Codex of Victory

Pros:
+Enjoyable campaign.
+Varied units.
+Units can be varied even more with modules.
+Units can be upgraded in levels which grant bonuses and abilities.
+Nice progression meaning you shouldn't feel overpowered or underpowered.
+Story keeps you on your toes.
+Ant farm base building.
+Solid tactics.
+Lovely artwork.
+Nice devs.
+Nice learning curve.
+Tough.
+Plenty of missions.
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Cons:
-Tough (some may find this a con so).
-Enemy has some units you can't match on harder difficulty without a good understanding of the game.
-Enemy can break spawn rule on story arc missions.
-Some things could be explained a little better (see below if interested).
-Game can crash. It's rare. Happened me only twice in 59 hours (dev said will be fixed in next patch. Due soon).
-A few spelling mistakes.
-Some missions can get repetitive (It's personal choice really. I didn't find it too bad but worth a mention).
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Cons list is for informative reasons only, my personal opinion is that none of them really detracted from the game for me.
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The rest of the review is more detailed on certain aspects of the game and my personal feelings. You don't need to read it if not interested.
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I have to say I really enjoyed this game and it came out of nowhere for me. I knew nothing about it and just saw it as newly released and decided to pick it up.
I'm very glad I did.
A few people have mentioned price but for me I think it is priced fairly and is one of the main reasons I bought it without knowing anything about it.
I have more then got my monies worth out of it.
I know not everyone is into achievements but for me if I enjoy a game they are a way to keep me playing and in this case they worked a treat because I wanted to beat the game on all levels.
This lead to me having a very good understanding of the game and so I can counter some of the negatives people have mentioned. Not to undermine their opinion but instead to give my personal experience with the game.
Unbalanced. I found myself thinking this sometimes but it turns out the game is balanced, you just have to learn it. The game is hard but if you are getting owned you need to rethink your tactics or unit setups/composition.
Some things are a little unclear which can make the game harder at the start and put people off.
I posted my concerns on the forum and the dev was very quick to respond and very nice and a patch is said to be in the works.
Timers at certain points in the game may make you rush but you can use up the time to advance your base and tech just make sure you leave enough time to get to any mission you want to be able to do.
The game informs you of travel times when you hover over destinations and you can also travel to and sit on top of a crucial mission but not take it until you are at the last of the timer.
Hovering over enemy hq's while in a battle will tell you how many units it has left to send into that battle so that helps a lot and is not something that was very clear to me initially but it is there.
There is a point in the game where missions can seem repetitive but this is down to personal preference and I personally enjoyed playing every one because I enjoyed the game so much.
You don't have to do every mission either, you can decide what you are willing to concede.
One of the things that can make the game seem unfair is if you don't re-capture taken territory quickly enough the enemy will reinforce it and the mission will get harder and harder.
It goes from easy (green text and one bar on map), medium (yellow text and two bars on map) and hard (red text and three bars on map).
This was something I missed and couldn't make sense at first, why enemies where attacking areas they already owned and it made me think the game was either bugged or it didn't matter if I let the timer run out.
It turns out that they are reinforcing the area and thus the missions can get very tough if you don't try to keep things in check.
However, how much you are prepared to work and counter really is up to you. If the mission timer is crucial and a must take mission, the game will tell you in the mission text.
There are a few other things I could mention but I would be heading into spoiler territory and I won't do that.
All I can say is that for the few shortcomings the game might have in some peoples view, I really loved it and I think the devs did a fine job.
If you like a challenge try it on normal and if you don't think that is unbalanced or you are finding battles too easy then congrats, you are pretty good at strategy games and should move up to hard.
Please keep in mind that things ramp up so try not to judge too quickly.
I would recommend beating it on normal before going to hard.
If you are not a strategy buff but like turn based games and like the look of this then I would say play it on easy. It should still give you a nice challenge and once you are familiar with the way the game and timers work you will be better able to take on normal and hard. If you so choose.
If you made it this far. I thank you for your time and I hope this review helps you.

