Mini Review: Empire of the Ants (PS5) - A Confused RTS That Shines in Its Multiplayer

Empire of the Ants is a victim of its own ambition. It burrows into the undergrowth offering a fresh perspective on the lives of critters dwelling on our forest floor and raises some interesting environmental questions during its campaign, but spreads itself too thin trying to be both an RTS and a platformer. Fortunately, the most exciting element is the focus of the competitive multiplayer mode.

You play a lone ant, leading legions of creepy crawlies into battle to defend and expand territory and hunt for vital resources. Being an ant, getting around is time consuming and deliberately restrictive.

You scour the terrain finding nests to conquer and turn into nurseries for your own troops — only one unit per nest. Nests have limited space for upgrades, so you need several to advance through the technology tree to unlock stronger beasties and swarm your opponents.

In the multiplayer, your lack of a bird's-eye view is the toughest challenge to overcome. You must scout ahead while managing core resources of food and wood, returning to nests regularly to buy enhancements.

Powers like improved healing, damage, or the ability to dig underground and emerge at faraway nests all help in battle massively. The 1v1 multiplayer matches are tense, but the combat mostly boils down to a rock-paper-scissors power triangle, with one advanced unit strong against the other three.

Unfortunately, the story mode features too many missions that focus on the game's deliberately tricky movement. These force you to jump to intercept fireflies or search a large area for lost ants before rising water kills them. The documentary-style presentation and emotive music is wonderful, though.

It can't decide if it wants to be an RTS or a platformer, so both areas feel like they're not achieving their full potential. The presentation is gorgeous and it's enjoyable thinking about the smaller creatures in our world differently, but Empire of the Ants tries to be too much at once. The multiplayer is fun for a time, but lacks the depth seasoned strategy players want. A focus on either the story or RTS would have helped a lot.