Heroes of Annihilated Empires

 PC
User Score
7.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 80 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 57 out of 80
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 80
  3. Negative: 11 out of 80
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  1. attila
    Mar 2, 2008
    6
    The single player is not a complete game.
    You'll go weeks without seeing anyone online. Most the people (90%) i have played use some leveling up hack...They gain a level every 2 seconds without killing a thing.
    Over all the game has a lot of potential, but it seems like the development team gave up on it before the game was finished. Seems like a rush job...
  2. Klewer
    Jun 5, 2014
    6
    This game had the ingredients to be a great blend of RTS and RPG. It get's some parts right, mainly the RTS. However the slow pace of much of the single player campaign and a few quirks stop it from quite being a great game.
  3. VidyaBum
    Mar 27, 2014
    6
    A very honest attempt at an RPG-RTS fusion that does actually work, but is cluttered with tons of little low production problems that really hinder it.

    General presentation/voice acting is really awkward in many ways. Hero of the first campaign(only one I've played) is quite the dou*he and his voice always sounding like he's faking being pissed off in front of the mic really reinforces    A very honest attempt at an RPG-RTS fusion that does actually work, but is cluttered with tons of little low production problems that really hinder it.

    General presentation/voice acting is really awkward in many ways. Hero of the first campaign(only one I've played) is quite the dou*he and his voice always sounding like he's faking being pissed off in front of the mic really reinforces the impression that he's trying to sound wierd or out of the picture. Since his character is about being an arrogant and stupid person who resolves everything by frontal assaults, it really aggravates things.
    The story is given through comics-style drawings and it turns out to be quite good most of the time, gives a nice identity to everything, but the sub-par voice acting and the fact that this VA is literally everywhere brings the experience down a lot. BTW, when you skip a textbox during the game, the recording keeps playing. It only skips the next textbox if you skip two or more, and if the last textbox is one long text, prepare to hear it talk till the end because there's no way around it...which again harms the presentation.

    Music is fine IMHO. So are most of the sound effects which all do a fine job.

    Visuals however are not: I once held a 250 elf army in my screen, and from eye count I can tell you that they didn't look like more than 100. This is because units clogg up like they take no room on the battlefield, something which gets absolutely ridiculous when your frontline of 70 men is botched up in one zone, one or two area-effect spells come by, and your 70-men frontline is reduced to 10. Just like that. It's very hard to tell what you're looking at and details, while nicely drawn, really can't give you a feel with how many units you're having or how many are against you. This is pretty terrible as you can never estimate if you'll win or lose a battle just by checking numbers and you have to constantly check your losses and their losses to see how the battle's turning out. Sprites are also small which doesn't help.

    Lastly, the gameplay, while fun and decidedly having lots of potential, feels rushed and unpolished. Many times you'll find yourself not doing anything but waiting for your army to get to a position because the level design is a bit like a maze and you'll go to the edge of a corridor, and have to turn all the way back and that takes a full minute of backtracking an area you cleansed of enemies.
    You have many moments where the fast-paced, very micromanaged battles are followed by long bits of nothing. Battles are constantly, almost universally, micromanaged, every group of units has to be repositioned at all times for all sorts of reasons and you just can't strategise or be away from the frontline for more than 3 seconds, almost as bad as Starcraft II. A good example of how poor the AI is is that if you send out units against an enemy army, say all your units, your archers will immediately kill the one unit you clicked on and the rest of the army will stop dead in its tracks as if to say "job's done, waiting for next orders" without even going to the area where the rest of the entire army of the enemy is. Friendly units with an area of attack will attack the closest enemy and not the big mass of enemies they should attack. There's a sequence where you have about 80 Ghouls that attack you, but if you bypass them and attack by the rear, they will sit tight and let you kill them one by one until you get into that one zone where all the remaining Ghouls come at you together. During one boss battle of your Hero vs the Undead Hero, you can either spam health potions and go with your sword which does 9 damage, or use your bow which does 1, but allows you to shoot through the buildings while his spell attack doesn't go through...

    The RPG-RTS mix of using a Hero unit with RPG elements that influences the RTS a lot is very well done but by no means sufficient to counter the numerous little nitpicks I have with numerous backtrackings, waiting, micromanaging, and the like.
    Although the RTS system alone is quite satisfactory it doesn't exactly shine because of many little things like how units will always aim at the closest unit and not the most interesting one, you can't make unit groups(can only double click to get all the types of one unit in your hand), at least I didn't find the way, and while the spells, powers, options, types of attack and such, are all nice and pleasant, they're not covering the lack of polish and the poor interface.

    There's more and more little nitpicks, but ultimately this is a game with a good basic system that could've used a lot more polishing and work on its units, interface and presentation, and a different level design because all this backtracking is just crap.    … Expand
  4. JonathanS.
    Apr 15, 2007
    7
    A nice strategy game, nothing new though. Didn't really like the graphics (since they are 3.D with 2.D figures) and it really needs a tutorial, like the way that you can choose if you wanna be a mighty hero or build a city with huge armies. This could have been a really awesome game.
  5. CharlesC.
    Nov 5, 2006
    5
    The plot is puerile, the voice acting is enthusiastic at best, the interface is clunky and confusing, the graphical style is jarring (thought bubbles... for speech. Is everyone telepathic or something?!). It's not actually a terrible game... it's simply not in any way a *good* game. Still playable, I guess.
  6. RoryM.
    Dec 25, 2006
    5
    Graphics are good. Detail is very good. Game play needs work. Slow recovery from battle. Manual control of camera/view is annoying. No notice of leveling up. Needs a small tutorial in menu. This could become a great game.

Awards & Rankings

53
#53 Most Discussed PC Game of 2006
66
#66 Most Shared PC Game of 2006

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
65

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 23
  3. Negative: 1 out of 23
  1. PC Zone UK
    82
    A massive improvement on "Cossacks" and its kin, and it's a real pleasure to play. [Nov 2006, p.86]
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  2. PC Format
    70
    Like a good pie, but with crap pastry on top. This is a game weighed down by an army of faults, but it's still periodically entertaining. [Jan 2007, p.64]
  3. IGN
    60
    A forgettable experience all the way through. While we really like Elhant's attitude, it's the only thing that stands out as unique in this game.
    Read full review
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