Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Re: I think it was pretty obvious what I was saying, dumbass

[quote name="curst"][quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"]And the thing is, I would happily play games that were linear if the stories were better.[/quote] I'm already taking back my newfound pure-hatred stance on RTS games, because when thinking about doing an all-purpose rant on this stuff, I replayed some. And with Warlords Battlecry 2... huh. To my surprise I found that it still holds some appeal to me. Part of it stems from the fact that it seems to recognize that most if not all RTS games boast completely forgettable stories no one can possibly be made to give a shit about, so it does away with it completely. It's about as "free-form" as an RTS can probably get. I'm not sure it's qualifies as the sort of gloriously non-linear game SB's talking about (again, would that be possible with a strategy game?), but there's some cool stuff that it does that other RTS titles do either half-assedly or not at all: - RPG elements are really well developed. This isn't Warcraft 3 where every level 10 paladin will be identical to every other one. The main unit in your army is the hero. You choose his/her race, which will determine what classes you can pick from (fighter, mage, rogue, maybe other stuff like priests? I forget most of them). They'll have various stats and skill attributes, much like Diablo. Then once you gain a level you can specialize - i.e. fighters can become either paladins, rangers, barbarians or probably other assorted things. You get stuff that's a lot like Fallout's "perks" if you spend a lot of growth points (which are gained, of course, when you gain a level of experience). There's a nice, big-ass variety of spells to choose from (I think there's 8 schools of magic with 15 spells per school). And at level 22, I wonder if there is any kind of experience cap at all. - While you generally have to rebuild your army/fortifications when going from one mission to the next, your hero will be able to retain a Retinue, the size of which is limited by your Command or Leadership attribute (I forget what it's called). The Retinue consists of basic units that survived in battle long enough to gain experience levels - they'll be given names and will become dramatically more powerful. Plus, before a battle begins, either the computer will decide (if you're playing the campaign) or you can decide (if you're going multiplayer or doing an AI skirmish) how many Starting Army Points you can use to build a starting army, and this will be equal for every player in the game. And if you don't use up all your SAPs by bringing along your retinue units, you can then bring some basic units as well. It's a great feature that prevents early rushes, because each base starts off with three deadly towers, and any rushers would see their units get slaughted by the towers and enemy's starting army, therefore all they accomplished was wasting resources and basically handing their enemy free XP. (Oh yeah, XP levels can be gained in mid-battle - the hero doesn't get any until they win the battle, but basic units grow constantly.) - Speaking of the campaign... again, it doesn't even try to do one in the traditional sense. Rather, the land is divided into about 50 countries, and the eight or twelve or whatever races each control a certain percentage. Then you choose an enemy country adjacent to one of your countries that you want to invade. The country you pick will cause it use the random mission generator (which works okay but doesn't do anything astoundingly cool) with certain settings - i.e. sometimes it'll always change the mission goal to 'assassinate the enemy hero' or 'build a level 5 main tower'. If you win the mission, you gain control of the land. This A: increases your Starting Army Points amount for your next battle, and B: gives your units a special benefit (i.e. +1 to all melee damage, movement is slightly increased). The downside is that while the first few missions you play are incredibly easy, the AI gets tougher every few missions, until you'd swear that it's cheating its ass off. There's no story whatsoever other than "kill everyone and unite the land under your rule". - If you take your hero into a Skirmish mission (not part of the Campaign), the experience, items, special retinue units and so forth that you get after you win can be carried over to the Campaign even if you're in the middle of one. It's much like Dynasty Warriors 3, where if you found that your character wasn't strong enough to take on a particular mission in your campaign, then you simply take them through a few runs of easy missions in Freestyle mode to boost their stats, then return to their campaign. - It's not as crash-prone as the first Battlecry. Of course, FEW THINGS ARE. I guess what I mean to say is that it *seems* to be bug-free. I noticed there are two patches for the thing, but I don't really need them right now. Otherwise, the game is a rather typical top-down RTS. By all rights, I should still be bored by it, and I'll probably give up on the thing in a few weeks (especially since I only just now bothered to get Thief 2, which will likely consume a lot of time). But right now it's - dare I say - fun![/quote]