Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Uprising DLC Review (PC) – Resistance Rising
When I reviewed the vanilla release of Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance (God that’s still a mouthful), I lauded the gritty and immersive vision of the Terminator universe, but lamented the lack of real depth outside of the campaign. The previous DLC, We are Legion, expanded on the story and core aspects of what made this RTS great in the first place. Uprising, however, finally attempts to properly address the lack of other modes, alongside all the work Slitherine have done post-launch to improve the original vision.
Uprising introduces an equivalent of a conquest mode, flimsily tied into the events following We are Legion. There’s now an overworld map with 22 sectors, distributed between six factions. Your plucky resistance movement must expand out from one corner of the map and claim ultimate victory by defeating Legion at their main sector on the other side. Does it have what it takes to make it worth a return trip to this war-ravaged version of America?
Stand and Fight
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Uprising opens with a basic mission in which you eliminate an enemy faction to claim your first sector and then get going with the real meat of this DLC. Once the overworld map is unlocked, you’ll find that Uprising is basically a 50/50 blend of a campaign with skirmish mode. It’s light on narrative and heavy on battling and strategising.
Effectively, each turn will involve bolstering up your army through recruiting units and acquiring better weaponry (options of which increase as you take sectors), before embarking on an attack or defence mission to decide the fate of a sector. There are only two resources to worry about: supplies and population, as these form the basis of your refuelling, rearming and re-equipping all of your units.
If you were hoping for more actual strategy, you’ll be rather disappointed. There are no diplomatic options (outside of helping the Movement or allying with the Interceptors), and there’s no element of base-building involved. For me, this is a real missed opportunity. The best attack-defend conquest modes usually offer some limited tactical options, like local militias loyal to one faction or another, or having defensive structures you can place, for instance. However, there’s none of these layers of complexity to tinker with in Uprising.
Not So Grand Strategy
Even with the sector engagements, there’s just very little to have to consider. Your army is universal, meaning I never needed to contend with halving my forces to assault one stronghold while leaving the other half for defence. Your forces can attack via borders, while Legion, for example, can slip in to attack any sector of yours, but does it really matter when my army is always at full strength no matter what my previous choices were?
Simplicity aside, the conquest mode itself is enjoyable. I’ve always had a fondness for the make-your-own story approach of a constantly shifting world map. Building up your territory and claiming victories will lead to the Interceptors offering trades for a future alliance, the potential to absorb Movement into your command, and cause Legion to become more aggressive towards countering you. This part works well, providing a natural curve of difficulty as you amass more forces.
Similarly, the core real-time strategy battles are still superb to engage with. Nothing has fundamentally changed, aside from a couple of new units, but successfully dismantling an attacking Legion army with clever placement of Abrams tanks and fortified anti-tank weapons still thrills. There are only six different mission types (elimination, domination and the like), all of which are variants of established skirmish tropes, so lack of variety becomes an issue fairly early into an Uprising campaign.
Stay Defiant
Much of Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Uprising feels retooled and reutilised from the campaign and skirmish modes, just with a little bit extra tacked on. While I personally really like conquest modes, even a more basic variant of it, I do think what’s here is somewhat lacking in new content or direction. There was real potential to add gameplay modifiers with diplomacy, differences in attack vs defence and even local sector variables that could have freshened up the formula without taking an age or breaking the development bank.
The inherent thrill of Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance’s gritty and realistic combat sandbox is still alive and kicking despite the odds, though. Even when Legion was throwing everything it had at me, I always felt able to compete and fight the good fight. If you were looking for more from your skirmish mode at vanilla, Uprising offers you a semi-decent upgrade on your plasma rifle, but it won’t be taking down any T-1000s with ease.
There’s just enough in Uprising for it to feel worth it for me. I can’t help but lament the missed potential of what could have been, but conquering America one sector at a time still provides enough of a kick to give humanity hope of overcoming the machines yet.
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Uprising DLC is available now on PC (review platform).
Developer: Slitherine Ltd.
Publisher: Slitherine Ltd.
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.
If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.
Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.
