Warlords: Battlecry

DEVELOPER : SSG
PUBLISHER : SSI 

 

System Requirements Pentium 233 Mhz, 32 MB RAM

Recommended Pentium II 333MHz+, 128+ meg RAM, 8X CD-ROM, 8+ megs video card

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 8 The artwork for the hero portraits and upgrade buttons is very impressive. Excellent animation for idle units. Audio: 7 Good sound effects, but the music is nowhere near as good as Warlords III. Interface: 7 The interface is the tried-and-true setup that we've seen in a million other RTS's. The mouse cursor should give more feedback, though.	Play Issues Solo Gameplay: 8.5 Skirmish mode is the highlight of single player mode, although there is also a campaign. Replayability: 9 The urge to improve your hero adds to the replayability. Additionally, a random map generator and scenario editor are included. Multiplay: 8.5 There are many multiplayer options, including the free MPlayer service. Only one copy of the game is needed for LAN multiplayer. Learning Curve: 7 Some races are easier to learn than others.
Other/Notes Documentation: 8 The 91 page manual is thorough and includes many stat tables and charts. The readme file contains some additions and corrections. An in-game tutorial mode also teaches new players important aspects of gameplay. Pros: Building up heroes adds a sense of purpose to the game; lots of races; very fun. Cons: Some interface issues; computer heroes sometimes make boneheaded mistakes. Overall: 8.8

Over the past couple years, we've seen some genuine innovation in the real-time strategy genre. The Seven Kingdoms series focused on diplomacy and economy, while the European hit 1602AD added more of a Sim City type feel to it's gameplay. Now we have SSG's Warlords:Battlecry, the first game from the classic Warlords series to make the leap into real-time. This title inherits the strengths of it's strategic ancestors, but also borrows many elements commonly seen in computer role-playing games.

Warlords:Battlecry's unique contribution to the real-time strategy world is the hero system. While heroes are typical in many turn-based fantasy games (Warlords III, Heroes of Might and Magic III), they have been MIA from most RTS's. Sure, Age of Empires 2 and StarCraft gave us a few unique units that have more hitpoints than normal and occasionally shoot off some clever dialogue, but none of them are as deep as W:BC's characters. In W:BC, heroes actually have an effect on the units that they command. The effect is illustrated by a command radius and armies that are encompassed by the radius can get bonuses associated with that hero. As the hero becomes more powerful, his command radius increases and the effect grows stronger. This creates an incentive to keep armies organized. I kept thinking to Mel Gibson in Braveheart, constantly running back and forth in front of his men trying to raise morale. That is how I viewed the heroes. They can also be formidable attackers themselves, whether it be by might or magic. Heroes gain experience from killing enemies and completing quests. When they graduate to a new level, professions can be chosen and skill points distributed.

But no matter how skilled your hero is, you will still need armies to get the job done. Armies also gain experience, and heroes can keep a retinue of their favorite warriors. 9 races occupy the world, although some are very similar (there are 3 races of elves, for example) and many buildings are common to certain groups of them. I found myself gravitating towards the Humans and the Undead, the former because their are easy to use and the latter because that is my favorite hero's race. I'm not convinced that the races are totally balanced, though. For example, while the elves can be devastating in the endgame, they are very vulnerable early on and susceptible to rush tactics.

Thankfully, as in Age of Empires II, a little defense can go a long way. Walls can reinforce your borders, keeping dangerous enemies at bay. Towers also provide important protection, and their speed and power can be improved upon by garrisoning archers and infantry. Damaged buildings can repair themselves with varying degrees of speed depending on how much you are willing to spend. Making use of terrain also improves your chances of survival. Units move slower when walking up hills, so building a row of towers on a ridge and sniping attackers as they run toward you is a nice, bloody tactic. For those who like to hide, trees provide cover, allowing you to setup ambushes or simply hold your breath and pray that the level 10 hero strolling by doesn't see you.

There are 4 types of resources in W:BC: crystal, ore, stone, and gold. These resources are gathered when your hero converts a mine towards your team. Some races have the ability to permanently add workers to the mines which increases production ("some races" is another thing that makes the game seem unbalanced). The early part of the game usually consists of sending your hero out to convert as many mines as possible. Enemy mines (and buildings) can also be converted as long as you can avoid getting attacked long enough to do it.

