Leet Eriksson
09-10-2004, 23:29
Heya guys you'll notice that i'm not active lately, well thats becuase a friend of mine who works in a magazine managed to get a build of the game mentioned in the topic while he was in korea, i sat down with him to try it out and i was pretty surprised at how incredibly good it is!
Ironically this game is set in a fictional world (infleunced with a mix of tolkien and the crusades) but i have to say the units behave realisticly wich i have yet to see in historical rts games, here is what i managed to extract during my gameplay:
The cavalry are real, seriously you might see dark elf horse archers or orcish boar riders or human heavy cavalry, but they act so realisticly, they charge straight through units, and i mean like peirce through them just like what real historical cavalry would do, you can also order them to move away and re-charge. There is also Cavalry archers, these can shoot while moving and can be pretty annoying becuase they can circle a particular units, most usually a slow unit who melee, melee units raise their shields and remain stationary or move even slower (thats why cavalry archers are lethal) until the horse archers leave them alone or a foot archer unit, or a fast unit gets them.
The terrain, weather and sun affect your units!I'll describe terrain on the following:
1.Trees: Trees block arrows, makes your units more stealthy and can be burnt by flaming weaponry ( archers can be ordered to set their arrows on fire to burn forests, the animations of one archer pulling a torch and setting the arrow tips of his comrades arrows is very pleasing). When setting forests on fire the fire spreads, wich also helps flushing ambushers from forests!
2.Sun: The sun on dawn or dusk may hinder your units, they cannot fight as well or aim accurately.
3.Weather: Rain hinders your ranged units mostly, winds help fire spreads when setting forests on fire and can also reduce archers accuracy!
4.Terrain: You know the gist, higher ground = better charge, range .... etc. Rivers can be a tactical advantage or hinderance based on the situation.
OK enough about terrain, now on units, besides cavalry as i have mentioned earlier, there are also anti-cav units like spearmen who actually can form a nice checkered pike phalanx and can stop cavalry on spot, their evil counterparts the Orcish axe throwers act almost the same but they are more fictional but its a fictional game anyways so units need diversity right?! there are also infantry, archers and logistics units like sappers and seige engines. All of these can be upgraded, for example archers can be upgraded to longbowmen who are basically better in every aspect, they can also skirmish and go melee albiet not as well as their close combat counter parts. There are also Sapper units who can be upgraded to Seige units, Sappers can set traps, flush flood gates(if there is one in a river bank), remove traps and also act as general support/logistics units. Good in seiges too! they can be upgraded to seige units, i tried a level of seige and i'm pretty impressed, there are 2 seige units for the human side, though i don't know what the dark side uses, but anyways, they have the catapults and ballista seige engines, one is good against units and acts as support and the other less effective against units but good at breaching walls, the animations for falling walls, people loading rocks on the catapult is also pretty realistic!
Also based on your preformance after every battle you receive a certain amount of plunder that is in the form of gold, wich you can upgrade your units with, upgraded units not only have noticeably better stats, but also have graphical changes (ie armour and hand weapons, bows, spears/pikes, sheilds can all be changed and its noticeable graphically).
ok thats it for realism, the game gets a bit rediculous in the next part ~;p, there is magic, yes magic, since there are orcs, dwarfs and elves there is bound to be magic, wich can effect your units aswell, thunder storms, meteors, ice hails are all there, and they can prove pretty lethal if the units armour does not have decent protection against them, when you equip units with a particular peice of armour, they not only protect them from physical attacks (there are various forms of them, frontal for example is for units equipped with spears, that includes cavalry lances, ranged if for bow equipped units and melee is for axe/sword/mace equipped units), but also 2 magical attacks say for example ice and fire, but if the enemy casts thunder your units may get hurt pretty badly for the lack of protection against thunder.
There are also flying units! both sides have 3 flying units and are almost identical in function, except of course different graphically. i've yet to try them out, but the build was meant for magazine previews and NOT a review.
Last part is the action part, if you haven't played dynasty warriors yet, here is the gist, although its a bit simpler than dynasty warriors, it could get pretty hard in some spots, you have x, y, and a buttons as attack buttons, a is a strong attack and x is a lighter one, y is a charge attack and only has 1 combo wich could be devastating, when fighting against another unit killing the officer automatically routs the enemy unit, but thats easier said than done, becuase finding the officer is pretty tedious, rarely do they seem different than the men they command, but in some situations they could come mounted or wearing different armour.
Anyways, if you skipped past the preview i wrote/typed here is the gist of it recapped and summarised:
1.Game is pretty realistic despite fictional setting.
2.Weather effect your units.
3.Diverse array of units each side has a different range of units. Every unit has a particular function.
4.Each side has 2 campaigns, an easy and a hard one, both campaigns for each side are different story wise.
5.Customisable units, officers and main charecter.
6.Huge battles (though not total war huge, but compared to other console games, its pretty friggin big, almost hundreds of peeps onscreen at once!)
7.Easy to understand controls, learning curve is not too complicated, or i think it ain't...
8.Awesome graphics and animations, catapults operated by crew, archers lining up to shoot arrows, spearmen in checkered phalanxes, charging orcs raising their axes, tuanting, cheering and cries in mid battle are not limited to sound either! Units animate depending on situation.
Ok thats basically the entire Preview i hope you guys enjoyed it. ~:)
If you have any questions PLEASE do not hesitate to ask, ask away.
