I found the game a bit overwhelming at first, but after I learned of achievement rewards and to replay the earlier stages to get them it went a lot smoother. I just find helicopters to be a bit game breaking, once you upgrade them to you can ditch trucks and breeze through the rest of the game.
There's a system that nullifies damage for words already used, but the game only keeps track of the last 20 used words. So all you have to do to beat the game is to craft a dictionary of at least 21 words, type it until the end and repeat. Works particularly well with Ragnarr's strategy (filling your boiler with just F, L, and Y). Here's the dictionary I used: Fly Flay Fley Flaxy Flyby Fluky Flaky Flawy Flyoff Fluffy Flyway Flyboy Fleshy Flyaway Flyways Flyaways Fretfully Fully Lullaby Slyly Flyable Flyblow
@Balbanes This game *does not* require guessing. Harder challenge levels have just enough information to be cleared. If you ever try something that you think should have been enough to beat a level, but it wasn't, grey out every other square, the game will mark any mistakes you made that you didn't notice.
I got a small improvement on luisjoliva's strategy: keep fishermen at 3/3. That will be less burden for gatherers so you'll have a higher gold rate, and as long as you have environment at a high enough level you'll make it just fine. Also if you see that your gatherers are leaving resources on the ground increase their level, ideally they should reach the end of the map before returning. My final score was 1135 and my upgrades at the end were lumber/tree 6/7, fisher 3/3, gatherer 5/7, house 8, egg 3.
You can get set bonuses by having a helmet, armor and boots of the same colour equipped. If you get the blue set bonus (+25 defend, +200 life) you can put all your stat points into attack and get through the game much easier.
If you're finding the game grindy you're playing and/or upgrading the wrong way. I found that having every attack at the same level works well, though the sword could be kept lower. Don't invest everything on the regular attack, it's designed to kill minor stuff. You should be using your special attack to take down stronger enemies and pass through bullets, if you don't spam it and try to use it to take down multiple enemies you'll have enough refills to never run out of energy. Use your sword to clear bullets when things get too out of hand and wait for a damage upgrade that will enable you to kill everything. There's also an Ultimate attack that you can use when you're at full energy but you don't really need it to beat the game.
Getting the badges as quickly as possible: 0. Make sure your pet has an offensive starting skill. 1. Finish the tutorial. 2. Buy several +5 Shampoo and Discus, and use them when your pet drops to 95 health/happiness. 3. Fight in Coliseum (Quick Fight) against opponents with about the same level as yours and lowest rank as possible. 4. Every level increase your starting skill level, making sure you don't make it go over the "PP" limit because you'll brick your skill. Don't get a second skill. 5. Once you're level 10, look for higher level opponents that have Rank E because they were likely abandoned, so they'll have 0 health and happiness, which will make it much more likely for you to win. The higher the level, the higher the exp. 6. Whenever you get a new trait try to get the ones that increase hit and strength, no matter the side-effects. Using this strategy I got to level 19 by the end of my free drinks, and got to level 20 soon after.
This has to be the most frustrating and least fulfilling hard badge I ever got. I don't think I've ever felt less in control on a video game than with this one. World 5 is particularly infuriating.
Waving your mouse up and down does damage faster than spinning around. It's also easier to pull out when you're out of the water and lets you take down those spaceships in fewer jumps.
One aspect of this game that I really like is that the difficulty of puzzles seem to vary according to the story. It will ask for you to invade something that is supposed to be hard to invade it'll be difficult, and next to invade an easy target and it'll be simpler. That's a really nice touch.
I just got the hard badge, and there's a lot of good advice here already, but I'd like to comment on the Long Range challenge. A lot of people are saying to use the AK47, but I think the M4A1 SOCOM is way better for the task. It has just a tiny bit less accuracy than the AK47 but it has way better mobility, so it's a lot easier to move the cursor around and it flows better. Accuracy isn't as important here, I got 62k with only 86.4% accuracy in 47 seconds. Also it really helps to change the reticle in settings to something small. I used the smallest circle one, tried the ones that have tiny dots in the center but they get in the way for the smallest targets.
This is a really unfair game. I thought I had a really good strategy going, then it suddenly had a wave consisting of 6 armored vehicles with rocket launchers and .50 guns. It decimated my army and my turret in seconds. Before that, I had several runs where they had air strikes or deployed an army of paratroopers that quickly overran me. Otherwise, every regular wave seems to be really weak. These random difficulty spikes takes a lot of the fun from the game for me.
I'd like to point out that I got the hard badge (complete the hard campaign) but didn't get the medium badge (complete the campaign on any difficulty). Please fix this or change the medium badge's description.
I was playing the bonus map and the enemy had all these planes, ships and oil rigs I thought I was done for. But then it suddenly stopped making units, even though it was sitting at loads of cash. It also put their units on blimps but never actually deployed them afterwards, which made them an easy target. What a terrible AI.
So after playing for 3 days I finally got the hard badge. Took me a lot of patience and refreshing once it slowed down to unplayable levels. At least the last 1/3 of the game had less scenery graphics and took some extra time to get sluggish. To tell the truth this game is not that bad, it's just the lag that ruins it. But well, glad I don't have to play it again now! :)
Failproof strategy for beating every trial with some basic units and without having to level up multiple teams: 1. pick Queen Etheria 2. Beat the regular stages. 3. Beat level 9 over and over until you unlock White Tiger. Use the following team: Elf Hunter, Centaurion, Goblin, Vampire, Dwarf Engineer, Hell Raider. Put it on 3x speed, charge all, leave your hero on the back and let it win automatically. Should take less than 1 minute per run, and you can just do something else after you set it up. 5. Use the above team and replace Vampire with Tiger. Equip Platinum Sword on everyone, Omega Seal on Tiger, Poison Rune on Centaurion. 6. On trial stages put it on 3x speed, fill your mana up, charge all except hero. You should try to either keep Tiger alive with your Regen (hero) or use Wall (Hell Raider) to keep the boss from advancing, or do both if needed. On trial 3 use Ice Blast (hero) to lure one boss a time. Should be able to beat everything on your first try if done correctly.
I played this game for the first time some 6-7 years ago, and while I really liked it back then, now I like it even more after giving a go at Intense difficulty. Back then I quickly dismissed it because it seemed so fast it felt impossible, but it's extremely fun and satisfying once you get the hang of the speed. When things go that fast you have to use not only your reflexes, but you'll have to learn how to beat all the stages individually, so memory comes into play a lot more. The game just plays completely different. It took me several hours to beat Infinite and Adventure mode on Intense (and I actually have no idea how I actually managed to beat levels 49 and 50, I just kept trying and it eventually happened) and it was well worth it :)
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May this comment be up voted to the heavens!!!