Diplomacy is Not an Option Review (PC) – The Negotiations Were Short

When Diplomacy is Not an Option, all-out warfare always is. When it comes to gargantuan armies of both the living and the undead, Door 407 has the castle building real-time strategy game for you. Establish your minor lord kingdom, erect your stone towers and man your catapults, you’re going to need all of them, in abundance. Massive armies require massive… wills… to confront, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Diplomacy is Not an Option.

I’m an avid fan of medieval RTS titles. Whether it be taking on ye’ old England’s foes in Stronghold as a kid or defying the Holy Land’s warriors in The Valiant, I’m always down for some drawing of bows and clashing of steel. Can Diplomacy is Not an Option match those fond memories with huge, bombastic battles and resource-heavy town management? It’s had a couple of years in Early Access to reinforce its garrison, so let’s see if the time has proven prudent for this ambitious lord in the making.

Fighting For A Piece O’ Cord

In answer to the very first question anyone is likely to have – no, Diplomacy is Not an Option. It *is* an option in the settings, but the answers are the title, no and off. Tickled me greatly to discover that. One of the biggest criticisms the game faced during its two years in Early Access was the lack of campaign missions and content in general. With the full release now here, this has been thoroughly addressed with the power of a trebuchet hurling a rock into the oncoming crowd.

The campaign has a variety of missions, many of which are determined based on your choices at certain junctures. Side with the plump, pompous and overzealous king or take up arms with a bloodthirsty maniac rebel? Up to you, and your experience will differ greatly depending on whose side you throw your lot in with. The cutscenes in particular are a highlight. There’s a lot of dialogue, but seeing your “lord” face down in a puddle of wine as the exposition is dished out works surprisingly well.

Diplomacy is Not an Option is tongue-in-cheek with its approach to story and I found it a joy as a result. Your advisor cracking out abusive orders, smack talk from your opponents, it’s all here and makes for a fun time. The reams of dialogue do take their toll at times, and seeing every story decision will take a lot of time, which might be a bother for some. Overall though, the light-hearted yet on the pulse approach to medieval scheming and “leadership” strikes the right iron.

The (Diplomatic) Ties That Bind

Due to your relatively low and not-in-the-least relatively drunken standing, your minor lord must take on many a battle on behalf of others. Much like Donald Trump’s small loan of a million dollars, you begin each conflict with nought but a keep, some villagers and resources – hardly starved. Regardless of whether you’re in the campaign, endless, challenge or sandbox mode, you’ll need to develop your castle into a functioning township.

If you’ve played a Stronghold-type RTS or something similar, you’ll feel right at home in your fledgling keep. You need constant supplies of wood, stone, iron and later gold and magic crystals. There’s a nice variety of building types without becoming too overburdening, managed through upgrade tiers that require ever more plentiful and complicated mixtures of resources.

The actual act of building your castle is very good. The UI and interface are intuitive after the initial learning curve, and the way your population manages itself makes it a streamlined, less micro-managing affair. Builders are prone to infrequently getting themselves caught in between walls or stuck in the middle of two buildings. In these cases, you have to bust something down to get them out, which is a bit annoying.

However, the biggest issue you face is scaling up your production and manpower in time for the various ferocious armies that attack your settlements in waves. Every few in-game days, you’ll be assaulted once more by bigger, stronger and faster hordes. Quite the sobering sight for a drunken lout. On some campaign missions and even the endless mode, Diplomacy is Not an Option ups the ante far too quickly, making it commonplace for failed efforts and restarts.

Gondor Calls for Aid… And No-one Will Answer

I feel I should stress this point further – Diplomacy is Not an Option is hard. These enemy waves have one thing on their mind and it is absolutely not Diplomacy, funnily enough. At points, it can feel brutal and demoralising to spend two hours developing a castle only to watch it crumble and burn at the hands of 1000s of foes. Mission four of the campaign in particular is rough, having seen feedback from the Early Access community, it seems this is an element of the game the developers have struggled to balance.

Having said that, boy are these slugging matches of gigantic proportions an epic spectacle. In Stronghold, it’d be impressive to forge an army numbering hundreds. In Diplomacy is Not an Option, it’s more common to have thousands. Catapults to trebuchets, foot knights to mounted archers, humanoids to undead, spells to exploding contraptions of flame, this game has it all. While the breadth of your army might be smaller in scope, the scale and size are a sheer wonder.

Honestly, I don’t even know how this game runs at any kind of stable framerate. Not only should diplomacy not be an option, neither should its performance. Waves will spawn from one of a few selected points at the end of a map, and charge upon your castle like the Rohirrim barreling into Uruk-Hai.

The lack of pathing information about where the army will march is problematic, as you may set up a fantastic defence exactly where you think they’re going… only to watch a gasp as they stroll through your side gate. I commonly saved when a wave was a day away from how often this happened. A simple arrow indicator on the mini-map would probably have sufficed in solving this.

Violence is Never Always The Right Option

With all of that furtive diplomacy said and done, is this an RTS worth checking out? Absolutely. Diplomacy is Not an Option is oftentimes ruthless with its punishing difficulty spikes, but then how else do you defend a fortress without some spiked barriers in the way? Overcoming the onslaught of challenges feels great when you feel emerge over the hill of a thousand bodies lying in your wake.

The visual style of Diplomacy is Not an Option is relatively minimalist, almost like an animated toy-like aesthetic. I think some of this is probably by design to serve the weight being placed on your PC’s components. The other part is that it’s a fun look. Trebuchets and catapults hurl cataclysmic stones that upend everything on the receiving end. Your spritely villagers meander around fulfilling their tasks and the idle animations for buildings are pleasant.

I wouldn’t say it has the best visual direction of the type it inhabits, but from the humorous delivery of the cutscenes to the enthralling flow of arrows and siege weapons, there’s plenty to find fantasy wonderment in. Slowdown can happen when the going gets truly intense, and I did have a couple of random FPS drops even when things were early in a mission, after loading up a previous save. On the whole though, my PC navigated these negotiations fairly well.

Can’t We Just Fight About This?

Content scarcity was a concern during Diplomacy is Not an Option’s Early Access period, but as mentioned before, the wealth of modes now completely rectify that. A sprawling, multi-branched campaign, a seemingly never-ending supply of challenges and endless mode maps, alongside the more relaxed sandbox variant. If you’re into RTS games that will protest both your abilities and your available time, this will be the one for you.

Really though, it’s whether the massive action and ridiculously huge armies you face will hold your attention, that will determine how long you spend with the game. Like an invading force, plenty of arrows, swords and bodies will be wasted laying siege to a nigh-on impenetrable wall of difficulty – or so it feels at times. Find the crack in the wall or the undefended flank, however, and there’s little to slow this armies’ momentous march.

Diplomacy is Not an Option is available now on PC via Steam (review platform).

Developer: Door 407
Publisher: Door 407

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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