A.I.M.2 Clan Wars

My spreadsheet instincts lit up about twenty minutes into A.I.M.2 Clan Wars, and that reaction cuts both ways. On one hand, this is a genuinely rare genre hybrid that most western studios never attempted: a first-person glider-combat RPG wrapped around a live faction economy and territorial conquest system, all set on the planet Polygon among sentient robot civilizations called mechminds. On the other hand, a 2006 Russian cult title ported to Steam in 2014 carries every rough edge you would expect, and then a few more you would not. The mechanical core is more interesting than the genre tags suggest. You pilot a customizable hovercraft called a glider, choosing one of three specializations: Warrior, Trader, or Currier, the jack-of-all-trades option. Those are not cosmetic labels. Your glider class and the upgrades you bolt onto it steer you toward dogfighting, supply-running, or a mix of both, and the choice matters because the world around you is actively simulated. Clans fight over territory in real time, trading resources between bases, and you can strangle a rival faction economically by intercepting their supply gliders or simply buying out their stockpiles before their production facilities can draw from them. That is a legitimately clever loop, and for strategy-minded players it produces the same low-key satisfaction as watching a well-timed trade embargo collapse an opponent's position in a grand-strategy game. Building your own clan compounds that depth. Capturing a neutral base requires filling its cluster with convinced mechminds, a process that involves either paying an energy-crystal fee on the spot or dragging a captured enemy to a friendly base first. The distinction matters: convinced mechminds are the only currency for claiming neutral territory, while directly convinced gliders flip immediately but cost more. There are only 13 Fifth Generation mechminds in the entire game, and securing one makes a base uncapturable, functioning as a kind of elite anchor unit for your territorial hold. That is the kind of mechanical asymmetry that rewards players who read carefully and plan three steps ahead. It also means your clan can be wiped and rebuilt within the first hour if you move recklessly, which the game will let happen without warning. The problems are real and not minor. The AI is passive enough that the war rarely feels like a war, just intermittent dogfights with busy traffic near bases. Clan management is stripped down: a couple of sliders for role ratios, no remote stockpile monitoring even for bases you own, and side quests that are largely procedurally generated and forgettable outside a handful that flesh out the lore. The economy simulation can also collapse under its own weight without sustained player involvement, since AI traders cannot sustain sectors independently. Compatibility on modern Windows requires running as administrator and possibly Windows 98/ME compatibility mode, which is a real barrier for players who are not used to babysitting older titles. Music loops bug out, crashes occur, and the localization is uneven throughout. For a newcomer, the honest path in is to treat this less like a story game and more like a systemic sandbox with a narrative scaffolding. The Warrior path is the most immediately legible: shoot things, upgrade your glider, grind energy crystals, and only reach for clan management once you understand what the economy is doing. Steam carries a Very Positive aggregate, and that score makes sense in context, it is a dedicated niche audience grading on a curve that accounts for age and origin. If you played the original A.I.M. and want to see the faction mechanics expanded, or if you have a specific appetite for open-world vehicle RPGs with real economic simulation underneath, the rough edges become part of the texture rather than dealbreakers.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on A.I.M.2 Clan Wars.