Official game forums are usually the best place to get the skinny on a game. Reviews are great in ascertaining if a game is for you or not, but a forum is where the elusive fanatic dwells. Now, the fanatic can often help designers by giving them great insight into the game’s mechanics (“I spent forty hours testing my bowman against the knight, and I’ve concluded that the damage ratio is off by .02”). This can often lead to better patches that significantly enhance a title. Fanatics, however, can also foretell the death of a game with stunning accuracy. If 90% of posts on the forum are, “Where’s the next patch?” or “This Game is BROKEN”—watch out!
PC games are a rare breed, however, in that they are one of the few products that continually get sold to consumers in an unfinished state. Now, I’m not saying that Warrior Kings is unfinished—wait yes I am. Underneath lays a superb game—one that did not escape the notice of said fanatics on the message board. They wanted this game to succeed.
Warrior Kings is a 3D real-time strategy game set in a fictional world similar to Europe (Part of the game takes place on the island of Angland, blokes). Mixing fantasy units with true to life medieval ones, the game tells the story of Artos, a victim of a vicious coup that forces him to abandon his kingdom. The story is well told through both mission briefings and in-game cutscenes. While the game may seem to have only one campaign, choices you make affect what faction you are aligned with—Imperial, Renaissance, or Pagan—and thus what missions you play. Of course, each faction has its own variety of units and structures. They better, as the campaign structure is the only real replayability in the game. There is absolutely no skirmish mode.
This is what brought me to the game’s forum in the first place. I consider a skirmish mode to be an essential part of any RTS. So, I hopped on over to see if there were any plans to release it at a later date, a la Freedom Force. The designers from Black Cactus admitted on the forum that there was going to be a skirmish mode, but the game was rushed by their publisher Microids. They claimed they were working on one, based on player suggestions, and it would be added in either a patch or an expansion pack. The mention of an expansion really set people off. Why should they pay for a feature that should have been there in the first place? This was not the only source of their annoyance. They’ve also been holding out for the next patch, which promises to fix many of the game’s problems—balance issues, friendly AI, multiplayer mode. But before I get into those issues, let me give you a rundown of the gameplay, which in some ways is quite unique.
The core gameplay is classic RTS (I never know whether to write classic or tired, but I guess it depends on the player). You build up a medieval kingdom using three resources—food, materials (wood), and gold. Instead of the peasants doing the manual labor and the transporting, they bring their food or wood to a village or dock. From there, horse-drawn carts or transport ships bring them to the manor, the main structure. Manors can often be located far from villages, so you will need to establish a steady supply line to keep the resources flowing. You will also have to protect convoys from attack, as cart drivers can be killed and their carts captured by the enemy. Gold is acquired primarily through shops, which are run by a single peasant or merchant unit. More advanced units and structure will require plenty of gold, so you will need to set up multiple shops, a marketplace if you will.
Civic buildings have to be built in the proximity of your manor, and when built, your walls are automatically extended to surround the new structures. This has the effect of creating a rather large medieval city with dozens of buildings. Other structures that help in resource production, such as lumber mills or windmills, need to be built along your peasants’ work routes. Instead of a lumber mill abstractly increasing wood collection, you’ll see your peasants chop up the wood, bring it to the mill, and then take it to the village. From there, it is transported a distance away to your city. All of this combines to create a very authentic feel. Just watching your kingdom and supply lines in action is enjoyable.
The structures and units you have access to depend on your alignment, but in all cases, the variety is impressive. While some units are shared, such as archers, pikemen, and cavalry, many are alignment-specific. There is a great variety, ranging from undead troops and demonic troops to Archangels and Behemoths (think Rancor). There are also a number of different units that can be summoned through temples or conjured through magic.
Armies can be put in one of four different formations, and the 3D terrain has significant effects on combat, such as increasing the range of archers or slowing down cavalry charging up a hill. You simply must have a variety of units and position them carefully to deal with different threats. Another nice tactical feature is that buildings can catch fire, and the flames can spread. Send a group of archers with flaming arrows to attack a building nestled within the enemy’s walls and there is a chance of taking down half the city. Fires can be put out by peasants, but this invariably takes them away from resource gathering. Sieges play a part in the game as well, and there are trebuchets, cannon, and other fun pieces of artillery.
The combat is exciting and varied, but a few flaws really raise the frustration levels and at times, made me stop playing. Although a few patches have been released, I played with the most recent installed and they have yet to be fixed (these fixes were supposed to be addressed in the patch everyone on the forum is rightfully clamoring for). For one, friendly AI is lacking. Units will often sit around while their neighbors are attacked, and pathfinding is atrocious. The missions and multiplayer maps are quite large, and it becomes a pain to baby-sit your units. For instance, why is my pikeman walking up a hill and through a river to get to the waypoint when a flat, grassy path goes straight there? Furthermore, my units didn’t seem to respond to my attack orders if they were right next to a building or enemy unit. For example, I wanted to destroy a barbarian village with my cavalry, but before they would attack I had to move them a good distance away from the village and then click on it.
Not making things easier is the fact that the engine is a little rough. To be fair, it is impressive at times. It can be zoomed out to dizzying heights, letting you view a good portion of the map at once. The best comparison is Black and White, but unlike that smooth engine, Warrior King’s moves jerkily unless it is zoomed in close. Also, there is quite a bit of clipping, and the units will sometimes disappear and then reappear a few steps away, as if the engine is hiccupping. The units and terrain are not composed of that many polygons, leaving a bit of a jagged look, though the unit textures are excellent. In the end, the sheer scale of the terrain and buildings more than make up for the sometimes rough graphics.
Production values in the sound department are up to speed. The music is standard medieval fare, but I really enjoyed the voices. Sure, some of the accents are a bit overdone, but for the most part the narration and unit voices are entertaining. I still smile when my female peasant says, “You’re such a slave driver.” That I am.
Luckily the interface is nicely laid out and very accessible. One feature that is sorely missing, however, is some type of speed control. As I said, the maps are often very large, and it can take a lot of time to build an army massive enough to attack and then move them all the way across the terrain. A button to speed up these moments of tedium would really go a long way.
Now, multiplayer is present over Gamespy, but the times I checked in there only a handful of players were present. Whenever I tried to join a game it kept giving me error messages. One person I chatted with said they have tried to join several multiplayer games with no luck. The buzz on the forum is that the multiplayer mode is broken, and going by my experience I would have to agree.
Warrior Kings is the perfect example of a great game made merely decent by an anxious publisher. Given the time needed to implement a skirmish mode, get the multiplayer working, and improve the AI and engine, Black Cactus could have had a classic on their hands. Now, it seems as though the game will be relegated to the bargain bin, despite being innovative and very fun at times. If you find it cheap, it is worth a buy, especially if the designers release the skirmish mode and next patch as promised (or an expansion). For full price, however, I cannot recommend it, especially with new titles such as Medieval: Total War and Crusader Kings released or on the horizon. I had some good times with Warrior Kings, though I experienced a lot of frustration thinking about what might have been. Is that a combination you want in your game? Didn’t think so.
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Reviewed by Anthony Micari.