This is a blast - good old fashioned turnbased goodness. The base management is clearly inspired by XCOM - it's a stripped down version the 'ant colony' from that game. The tactical battles are as in Elven Legacy, cramped spaces in which you must plot your moves in chess-like fashion. I recommend playing on Hard for a nice challenge. The graphics and UI are fine - cartoonish, but serviceable. There's no voice acting and the story is very much to the point. 4.4 hours in and I've completed the first planet, having to retry a couple of missions 4-5 times. Apparently there's 30 or so missions in the campaign, so that's got to be at least 15+ hours of playtime without dipping into multiplayer. All in all, I'm having more fun with this than I've had with a game in months. Bravo!
EDIT: a week later, I've completed the game on Hard in abotu 25 hours of game time. My only disappointment is that I'm finished. Excellent game :)

This isn't bad, but you should know what you're getting into when you pick this one up.
It is *not* a plot-driven mech-drama done in the Battletech/Mechwarrior style. Nor is it a smooth, clever, deterministic Advance Wars clone.
Codex of Victory feels like a last-minute conversion of a wait-timer-driven tactics MMO into something a bit more Advance Wars-y. It has timed resource-harvesting, item icons that look exactly like something you'd see on Kongregate, and an overall structure that emphasizes waiting for upgrades, waiting for buildings, waiting for resources, etc.
Still, if it's a rushed conversion, it's a fairly good one. Codex might be a little bland, but it has a good gameflow to it, and the strategic and tactical elements actually have some bite to them.
In Codex, you build units in your X-Com base, then travel to combat sites and spend them in skirmishes. Everything you do from deploying to moving to shooting in combat requires Action Points, which are generated by taking and holding strategic sites. Strategic sites also allow you to deploy new units from them, so combat tends to revolve around taking and holding key territories and chokepoints.
All of that is very Advance-Wars-y, but here is where Codex differs. First, it lets you move and attack with units the turn you deploy them, which means you can take a territory, spawn a unit from it, take a territory, spawn a unit from it, etc until you run out of AP. It also makes attacking a fortified position more perilous, as failing to take it in a single turn means the enemy gets to start warping in reinforcements, all of which can fire on your units as they come in.
Codex is also heavily upgrade based. Every unit can have ten upgrades, which must all be slowly researched and paid for, and there are a *lot* of units in this game. You're not going to be able to afford to max out everything or even most things. This gives units and armies a high degree of customizability, even if the fruits of that customization don't really start to show until mid to late in the game.
Codex's campaign is fairly beefy, but unfortunately the flat dialog and uninteresting world mean that it kinds of outstays its welcome as anything other than a tactical exercise.
On sale, this is a reasonable pickup if you liked Advance Wars and want to try a slightly different take on the genre.
However, if you're looking for lore, world-building, and engaging writing, it's probably best to wait for Harebrained's Battletech to release.

Updated after release.
Decent indie hex-based strategy that combines tactical turn-based combat with real-time base building. If you don't have high expectaitons, you won't be disappointed.
Combat is somewhat simplistic (units don't respawn, no flanking, etc) and rather easy to master. Action points (AP) system and modular based unit upgrades look really fresh.
Base-building is a nice addition that will keep you busy between battles: resource management, upgrades, research.
There is PvP arena with army builder too. Hope, the matchmaking will now be faster with more people joining the game.
Early access review:
Played for about 3h. Love how they combined base building with unit progression and combat.
Base is pretty similar to X-COM. Right now the building-side not that much strategic, so waiting for improvements here.
Combat somehow reminds me of Massive Assault-series, chess-like and exactly what I would expect from this kind of game.
Units advance in tiers getting better specs and new module slots (up to 3 in total), modules improve unit specs and sometimes give new features like regeneration.
Content-wise feels somehow limited and I'm definitely looking for more missions, units and stuff.
At the moment has a small campaign and PvP arena to play against other players.
Definitely has got some promise for multiplayer.
Thumbs up! Keep up the good work and look forward to the updates.

CHEAP TACTIC TIP BEFORE YOU START THE CAMPAIGN!
The very first moment you start to earn money, put the game in fast forward mode, leave the game idle for hours while you do other things on the computer.
This is reflected in my supposed game time, i used up several hours letting the game idle while i did other things to come back to a load of money!
Mobile port game.
No keyboard controls. Bleh!
All you use is Left Click. Thats it. which sucks since it could've been a lot faster if say space bar was 'end your turn' etc.
I beat the game on hard, so its a lot different than the other modes.
Enemies are substantially better, upgraded, different types than the meager force you will start out with.
Makes for an annoying challenge, where you're constantly checking enemy movement and attack ranges to either bait them, or stay away until you build up your army. Like chess I suppose?
You slowly unlock up to about 10 different unit types? Each completely different than the rest in how they are best used.
Slight base building. very annoying in that you get lets say a 10x10 area to build, when at max buildings built, you occupy only 4x4 of that area. with all that emptyness doing nothing!
Only reason to deal with this is for the achievement(s) regarding base building.
5-10 different types of maps other than specially made campaign missions.
game was overall ok, except for a few missions and the very end of the super short campaign...
Where you couldn't even use certain features that you used up to that point! very last mission i used a cheap tactic to beat it. No way in hell could you beat it 'normally' on hard mode, since i couldn't even use a hero unit's 'control enemy unit' ability
I do not recommend at full price. easily a short game on other difficulties i'd bet.

