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Tzar
DEVELOPER
: Haemimont
PUBLISHER : Talonsoft
System Requirements
Pentium 200, 32MB RAM, 300 MB HD space |
Recommended
Pentium II 233MHz, 64+ MB RAM, 4 megs video card |
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Ratings
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Issues
Graphics:
8
Very detailed 2d sprite-based units in 16-bit color. Lots of
detail on the units and map, but –1 point for lack of
cinematics other than short intro movie.
Sound:
7
Outstanding
sound effects, but no voices, and awful music that you will
turn off after 15 minutes.
Interface:
8
Standard
RTS fare, hot keys, several different screen configurations
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Play
Issues
Solo
Play: 9 -
Very
challenging campaign, Random maps and Bloodthirsty AI
Replayability:
8 - The
campaign scenarios are lengthy and very difficult. Map and
campaign editors are excellent and maps are beginning to
appear on the fan sites.
Multiplay:
6- Currently only direct IP is supported. Most players set
up games with ICQ. A new server is launching very soon. Very
stable and fast network code. The CD can be removed and passed
around after the game is started for LAN multi-player.
Learning
Curve: 7 - Incredibly intuitive, but many of the
strategies and subtleties will not surface until you have
played a few games. Some reviews have panned the game because
they only played a couple of games and missed a lot
of the cool stuff.
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| Other/Notes
Documentation
8.0 –
The printed manual is pretty good, but lacks tech tree chart
and unit statistics. However the CD includes Adobe Acrobat, a
strategy guide and manual for the editor in .pdf format.
Fun
+.5
I
can’t stop playing this game. I have had it for a month and
I have played virtually every day, and spent 23 straight hours
playing one weekend with 3 friends. Every time I play I find
something else cool.
Stability and network
code:+.3
Tzar has
only crashed twice in several hundred games. And it plays very
well online with virtually no slowdowns or lag. Great network
code.
Pros:
Just
about a perfected real time strategy game.
Cons:
Still a retains the same RTS formula,
no multiplay server yet.
Overall:
8.8
Kudos
to Haemimont Interactive for making a rock solid game that is
a blast to play. Lots of original features combined with all
the things you love about RTS games.
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When I started playing Tzar; The Burden of the Crown, my first impression was "been there, done that". But I was having so much fun I couldn't stop playing. And the more I played, the more subtlety and depth I uncovered. I guess what they say about first impressions being misleading is true. Despite the superficial similarities (and the inevitable comparisons) to Age of Kings, Tzar is a game with far more strategic depth and options than the more popular RTS games out there. In my opinion this is the RTS sleeper of the year.
Tzar follows most of the standard RTS conventions, and then adds a few features that should become standard fare on new games. There are three distinct civilizations, Arabian, Asian, and European, each with a different tech tree and units. Waypoints, exit points and build queues. There is an 18-mission campaign, a selection of custom maps, a random map generator, and a campaign and map editor with good documentation. The standard population limit starts at 200 units per side (going up to 250 or 300 with some advances), and plays smoothly on my PII 266, even with 8 players at the limit!
Tzar runs and uses highly detailed 2d sprites and runs at 800x 600 and at 1024x 768. The unit graphics are similar to and comparable in quality to Age of Kings, but Tzar uses 16 bit color for greater color depth. The unit animations are excellent, the artists at Haemimont Studios should be congratulated for the effort they put into the units. The spell effects are also intricate and especially entertaining to watch. Fire spells, lightning bolt, freeze and the dragons breath are very detailed and realistic. The freeze spell conjures a blast of ice down from the sky that strikes the ground and deflects outward and up to envelop whole groups of units in ice. Any further damage to those units results in them shattering into tiny slivers of ice.
The buildings are similarly well done, although they are not to scale with the units. The terrain is a mixed bag. The four terrain sets, (desert, winter, summer and grassland) feature detailed and realistic forests, with varieties of palm trees in the desert oasis, pine trees in the winter landscapes, and deciduous trees in the summer terrain. Forests may or may not be passable, depending on the density of the trees. (A key to make trees transparent, allows you to find that pesky potion that you lost.) The water is colorful and has a sort of shimmering translucence. Giant monster skeletons, gallows, and wreckage all lend a fantastic feel to the landscape. My only complaint is that the actual ground terrain is a little bit flat. Ridges can be used as choke points, and mountains block movement, but the terrain is somewhat 2 dimensional. (This applies mostly to random maps, with the map editor it is easy to create a more truly 3D terrain.)
