PC - Microsoft Game Studios
The intro movie sets the scene for the game, while nothing that spectacular its better than nothing and gets you in the mood. The options menu is straight forward but the attempt at a medieval setting for the options is more annoying then useful.
When starting a campaign you also get a brief piece of introduction text giving a simple historical outline, however it is not really sufficient to really get to grips with but at least you have a vague idea of who and where you are. This is not present for the straight deathmatch games but there as they have no basis in history and your keen to get started it is ok.
The game play is quite simple to grasp and it is easy to pick up how everything works. In the campaigns the objectives are clear and easy to understand so you always know what you are meant to be doing. The deathmatch mode is trickier to get to grips with as it takes a few goes to figure out what the best strategy is for building your town.
They also use a handy tooltip system which is useful when starting out and the ability to hide the advanced options which keeps it simple to begin with.
The fun in this game comes from building up your town and attacking your opponents and as such a lot of the campaign missions are not very good. They are entertaining for a while but quickly begin to drag, especially as they do not have particularly engaging stories.
The deathmatch mode on the other hand is completely different, trying to figure out and execute a strategy for managing your town while defending it and attacking the enemy is completely involving. This is particularly well done as you have complete control over your units, meaning a victory feels extra good knowing your skills made it possible.
However, during a long game the unit limit of 200 does begin to get frustrating as you want to keep expanding but are unable to, this limits the game to relatively small battles which detracts from the experience some what.
There are no visual tricks which stand out in particular, the units and structures are animated well during combat but do not do anything special.
The computer intelligence is good; they can certainly provide a challenge in the deathmatch mode, although the campaign missions were slightly easy. Also given the detailed tactical options available to the player in a battle, the computer does not often use them to there full ability.
While the game does not do much to get you in the mood, you quickly find yourself immersed in it once the game play starts. This seems to be done mainly by giving you lots of things to be working on at once and you quickly realise that speed is vital at the start of a game. These things mean that your have to keep concentrating and thinking about the game to survive, keeping you hooked.
The viewpoint is a traditional RTS fixed isometric one which works well but occasionally you do wish you could zoom out to get a better overview of the game world. It can also be annoying when you have a unit standing behind a building or tree and you cannot move the viewpoint to see them, although this is helped partially by them being outlined in yellow.
The controls are simple and can be done with the mouse or using keyboard shortcuts. It can be difficult to select a unit in the middle of a large group, which can be frustrating in a fight and leads to the blaming of the controls rather than the player.
The game has got some great ideas to add to the depth of play, one of the best is the ability to order your troops into formations that are better suited at different situations. Also the built in map editor extends the game play by letting you design your own scenarios.
After playing you are left thinking about the great battles you thought and how you led your troops to victory or alternatively what went wrong and how to fix it. Although the desire to play again comes from defeating your opponents, so this does not last to long with computer opponents but is much stronger in multiplayer.
While the game has a great resource management system and exciting combat system, it does lack a few things that would make it even better. Things like zooming the view, more engaging campaigns and smarter computer players and unit movement.