Warrior Kings

"Nothing to get excited about"

Warrior Kings is a RTS that incorporates both resource gathering and tactical combat in a fantasy world.

Graphics 4/10

Warrior Kings' graphics aren't especially pretty, however, they get the job done. There are no fancy bells and whistles like transparent smoke, weather effects, or impressive explosions. Your soldiers are small but well drawn and animated. Attack animations are nice but death animations leave a lot to be desired. Occasionally, enemy soldiers are difficult to pick out when they are among your troops, which, unfortunately, is when you need to be able to see them the most.

The terrain looks nice with rolling hills, mountains, and rivers. The textures aren't particularly great. Some of the terrain types are difficult to tell apart at a glance. This can be deadly to cavalry that doesn't move well in swamps and rough terrain.

The one saving grace of the graphics is the sense of scale some units and buildings give the player. Some units, like siege engines, literally tower over archers and cavalry. Seeing these war engines trundle across the map escorted by relatively puny soldiers is truly stirring.

Gameplay 3/10

The gameplay isn't anything new: gather resources, build structures, train an army, crush your foe. It's a solid, tried-and-true formula, but Warrior Kings doesn't offer anything dozens of other RTS games have offered in the past.

Enemy AI is likewise unimpressive. While you are busy building legions, the AI will continually attack your settlement with one or two units. In the second mission, I assaulted an important barbarian base. I was able to destroy a number of buildings before the AI decided to counterattack, again throwing away a potentially deadly striking force by attacking with only a few units at a time. I decimated the base and a huge number of foes with a pitiful band of eight troopers. The AI is more an annoyance than a threat.

As with the graphics, I wasn't overly impressed with Warrior Kings' gameplay. While mission objectives are varied and well defined, the game's mechanics are rather murky on a number of subjects.

The included tutorial is not interactive. It discusses economy and combat, but it's more of a slide show than a tutorial. Unfortunately, the manual isn't much help either. It gives a detailed, step-by-step walk through of the first two missions but almost nothing about the game's controls. The manual refers the gamer to a reference card for keyboard and mouse commands but the card was conspicuously absent from my box.

Controls 3/10

I disliked the view controls intensely. Moving, turning, and zooming the camera with the mouse in unintuitive. Adjusting the camera with the keyboard is cumbersome. Selecting units and ordering them about is a confusing series of right and left clicks.

Audio 3/10

Music is dull and uninspired. Combat sounds are quiet and lack luster and variety. Voice acting during cut scenes is decent but the narrator never, ever stops to take a breath or pause at a comma or period. It's like listening to the excited ramblings of a child. Much like Warcraft, units vocally respond to your orders, but each unit only has two responses which both quickly become annoying.

Story 3/10

Warrior Kings does have a plot but much like the gameplay, there is nothing new here. You play the son of a murdered duke out to reclaim the family's honor by battling evil. Even the world map (which looks suspiciously like Europe) is another strike against Warrior Kings. The young duke flees to Angland at one point (which looks a whole like England). Again, solid but utterly uninspired.

Challenge and Replayability 3/10

The wide variety of mission objectives and units makes Warrior Kings challenging. You will be constantly attacked and resources will always be lacking.

Some missions allow the completion of objectives in any order but they are still the same objectives on the same maps with the same irritating controls, bad music, and sophomoric AI.

Technical Issues

I noticed a number of minor, niggling bugs but the recent 1.3 patch takes care of them nicely and tweaks a number of gameplay balance issues.

Overall 3/10

Warrior Kings is nothing to get excited over. Dull graphics, dull gameplay, and poor controls drag down what may have been a solid RTS game. I found it in the discount bin for $10. It was worth that but not a penny more.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/02, Updated 11/05/02