshop, which boosts production, or the Stone or Iron Works, which consume wood to produce unlimited stone or Iron.

Of course, there’s still the RTS element of Diplomacy, which is Not an Option. While doing all that, you move around the map and clear out the surrounding area of enemies and their camps. This gives you soul crystals, which can be used for spell-casting. You can also find resource carts strewn around the map, rewarding you for exploration and boosting you during your early game.

You need this as before long, you will have a wave of enemies crashing upon you. These enemies will always outnumber you, so you need to use strategies and tactics to deal with them. You can build walls to block their path and get archers up on those walls or build dedicated towers for these archers. You can also unlock explosive traps and spikes to slow them down. Or, you can always kite them with your melee units while your archers turn every last one of them into pincushions.

The latter strategy will only last you so long, however, as succeeding waves will be stronger and come with different units, such as monsters, archers, and siege engines. To fight them, you need to build better defenses, train more units, and upgrade these units. You will eventually have access to all three military building types.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

These are the barracks, stable, and engineer guild. The barracks will let you train infantry, ranging from spearmen and archers to foot knights and hammer guys. Each unit has its quirk and ability, as well as situations for which they are best suited. The stable lets you train horse units like knights and horse archers, and the engineer guild lets you build siege engines like catapults and ballistae. You can further augment your forces with technologies and magic.

Speaking of technologies, your tech tree is an actual branching tree that unlocks in segments as you build key buildings or upgrade them. These then unlock the ability to research certain technologies that further unlock newer things or improve them. You can improve both economic and military buildings and units with these. Researching a tech requires a certain set of time and resources. You can build a university to decrease the research speed and unlock useful technologies.

The other part that adds to the gameplay is the magic system of Diplomacy is Not an Option. Remember those Crystals? They come in here. You can use those crystals to deploy powerful spells, such as summoning a bunch of death knights, shooting a comet at the enemy, or healing your troops. The spells are fun, easy to use, and don’t make things too overbearing. In fact, the game does a good job at balancing the use of spells as you will come to rely on them, but until the late game, they will remain a rare commodity rather than something you drop willy-nilly.

The game also has a market, where you can use gold that you might’ve found around the map to buy and sell resources via a funky boat-zeppelin. A very useful system to sell excess resources and buy important ones, especially when you are in a hurry. Remember that all your units require resources and workers to produce, so you will constantly be in a bid to expand, harvest more resources, and have more workers available.

Even then, you will have to rely on strategies such as layered defense, using chokepoints to hold off enemies, and placing your siege engines on walls to deal with the enemy. Amid all that, the game lets you pause and plan things out, straying a bit from the aspect of RTS. That is not to say the enemies are smart. Rather, they are reliant on being a giant blob or horde.

Diplomacy is Not an Option, Review

Other than that, they are as dumb as a log, with intentionally direct pathfinding that makes them attack and go through walls rather than around. That doesn’t mean they will not go around small obstacles or get stuck, however, so be aware of that.

The enemies you encounter will also be somewhat varied at certain points, as you might hole up pretty well in your castle with layers of walls and archers, but as soon as the enemy brings out a few siege engines, you are screwed if you don’t have any preparations for that. Walls and Towers are really going to be your best friends, however, as they not only provide a barrier between your town and the hordes of enemies but also provide a platform for your siege engines and archers, giving them increased range.

The graphics and art style in Diplomacy is Not an Option are pretty neat, and the art is as adorable as it is charming, adding to its simplistic gameplay and luster. The UI is also very basic, but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s compact, simple, easy on the eyes, and easy to understand. Of course, the art style is not for everyone, and the cutscenes could use some work. The bareness of the cutscenes is what makes them, so that isn’t the issue here. However, the jump cuts and fast transitions might make your mind whirl a little.

The game has very nifty and intuitive controls, allowing you to change the area where your production buildings collect things from and also being able to change the radius. The technologies are very easy to research; where you just click on them and close the menu, and if you want to cancel or change, you just go back and click on it again. Or the fact that the game gives you options such as ‘repeat last order,’ makes life incredibly easier and is often a very minor thing to notice.

The soundtrack is pretty similar to its early-access variant, with nothing much of note. It gets the job done, and you certainly feel the atmosphere, especially when the waves of enemies come. But it definitely is not memorable or something that gets your blood pumping.

Diplomacy is Not an Option is also incredibly hilarious, and you’d be surprised at the number of times it employs incredibly dark humor. The characters, while not always present on the map, are funny and subtly so. The game maintains a great balance of being simple, silly, and dark.

Diplomacy is Not an Option has come a long way since its initial release, and while the basic foundations have remained as is, the game has seen a lot of tune-ups and refinement, from an increased variety of units to a more expanded gameplay. Everything isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows, however, as the game still lacks a lot. Much of it can be chalked down to quality-of-life things, such as having the ability to queue research technologies or lay out plans for walls while not having enough resources, but for some, this can definitely affect the experience.

Overall, Diplomacy is Not an Option is a great game with very few misses. It is comparatively fast-paced, engaging, and always keeps you on your feet. It is challenging yet simple, fast but not stressful, and now it has ample replayability and gameplay options. Whether you are an RTS fan or a city-builder fan, it doesn’t matter what your draw is, be it the new campaign, the challenges, or a quiet city-building escapade in the sandbox mode; you will enjoy every minute of it. Endless fun combat, war, and diplomacy, well, that is not an option.

Diplomacy is Not an Option

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