Tzar's sound effects are outstanding, but does not feature any voices at all. A wide variety of atmospheric sounds from thunder storms to monkeys and birds and farm make the maps feel more alive. The sound of battle and the death screams are varied and very real sounding. The engine does support voices, but as the game was released in twenty languages, there are no speaking voices. The music is repetitive and of mediocre quality at best. (But other than playing Homeworld, who actually keeps the music on after a couple of hours anyway?)
The campaign features 16 challenging missions. The first few are short, and fairly easy, but the difficulty escalates rapidly. The campaign tells the not so original story of Sartor, the son of an assassinated king, and his attempts to reclaim his birthright. The presentation of the campaign is a very basic comic book style with text blurbs, but no voices. Although the presentation is less than compelling, the actual missions are excellent. You must keep the main characters alive, but the experience gained by Sartor and his comrades carries over to each new mission. This lends a strong RPG element as your heroes become truly mighty. One mission early in the campaign involves defeating an enemy outpost, and then bringing your army across a river to defend a city under siege. When the enemy attacks, it is an amazing sight. Four armies of 200 hit the city at once. The effect is astounding. My knights were pinned inside the walls by pikemen who blocked the bridges while catapults and ballistas attacked my towers. Walls crumpled, and enemy troops began streaming in. My reserves of footmen and macemen plugged the gaps as my peasants hastily repaired damaged towers. Enemy longbowmen made pincushions of my footsoldiers. I quickly loaded my ships and transported reinforcements just in time to push the enemy back out and repair the damaged walls and towers. That one scenario was worth the price of admission.
You begin most games with three peasants, a castle and three towers to protect your fledgling kingdom. Your peasants cut trees and mine stone for resources to build buildings. They build fields and farms for food, and they mine gold to pay for technologies. As I said earlier, anyone with Experience in the RTS genre will find this part familiar. But what starts to set Tzar apart from the rest of the crowd are the guilds. A very expensive guild building is required for each one of the four major strategies. The Way of War requires a War College to improve your troops. The Way of Magic requires a Mages Guild to make wizards and research spells. The Way of Trade requires a Merchants Guild to allow trading and banking. The Way of Religion requires a Cathedral/ Mosque/Shao Linn Monastery to create priests and spies or ninjas and monks. The cost of the guild buildings makes it very difficult to build more than one or two in any game. This means you must make important strategic decisions that will affect the rest of the game.
The
Way of War
The
War College allows units to gain experience faster, to attain higher
levels, to gain experience from nearby heroes, and to recruit
mercenaries. In the real world soldiers generally get some sort of
training before they go into combat. But in RTS games, units are
like fodder. Feed em into the grinder, and keep building them faster
than your opponent can, and you will probably win. Tzar is one of
the first RTS games that not only allows your units to gain
experience in battle, but you can even train your units before
sending them to war. By building a War college and researching
tactics, you can build training dummies, which you can then have
your units attack to gain experience. Trained units go into battle
with a huge advantage against untrained units. This advantage means
that they will accumulate more and more kills, and with proper
management and rest, continue to rise in level, eventually becoming
Heroes.
The
Way of Magic
For
some reason most new players try the Mages Guild first. I think we
all miss Warcraft 2. The mage tower allows the creation of wizards
and the researching of different spells. The Asians have a fire bolt
spell for direct damage, a confusion spell that makes all troops in
the area of effect attack one another, a whirlpool spell to
devastate ships, and a summon dragon spell. The Europeans have a
lightning spell, invisibility, the above mentioned freeze spell, a
summon bat spell, and a summon stone golem spell. The Arabians have
magic vision (to see far away places), summon magic carpet (the
ultimate in luxury transportation), summon Jinn, and the dreaded
rain of fire. The Arabians can also make a magic workshop to build
magic items.
One
of my favorite features in Tzar is the inclusion of magic items.
Items can be built in an Arabian Magic Workshop, can be included on
random maps, or even purchased in a Market. There are three basic
types of items; Weapons and armor, which give a bonus to a units
attack or defense. Spell books, which allow the use of a spell. Some
books have limited charges, some, and some require mana. Potions can
permanently raise a unit’s attributes; attack, defense, hit
points, mana or experience level.
In
addition to making overtly powerful items, a magic workshop offers
many cunning strategic options. Invisibility spell books used on a
flying carpet allows easy access to the deepest, best defended parts
of an enemy base. A powerful mana potion and a summon dragon spell
book could create a very nasty aerial infestation for your enemy.
