From gamer to battlefield commander, the war grows!
Recruited from Earth and tasked with putting his gaming skills to work commanding vast fleets of starships, Evan secured a victory considered impossible. Now the Hegemony is asking him to repeat that accomplishment before the deadly forces of the Children consume their empire.
Whilst searching for a suspected enemy base, Evan discovered a secret the Children are desperate to hide. One that will determine the entire course of the war. Victory will require winning in an entirely new theatre of battle.
With a new suite of units at his fingertips, the ground assault begins!
My Opinion: 186 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is the 2nd book in one of the only GameLit novels to utilize real time strategy game mechanics like: base building, resource gathering, and unit production. It doesn’t have RPG aspects like leveling, instead power is gained in the books through strategic use of mechanics to build space and land based automated fighting units to defeat enemies. As the story progresses new units are unlocked as the main character’s (MCs) faction, the Hegemony, trusts him or the MC’s crew scans defeated enemy spaceships.
There was a little story manipulation, sci-fi justifications and cultural histories, to explain the RTS mechanics existence in the story. Like book 1, the space fights had both sides using similar technology to create and deploy their fleets, with strong stakes to add tension to the RTS battles outcome.
However, the land based RTS battles, while still having good action, only had one side using the game mechanics. Why this happens is explained away well with appropriate and logical background for the robotic Children side. But I would have liked to have seen a better use of the mechanics since they were built up so much.
Other aspects of the story were better than book 1. In particular I liked how the Children of the Hegemony, the antagonist, were developed. A believable, if predicted, history gave depth to the enemy faction, and clear and consistent motivations leant enough of a twisted culture to explain some quirks that made that faction interesting. Plus there’s a good lead into the next foe for the MC.
Overall, it's still an enjoyable story. It loses a little on the RTS side but makes up for it with the expanded universe building.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Real-Time Starcommander 2: Ground Assault: A Strategy Gamelit Novel