Greetings, comrades, today I am here to talk to you about "Codex of Victory." If you enjoy war-games with turn-based combat, you will enjoy "Codex of Victory." It reminds me of playing the old Avalon Hill 20th century boardgames such as Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz. The game is fun against the computer and can also be played against a human opponent in a 1-on-1 skirmish. Actually the skirmish mode is more fun as the computer mode involves a very long campaign. In PvP skirmish mode, your turns are timed and you only get a finite bit of time to study the map, plan your move, move your pieces and fire.
Before I go further into my own review, I want to address some misinformation that I've seen in other reviews: first of all, this is not a pay-to-win game, such as an idler or clicker. It's a standard IC game, published under the same umbrella as King's Bounty, though not made by the same guys. Also, it's not hard at all. Well, it has a hard setting, but you have two options: you can play it under the easy setting, or you can do what I did, and sit around and make lots of Space Rubles before your first battle.
The Campaign is divided into two parts. The first part should only take you a few hours, and it involves about 8 missions to take over the territories of your first planet. This ends with a boss battle against Baron Boarov. The second part is much longer, and involves you fighting Ascended Borg known as Augments. As with most such species, there is a Borq Queen in charge of the Augments. Where there are key campaign missions to be fought, at this point the game throws lots of side missions at you, most of which involve keeping the Augments from landing in a territory or in exterminating them if they grabbed a foothold.
In addition to the Campaign, you also have a secret underground base-- I think it's 36 rooms plus an elevator-- and in this base you can, between battles, build various rooms such as a Hangar, Warehouse, Research Center, Tactical Center, Foundry, Uranium Mine, and so forth. Rooms give you money, metal, weapons, upgrades, modules and so forth, and allow you to build whatever sort of army and air-force that you want. You army can be jeeps, tanks, artillery, turrets and mines, and the air-force is mostly attack helicopters, support helicopter, and various targeting drones and combat drones.
There are two ways to upgrade each unit: every vehicles, drone and Battle Mech has a tech tree from 1 to 10-- with each level giving a bonus such as extra hit points, extra range or extra attack-- but all units also have up to 3 modules, and you build these modules yourself, allowing you to give your tanks a force-field, extra armor, or even more range, for example. Some of the best modules allow you to min-max a particular drone or vehicle, so you can decide to take off 1 Hit Point and assign it to +1 attack, or gain a 15% critical hit chance at the cost of unit expense.
Speaking of expense: this is one way I am reminded of those old 20th century board-games. Or maybe Warcraft 3. If you remember from Warcraft, your army could only have 90 points worth of units in it. Codex of Victory is the same way; you get 140 points, and it's your choice if you want your reserve army to be 70 2-point jeeps or twenty 7-point helicopters. That's completely up to you, but this is a game that rewards kamikaze zerging of lots of little jeeps.
The game is 2 or 3 years old, but still runs great on my new Windows 10 computer; no glitches or crashes or any problems at all.
All achievements are doable, though as this is a war-game, many are time consuming and will require grinding. It will take about 40 hours to achieve most of them. However, as the game is all battles all the time, you will know within the first 20 minutes whether this game is for your or not.

