This is prime example of revolutionary ideas and mechanics get literally butchered up by execution. For start I loved this game, heck I remember when I was alot younger and playing demo over and over again, everything was great, couldnt wait to buy it when I was older and had money...then I did and its one of the WORST RTS I have EVER played, I left the anger pass and after many years IThis is prime example of revolutionary ideas and mechanics get literally butchered up by execution. For start I loved this game, heck I remember when I was alot younger and playing demo over and over again, everything was great, couldnt wait to buy it when I was older and had money...then I did and its one of the WORST RTS I have EVER played, I left the anger pass and after many years I tried it again and its even worse than I remember. I love RTS, heck I am die hard RTS fan I played from AOE 2, all Total war series including shogun I, Starcraft, Dune, Sacrifice, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Cossacks, Sudden strike, UFO, Blitzkrieg... the list could go on forever, but this game trully is the WORST RTS of them all, its not even Real time strategy, its Real time micromanagement without pause button!
Now let me elaborate my meaning. The game is interesting, its got good mechanics never seen, on paper. Live resource system, cross training units, battle gears, units countering units, good animations, graphics for its time, its hectic, it was fun....until you realise how butchered it is and how those revolutionary mechanics are in the long run one of the worst ideas I have ever seen. For instance watering rice, for start its nice but after you find out that you cannot PAUSE, let me repeat this you cannot PAUSE IN HECTIC RTS, its just another annoying element you must watch. Cross training units is fun from start, but it gets tiresome and again another chore in wich you cannot calmly pause and just send units to train in this hectic RTS where every milisecond is where AI trains 3 new units. Maiming horses looks nice on paper, but when you play, its literally waste of time. Battle gears are finnally good idea, but some are usefull and some absolutely not. The clans are nicely done, but UNBALANCED beyond redemption, you have goodie Dragon clan, weakest of all. You have serpent clan, strong but boring. Wolf clan, never played them and never will, but they are easiest to defeat. Lotus clan wich is literally UNDEFEATABLE, seriously they are overpowered too much, army of warlocks will annihilate anything, any "tactic" against them can be countered by having different troops, choose lotus clan and you will win.
Than there is premise that every unit is special and has its meaning....WRONG there are no tactics whatsovere, its just train level 3 unit with ranged units and thats the only tactic you need or find tactics that misuse bugs in the game. On paper you have thousands of options but in reality, only two that are actually effective. Now unto two WORSE THINGS in this game I have ever seen. Some early RTS dont have pause button, but for 2001 game not having functional pause where you issue commands, wich is hectic and about micromanagin units, this is the game breaker number one...all those great ideas just flushed down the toilet because you cannot even use them, because you dont even have time to do so or the fight will be over in matter of seconds. The second game breaking thing is that A.I is the worst and lamest A.I. you can imagine, its the nightmare of A.I. and its generally known that A.I in this game cheats, cheats mercilessly. Even before you are able to build first structure and train your first unit, he already has level 3 units and is already attacking you, thats how much he cheats. Even on lowest difficulty, its merciless. Its not "hard" its just unplayable. It has no challenge, its just unplayable. The challenge is artificial in terms of A.I. cheating, its like you would play multiplayer game against hacker, just unplayable. For those two facts, not having pause button in micromanagement heavy hectic game and A.I. cheats beyond tolerance, this game is unplayable. Playing this game is waste of time, the game that looks great on paper and few minutes in, but in reality its unplayable, broken beyond repair. If they would fix A.I. making it smart instead of being lazy and make it cheat and mainly adding proper PAUSE where you can issue commands, it would be interesting game that does things differently, now its just broken mess. Please dont play it, there are far more interesting titles to be played.
To sum it up, we have an RTS that does things differently and is interesting to play on paper, but in reality you have broken, unplayable game that is destroyed by design flaws and lazyness of programmers.
Unplayable broken game 0/10.… Expand
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