Catiline
06-15-2002, 04:33
First of all I should say that the CD has EXCCLUSIVE in big letters on the box, so legally I suspect pestering for the demo to be uploaded is futile, PC gamer have their paws on this for a bit.
So what do you get. Eight tutorial missions and the battle of Jaffa. All well and good. You fight ostensibly as the English in red. You fight Turks and Byzantines in the tutorial, coming up against Saladin in the Historical battle.
There's a nice bit of FMW to start, battle scenes and the like, mixed with in game footage.
The menu is basically the same as STW, different colours and font, but no real difference. All options are the same, though hte res options go a fair bit higher.
The game itself you've all seen in the screenshots. It's certainly prettier, and more colourful than old style STW, though perhaps to colourful, I think i prefered it a little more subdued. The sounds nice, and there's more of it, with differences between maps, so the northern European maps have cows mooing, hte desert doesn't.
Moving the cursor over hte buildings tells you what they are, shacks, wells churches, tombstones etc. Moving it over hte troops also gives more info, you get all hte info from stw, plus a mood status tip, 'encouraged by the presence of the general' 'Feel safe on a hill' 'worried by taking casualties' and so on.
The movement of the troops when marching seems more fluid and realistics, the formations deform in a way that seems more true to life. wheel the formation and those on the outside edge have to catch up. Formations aren't the organised ranks of stw, but have a variety of spacing between troops. Presumably training and discipline impact here, there isn't thwe depth in the demo to be sure.
There are single large unit banners, and then small penannts to denote unit honour. HTere are a lot of different sizes of units, the more elite the troops the smaller the unit it seems. Knights certainly do hteir job well, kataphracts get chopped up by spear men, peasants get eaten by everyone.
The basic command system is identical to STW, though htere's a reinforcement button, disabled in the demo, it would've been nice to have this in one of the tutorials just to see how it worked.
The unit sprites are much clearer, there seem to be more of them, certainly the horses look more realistic when they're moving.
Grouped units are easily selectable, when you group them there's a transparent bar above their icons. Select that and you get hte group, a nice touch. Ranged units seem to have less ammo, i didin't count, but certainly archers look likely to expend their arrows quickly, cross bows less so, but they're painfully slow.
The most interesting new aspect is of course the seiges. You get to use mangonels and trebuchets to attack castles in 2 or 3 of the tutorial levels. Great fun. The catapults have crews of 12, mine nenver got attacked in the first play, but presumably reduced crew equals reduced load time. Targets such as walls and tower get knocked down, there a % damage display if you hovre over them with hte cursor, shrapnel flies off, othre building seem to sink which is odd, but they also burn and you can hear them crackling. The shot bounces along if you miss as well, plus you can try simply squashing enemy troops. If you miss you kick up mud
Gates can be forced open, portcullises to though they dslide up, which is odd, but seeing as how anything is an improvement on STW's approach I won't complain.
The historical battle is hard. That said I won first play, but more by luck than judgement. It'd have been nice perhaps to have something more like the balanced trio we got in the STW demo, you play here as the English defending a reasonable position against massively superior Turk forces. You have to simply kill as many as you can with bows then countercharge at the last possible minute. No real replay value in that once oyu've won a few times.
No map eidtor this ti,me it seems, or it's harder to get into htan before.
Enough already
------------------
Timeo hominem unius libri
So what do you get. Eight tutorial missions and the battle of Jaffa. All well and good. You fight ostensibly as the English in red. You fight Turks and Byzantines in the tutorial, coming up against Saladin in the Historical battle.
There's a nice bit of FMW to start, battle scenes and the like, mixed with in game footage.
The menu is basically the same as STW, different colours and font, but no real difference. All options are the same, though hte res options go a fair bit higher.
The game itself you've all seen in the screenshots. It's certainly prettier, and more colourful than old style STW, though perhaps to colourful, I think i prefered it a little more subdued. The sounds nice, and there's more of it, with differences between maps, so the northern European maps have cows mooing, hte desert doesn't.
Moving the cursor over hte buildings tells you what they are, shacks, wells churches, tombstones etc. Moving it over hte troops also gives more info, you get all hte info from stw, plus a mood status tip, 'encouraged by the presence of the general' 'Feel safe on a hill' 'worried by taking casualties' and so on.
The movement of the troops when marching seems more fluid and realistics, the formations deform in a way that seems more true to life. wheel the formation and those on the outside edge have to catch up. Formations aren't the organised ranks of stw, but have a variety of spacing between troops. Presumably training and discipline impact here, there isn't thwe depth in the demo to be sure.
There are single large unit banners, and then small penannts to denote unit honour. HTere are a lot of different sizes of units, the more elite the troops the smaller the unit it seems. Knights certainly do hteir job well, kataphracts get chopped up by spear men, peasants get eaten by everyone.
The basic command system is identical to STW, though htere's a reinforcement button, disabled in the demo, it would've been nice to have this in one of the tutorials just to see how it worked.
The unit sprites are much clearer, there seem to be more of them, certainly the horses look more realistic when they're moving.
Grouped units are easily selectable, when you group them there's a transparent bar above their icons. Select that and you get hte group, a nice touch. Ranged units seem to have less ammo, i didin't count, but certainly archers look likely to expend their arrows quickly, cross bows less so, but they're painfully slow.
The most interesting new aspect is of course the seiges. You get to use mangonels and trebuchets to attack castles in 2 or 3 of the tutorial levels. Great fun. The catapults have crews of 12, mine nenver got attacked in the first play, but presumably reduced crew equals reduced load time. Targets such as walls and tower get knocked down, there a % damage display if you hovre over them with hte cursor, shrapnel flies off, othre building seem to sink which is odd, but they also burn and you can hear them crackling. The shot bounces along if you miss as well, plus you can try simply squashing enemy troops. If you miss you kick up mud
Gates can be forced open, portcullises to though they dslide up, which is odd, but seeing as how anything is an improvement on STW's approach I won't complain.
The historical battle is hard. That said I won first play, but more by luck than judgement. It'd have been nice perhaps to have something more like the balanced trio we got in the STW demo, you play here as the English defending a reasonable position against massively superior Turk forces. You have to simply kill as many as you can with bows then countercharge at the last possible minute. No real replay value in that once oyu've won a few times.
No map eidtor this ti,me it seems, or it's harder to get into htan before.
Enough already
------------------
Timeo hominem unius libri