You will also notice that i have not listed the games cons, but i will do so in a later post, becuase my hands are pretty numb right now after typing this post ~;p.
Ironically this game is set in a fictional world (infleunced with a mix of tolkien and the crusades) but i have to say the units behave realisticly wich i have yet to see in historical rts games, here is what i managed to extract during my gameplay:
The cavalry are real, seriously you might see dark elf horse archers or orcish boar riders or human heavy cavalry, but they act so realisticly, they charge straight through units, and i mean like peirce through them just like what real historical cavalry would do, you can also order them to move away and re-charge. There is also Cavalry archers, these can shoot while moving and can be pretty annoying becuase they can circle a particular units, most usually a slow unit who melee, melee units raise their shields and remain stationary or move even slower (thats why cavalry archers are lethal) until the horse archers leave them alone or a foot archer unit, or a fast unit gets them.
The terrain, weather and sun affect your units!I'll describe terrain on the following:
1.Trees: Trees block arrows, makes your units more stealthy and can be burnt by flaming weaponry ( archers can be ordered to set their arrows on fire to burn forests, the animations of one archer pulling a torch and setting the arrow tips of his comrades arrows is very pleasing). When setting forests on fire the fire spreads, wich also helps flushing ambushers from forests!
2.Sun: The sun on dawn or dusk may hinder your units, they cannot fight as well or aim accurately.
3.Weather: Rain hinders your ranged units mostly, winds help fire spreads when setting forests on fire and can also reduce archers accuracy!
4.Terrain: You know the gist, higher ground = better charge, range .... etc. Rivers can be a tactical advantage or hinderance based on the situation.
OK enough about terrain, now on units, besides cavalry as i have mentioned earlier, there are also anti-cav units like spearmen who actually can form a nice checkered pike phalanx and can stop cavalry on spot, their evil counterparts the Orcish axe throwers act almost the same but they are more fictional but its a fictional game anyways so units need diversity right?! there are also infantry, archers and logistics units like sappers and seige engines. All of these can be upgraded, for example archers can be upgraded to longbowmen who are basically better in every aspect, they can also skirmish and go melee albiet not as well as their close combat counter parts. There are also Sapper units who can be upgraded to Seige units, Sappers can set traps, flush flood gates(if there is one in a river bank), remove traps and also act as general support/logistics units. Good in seiges too! they can be upgraded to seige units, i tried a level of seige and i'm pretty impressed, there are 2 seige units for the human side, though i don't know what the dark side uses, but anyways, they have the catapults and ballista seige engines, one is good against units and acts as support and the other less effective against units but good at breaching walls, the animations for falling walls, people loading rocks on the catapult is also pretty realistic!
Also based on your preformance after every battle you receive a certain amount of plunder that is in the form of gold, wich you can upgrade your units with, upgraded units not only have noticeably better stats, but also have graphical changes (ie armour and hand weapons, bows, spears/pikes, sheilds can all be changed and its noticeable graphically).
ok thats it for realism, the game gets a bit rediculous in the next part ~;p, there is magic, yes magic, since there are orcs, dwarfs and elves there is bound to be magic, wich can effect your units aswell, thunder storms, meteors, ice hails are all there, and they can prove pretty lethal if the units armour does not have decent protection against them, when you equip units with a particular peice of armour, they not only protect them from physical attacks (there are various forms of them, frontal for example is for units equipped with spears, that includes cavalry lances, ranged if for bow equipped units and melee is for axe/sword/mace equipped units), but also 2 magical attacks say for example ice and fire, but if the enemy casts thunder your units may get hurt pretty badly for the lack of protection against thunder.
There are also flying units! both sides have 3 flying units and are almost identical in function, except of course different graphically. i've yet to try them out, but the build was meant for magazine previews and NOT a review.
Last part is the action part, if you haven't played dynasty warriors yet, here is the gist, although its a bit simpler than dynasty warriors, it could get pretty hard in some spots, you have x, y, and a buttons as attack buttons, a is a strong attack and x is a lighter one, y is a charge attack and only has 1 combo wich could be devastating, when fighting against another unit killing the officer automatically routs the enemy unit, but thats easier said than done, becuase finding the officer is pretty tedious, rarely do they seem different than the men they command, but in some situations they could come mounted or wearing different armour.
Anyways, if you skipped past the preview i wrote/typed here is the gist of it recapped and summarised:
1.Game is pretty realistic despite fictional setting.
2.Weather effect your units.
3.Diverse array of units each side has a different range of units. Every unit has a particular function.
4.Each side has 2 campaigns, an easy and a hard one, both campaigns for each side are different story wise.
5.Customisable units, officers and main charecter.
6.Huge battles (though not total war huge, but compared to other console games, its pretty friggin big, almost hundreds of peeps onscreen at once!)
7.Easy to understand controls, learning curve is not too complicated, or i think it ain't...
8.Awesome graphics and animations, catapults operated by crew, archers lining up to shoot arrows, spearmen in checkered phalanxes, charging orcs raising their axes, tuanting, cheering and cries in mid battle are not limited to sound either! Units animate depending on situation.
Ok thats basically the entire Preview i hope you guys enjoyed it. ~:)
If you have any questions PLEASE do not hesitate to ask, ask away.
You will also notice that i have not listed the games cons, but i will do so in a later post, becuase my hands are pretty numb right now after typing this post ~;p.