Heroes who can cast area of effect spells like freeze or confusion
can devastate a large group of enemy troops, opening gaping holes in
a defensive army.
The
Way of Religion
The
Cathedral, Grand Mosque and Shao Linn Monastery allow the creation
of priests who can heal and bless units. Arabian and European
priests have an exorcism attack that only effects magical creatures
and wizards. The Asian priest is a kung fu unit with a melee attack,
and with upgrades, they can also train other kung fu units like
monks and peasants, up to the level of the priest doing the
training.
The
Way of Religion also allows the creation of Spies for the Arabians
and Europeans, and Ninjas for the Asians. Spies and Ninjas are two
of the more interesting units in Tzar. Ninjas have two special
abilities; Cloak and Murder. Cloaking allows a ninja to remain
invisible to other units until their mana runs out (generally a
pretty long time). However the presence of another spy or ninja will
uncloak a ninja in hiding, usually resulting in a speedy death.
Murder allows a ninja to assassinate another character in a single
blow. This requires nearly all of a ninja’s mana, so a typical
assassination involves sneaking into an enemy’s base while
cloaked, finding a safe spot to uncloak to recover mana, then
cloaking and quickly hitting the target and running like all hell to
try to get away.
The
Spy has only one special ability, but it is a potent one. A spy can
impersonate another unit. In order to impersonate a unit the spy
must strike the unit. The spy then “replaces’ that unit, and for
all intents and purposes, becomes that unit, expending all of the
spy’s mana. Now both players can give that unit orders. Spies do
have a weakness however. Like ninjas, the presence of another spy or
ninja will reveal them, and they revert to their spy form. This
generally results in a summary execution at the hands of every unit
in the vicinity. Spies that are impersonating an enemy unit are also
vulnerable to attack from your own units.
The
Way of Trade
The
merchant’s guild allows trade to keep your economy running
strongly even after the gold and stone deposits are gone. Trade can
be accomplished by sending caravans or ships between markets and/or
harbors. And the profit from the route can be taken in any one of
the four resources. The merchants guild also allow for loans and
gambling form your local tavern, just the thing when you need a
quick fix to keep your war machine running. The European guild
allows the production of powerful galleons, and the Asian guild
allows access to gunpowder, and Rocket Arrow towers. But perhaps
even more importantly, A merchant’s guild allows even higher
population limits. European and Arabian players can have up to 250
units, and the Asian’s can go up to 300 units.
Tzar's AI is perhaps the finest non-cheating AI I have faced in an RTS. Expect to lose consistently on the easy setting. On medium the AI expands like wildfire, attacking with ever increasing numbers of troops while continuing to expand its economy. Viewing the map after yet another loss to the computer, I noticed that I had 10 fields for food production and 2 barracks. The computer had 15 fields, 10 barracks, and had taken control over ¾ of the map. It had build barracks near every single resource pocket. If you have ever played the Uberhack mod for Total Annihilation, you will be familiar with an AI of this type. The computer is excellent at using the special abilities of its troops, particularly mages and priests. I cannot express the rage I feel every time I loose another important group of troops to a perfectly executed area of effect spell. (Screaming only helps a little). Amphibious landings are also well executed by the AI, and the computer will include peasants to build structures in the area it invades, often leaving nasty defensive emplacements to protect resource pockets deep in your territory.
The computer does have some difficulty on maps that are mostly water. I have played several games where I have been able to trap the AI on a single continent to contain its expansion. However I have also had several games where my fleets were unable destroy the computer's harbors as fast as peasants built them, and I was driven off the water. Tzar
follows the same interface standard set by other RTS games, but Tzar has a few innovative
features. One example is the explore command. Take a unit, hit 'e', and off they go, unveiling the darkness without having to waste a bunch of the most valuable RTS resource of all, time. It is a funny little thing, but one that you will really miss if you go back to one of the 'other' games.
Overall Tzar is an excellent game if you don't mind the lack of window dressing in the campaign. Tzar features good graphics and sound effects, three balanced races and many varying strategic options. The single player campaign is challenging and varied, while the excellent AI, random maps and map editor all combine to insure a long lease on the hard drive. Multi-player is excellent, running smoothly and without crashing in large games on a 56k modem. When the Tzar server is launched, this month matchmaking will be improved.
If you like to comment on this review, please post
a message at the forum.
Reviewed by
Joe Zakszewski
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