One object that could be considered a resource is the shipyard, which lets you build sea units. Shipyards cannot be built but can only be discovered and converted by heroes. Once the shipyard is under your control, water vessels can be created to wage war on the high seas. Honestly, the jury is still out for me on how this effects game balance. In the maps I played, the shipyards seemed well distributed and everyone who wanted one seemed to have a chance to get it. But it is obvious that extreme care must be taken when creating customized maps that have oceans and shipyards.

The quality of the AI varies. In some games, overly ambitious enemy heroes seem to get themselves killed early on. This obviously gives that team a serious disadvantage that they rarely recover from. The computer does have it's moments of brilliance, though. Enemy heroes are especially skilled at sneaking into a base and converting your buildings. Several times, the computer converted my barracks. I converted it towards my team again, patted myself on the back for noticing it, and began cranking out the units. But my men where mysteriously disappearing. Come to find out, the computer had redirected the output of my barracks and my units were walking straight into the enemy's base! Many good pikemen were killed this way.

The hand-drawn artwork that is used for the hero portraits is fantastic. The same style is used for many of the upgrade buttons. Buildings also look great, and some of them are almost to scale with respect to the armies. The unit graphics, however, leave something to be desired. The "close-up" views that occur in the nav bar when a unit is selected seem like they are snapshots of 3D models, and poor ones at that. But the animations are clever. Bored skeletons play catch with their swords, and an idle vampire will occasionally transform into a bat. The cool art style carries over into the maps, which are detailed with bridges, chasms, and ruined buildings that add to the atmosphere.

The music in Warlords:Battlecry is a big step down from Warlords III. I loved the music in Warlords III. I ripped some of the tracks and made MP3's out of them. W:BC's tunes aren't nearly as inspiring. The unit voices are also bland. The human peons must have escaped the orcs in WarCraft 2 and headed straight towards Warlords:Battlecry, since they sound almost EXACTLY the same.

I tested Warlords:Battlecry's multiplayer capabilities on MPlayer, which was totally free and included on the CD-ROM. I rarely use these type of multiplayer services (I much prefer a system like Battle.net which is tailored to specific games), but MPlayer proved to be painless. There weren't that many people there, but there were enough to play a couple good games. The multiplayer map options and gameplay are essentially the same as skirmish mode except with human players. I didn't notice any lag with my cable modem. My only complaint was that when a player would quit, his buildings would still have to be destroyed/converted for him to count as dead. Other than that, multiplayer is as solid as the rest of the game.

There aren't any major problems with Warlords:Battlecry but there are lots of little nit-picky things that can hopefully be fixed with a patch. First of all, I had some issues with the mouse cursor. It isn't context sensitive, which means you can't really tell where your hero can and can't walk. Also, it is often difficult to select one particular unit when a bunch of them are grouped together. The game automatically assumes you are trying to select about 3 or 4 units, when you really just want to grab one. Besides the mouse, the mini-map also caused some strangeness. When you load a saved game, the mini-map doesn't automatically show your buildings. The player has to physically scroll the window to that area in order for the mini-map to refresh. A series of misleading audio-cues can sometimes add to confusion, too. For example, when a builder is constructing a large wall, he will say "job done" after completing each portion of it. More misinformation is dispatched when an allied hero dies, causing a voice to say "An enemy hero has been destroyed." Enemy? I kinda liked him.

As far as bugs go, I witnessed very few. Upon initially installing the game, the sound stuttered a lot and the game crashed a couple times. After a reinstallation, the problems went away. My main technical complaint is the load times. My PII 300mhz isn't the fastest machine on the planet, but it should load the maps a little quicker than this. Once the game was loaded, however, performance was fine. There was never any slowdown or glitches.

Many turn-based fans cried "heresy" when they heard that Warlords: Battlecry would be a real-time strategy game. They need not worry. W:BC is a worthy addition to this overcrowded field. Like this year's 1602AD, W:BC is enhanced by developers who borrowed the right elements of a turn-based game and successfully applied it to an RTS. It is satisfying to complete a scenario of W:BC and get an improved hero to show for it. That is what gives the game it's replayability and is why I plan to keep it on my hard drive for a long time.

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Reviewed by Trent Lucier