Basic Information
Title: Codex of Victory
Status: Released
Developer: Ino-Co Plus
Publisher: 1C Company
Genre: 3D Turn Based Strategy
Release Date: 16th of March, 2017
Type: Singleplayer & Multiplayer
Introduction
Codex of Victory is a grand-scale wargame which implements a hybrid gameplay of both real-time (for the base construction and unit deployment) and turn-based (in combat) strategy. As a result, it’s the perfect mix which shall please most Steam strategists, myself included. The developer has had sufficient experience with both the genres and platform, as his first Steam released project (Warlock - Master of the Arcane) dates back to 2012.
Story
The game also makes good use of multiple narrative themes, such as a combination between low-fantasy feudalism, involving notions of nobility and chivalry on a predominantly Sci-Fi background. At a superficial level it emulates the feel of Warhammer 40K, with some obvious differences which I shall explain in-depth. The storyline in Codex of Victory involves subplots of treason, expansionism, transhumanism and ultimately survival, since the main antagonist is represented by a technologically superior army of once human cyborgs, called the Augments. You can draw several similarities over here, with the Deus Ex universe as well.
Players assume the role of a newly knighted Lord of the Human Kingdom which is given his own fiefdom to control and defend. Before fighting the Augments in the name of your King, you shall have to deliver swift justice to the treacherous Baron Boarov and his separatist human forces. Overall, it’s a morally ambiguous fairytale, in which you never question your Liege, but at the same time you attack and terminate the direct threats of his ever expanding Kingdom whose ultimate goal is to dominate the solar system of his homeworld. If this doesn’t sound like the future Emperor of Mankind and his Imperium of Man, than I don’t know what it is. Almost made me root for the Augments which just wish to be left to their own devices, with no interference from the outside.
Graphics
The graphical engine is rendered in full 3D and with an aesthetically pleasing dash of cel shading, thrown in for good measure. I can’t recall of many strategy titles which used cel shaded graphics, except the underrated Chronostorm: Siberian Border (also found on Steam). But that one is entirely an RTS, not TBS like our Codex of Victory in this case. Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of this visual style in video games and I am happy to see it implemented in a strategic title, for a change.
Other than it’s peculiar visuals, the game ran flawlessly, performance-wise. 4K resolution, maxed out and sporting constant 60 frames per second. Can’t complain since I haven’t found so far any bugs or glitches at all. Not even a frame rate dip. As I mentioned earlier, the dev team isn’t the type to make an amateur’s mistake in any regard. The title runs as expected and for a TBS by 2017 standards, it also looks the part.
Audio
Cracks in Codex of Victory’s otherwise perfect image, begin to emerge when noticing the lack of sound diversity coupled with the simply subtitled dialogues between your in-game superiors and subordinates. A story-driven experience, such as the title’s campaign could have surely benefited from the presence of even a meagre voice acting performance. None to be found and the characters are silent as the grave. Sound effects are decent but they are still nothing out of the ordinary, much like the soundtrack itself.
Gameplay
Just as I already mentioned the gameplay is divided between the real time planning, building and upgrading your base of operations and army, while the combat takes place on maps which symbolize an entire battlefield from bird’s eye view. Thus you issue commands to your units in a turn-based strategy mode which allows you to think ahead, in terms of both tactics and chances of success. Movement slots are hexagonal shaped and any action undertaken while in TBS mode, costs Action Points (AP). It is fairly standard for this strategic genre so it should come as no surprise to players that enjoyed similar titles in the past.
More of a novelty might be the seizure of key settlements on the maps, that will reward players with more APs and subsequently, a steady supply of deployable reinforcements to tip the odds in your favor. Do not think for a second that numbers won’t count and that simply having a handful of fully upgraded units, will result in an easy victory. I was thrown off guard initially, when noticing that the Artificial intelligence could put up quite a fight and sustain itself in battle through flanking tactics and redeployment of its own.
Obviously, the Augments are the true challenge since you’ll be fighting them far more than the human traitors. In your King’s quest to conquer everything and everyone, you shall take control of not just the intial home planet of Scifia but also its natural satellite, the moon Elonia and eventually the planetary wasteland of Kali, where your cyborg foes have set up base. A lot of battles ahead and many more units you shall build and lose since the combat system isn’t really as dependable or predictable as a classic RTS-style rock–paper–scissors example. Total armor (as related to unit Hit Points) and firepower can be constantly improved through installed modules or base research.
It is ultimately up to the players in the end, how they manage the unit templates being created by your base. Speaking of that, the construction of your underground HQ resembles the system used in the XCOM series, through which new rooms have to be excavateg and the limited space available, encourages careful planning. Apparently there are no stacked bonuses by erecting facilities of the same type in adjacent slots. My advice is to save the game often enough, and observe the battle’s results. If you lost too many units, you must evidently change your tactics or assigned unit roster. Experiment all the time and you’ll find the optimum tactics to employ as the situation demands.
Verdict
I’m a self-declared strategy fan and Codex of Victory is a worthy addition to the TBS genre since most of the action you’ll be witnessing shall have you press the End Turn button. The RTS part is also sufficiently fleshed out, but I think that it could use a more dynamic approach. The AI is clearly faring better in combat than on the planetary regional maps. What more can I say of the game? It isn’t overpriced at all and it features the Cards and Achievements a Steam collector might certainly desire. There is absolutely no reason not to purchase this title even outside of bundles or Steam Sales.
Strong Points
+ Beautiful graphics.
+ Competent enemy AI.
+ Steam Achievements & Trading Cards.
+ Interesting cross between RTS and TBS.
+ Base building and multiple planets to conquer.
Weak Points
- Still gets repetitive after a while.
- Limited sound selection.
Rating 90/100

This review was submitted for Imperial Reviews and The Inner Circle Games Network through the generous contribution of Peter Faden.