"Iron Harvest" is an exercise in 30 hours of one's own self. Oh. Think a sniper lady with a pet bear is cool? Then how about a walking drummer armed with two heavy machine guns? You think that's cool? How about a quadrupedal personnel carrier firing mortars from its roof? Yeah. You think that's cool, idiot? How about a battle train? Yeah, you heard me. Battle. Train.

The game's approach to entertainment is an avalanche of awe, burying cynicism in increasingly powerful toy scraps. It's hard to dislike it, even if it's rooted in a clumsily written story and a strategy engine that needs more oil in its gears.

Iron Harvest is a graduate of the circa-2006 relic school of real-time strategy. In a standard match, players fight over resource-producing control points scattered across the map with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy's command center. Base construction and maintenance are streamlined to require minimal attention, allowing the game to focus almost entirely on combat and conquest.

The basic formula is similar to that established in Company of Heroes, with one crucial difference. Iron Harvest takes place in an alternate 1920s world conceived by Polish artist Jakub Rogalski, who previously won acclaim for his board game Scythe. The story revolves around three factions that emerged from the Iron Harvest version of World War I: Saxony, Rusuvia, and Polania (no prizes for guessing that this is where the inspiration came from). Iron Harvest focuses on the aftermath of the war, with the fragile armistice between Saxony and Rusuvia on the verge of collapse under the pressure of a shadowy cabal of malicious agitators.

In this world, Tsar Nicholas II is still alive, as is his close friend Rasputin; the 1917 revolution never took place, and Polania, rather than becoming an independent state after the war, is under Russian rule. There is another small difference. It is a towering diesel-powered battle walker armed with World War I-era weaponry. Machine guns, flamethrowers, artillery ...... The Iron Harvest has a leg up on the fearsome armaments of the WWI era.

The mechanics are arguably the Iron Harvest's greatest attraction, and it is to the developers' credit that they are so rewarding to command. The designs are phenomenal, ranging from the Polish Smeary, a weaponized boiler with a huge bolt-action rifle, to the Rossian Gry-Gorod, a giant bipedal artillery platform that can destroy an entire building just by walking. The detail applied to these giant war machines is especially impressive, especially in the animation. The Iron Harvest mecha is a lumbering, staggering work of art with a diesel engine that vibrates the entire machine as if it were in danger of collapsing or exploding. Every moment of their existence seems to defy physics, which makes their movements thrilling.

As for the fighting, oh dear. Every Iron Harvest match is phenomenal. It begins with small-scale matches, as squads of riflemen scramble to take the early control points while firing potshots from cover. Later, more advanced types of infantry appear. Grenadiers can destroy cover and cripple units with well placed grenades, while machine gunners can nail enemy units and create choke points on the map. At first the battle is primarily against infantry, but soon the combat becomes mech versus mech, with giant death machines firing cannons, cratering entire sectors, and turning buildings into rubble. The sound is tremendous when the Iron Harvest is at full speed. I can't decide whether the audio designer deserves a medal or a reprimand for creating such a cacophonous inferno.

"Iron Harvest" loves to play on a large scale, and this is true not only in the individual battles, but also in the campaigns. While they are seamlessly combined into one storyline, there are actually three campaigns, each focusing on a different faction. For example, the Polanian campaign tells the story of the Polanian resistance against the Russian occupation, as young resistance fighter Anna Kos tries to rescue her father from the evil general Zubov. The game is also a surprisingly cinematic experience, consisting of missions in which meticulously staged cutscenes tell the story of a three-way conflict. It is an impressive attempt full of twists and turns and goes beyond a simple war story, but the script's mundane characters and cheap smells hinder its narrative ambition.

When played, the campaign is interspersed with familiar RTS skirmishes and more character-focused missions, each gradually building up your forces from stand-alone infantry to a full coalition force. Occasionally, the two are fused together. Some of the more unique examples include a mission through a Polanian canyon while protecting a train full of supplies, and an early Rusviet mission that sneaks through St. Petersburg and gradually builds up to the Winter Palace while joining up with the scattered Rusviet forces. However, the variety included in the campaign makes some scenarios weaker than others. Some missions in the middle of the Rusviet campaign are very frustrating, with stealth failing instantly.

There are other problems. At the infantry level, Iron Harvest uses a Company of Heroes-like cover system. However, this system is vague about what counts as cover, while the map is not designed to generate shooting or movement mechanics. Furthermore, AI infantry tend to rush directly into the line of fire rather than retreat into a defensive posture when out of cover, which can make combat with infantry messy and unsatisfying.

Otherwise, Iron Harvest's early-to-mid game contains plenty of tactical nuances. Alongside the anti-infantry mechs, there are anti-mech infantry that smash armor with their massive cannons. Flame-throwing units of all kinds absolutely annihilate infantry, but are less effective against mechs. Mechs also take more damage when shot from behind, so it is advisable to flank them or use infantry to throw explosives from behind.

Defensive structures, such as bunkers, can be very helpful in stopping infantry and small mechs from harassing opponents. Finally, infantry also play an important role in the deployment of large mechs. Only infantry can occupy control points and extract resources from destroyed mechs (both their own and those of their opponents), allowing new units to be deployed more quickly.

All of this works well on a small scale, but the centerpiece of the game, the giant mechs that destroy cities, are arguably the source of Iron Harvest's biggest problems. The large mechs are so slow and so powerful that tactics tend to be scrapped when mechs are involved. The slow speed of the mechs also slows down the endgame. It can take 5 to 10 minutes for a large mecha to cross the map, and by the time it arrives at its destination, the situation has often changed. If that mecha fails its objective and is destroyed, the process must be repeated.

It is worth noting that the factions are well balanced and the battles are rarely one-sided. However, when this war of attrition is combined with slow-moving units, the game can drag on and on.

I'm not asking you to turn Iron Harvest into Starcraft. I don't expect a WWI-era diesel-powered mech to work like a gazelle. However, it would be beneficial to make all resolution times a bit faster and reduce the downtime of collecting resources on the map and moving mechs into place. Nevertheless, "Iron Harvest" is an epic, solid RTS and a worthy spiritual successor to one of the best RTS games of all time.