3D RTS goes Japan

Genre: 3D RTS
Developed by: Liquid Entertainment/Crave
Published by: Ubi Soft

My horse was restless and rocky. The men were all agitated and ready for action. I lured over the horizon to see anything. Not a trace. I guess those bastards wouldn’t show up. They burned our village to the ground last we met. Hundreds were slaughtered, so many lives taken, so many families ripped apart or wiped away. It grieves and angers all of us when this horrible event comes to mind. I retreated myself to the hills, to lock myself away in sorrow and meditation. I, as many others, had lost everything that night. I returned however, with a sense of unfulfillment. The balance had not been restored. Phantoms and spectres but heavenly creatures as well have been plaguing my mind for so long, screaming only a single word: revenge.
I returned to the present day and looked around. Even the geisha’s, whose sweet songs always soothe and calm us, have grown restless. It was time to settle it once and for all. A first contour appeared on top of the hill, as it stood there, blocking the light of the sun with his body. But this one silhouet turned into 3, 6, ten and even more. The enemy had assembled its army. I quickly ordered the men, archers, chemists and powder keg soldiers back, spearmen in front and samurai to fill the gaps. Geisha’s fanned out between the men, giving them strength and motivation for the upcoming clash. “For the Dragon!”
In this world of war, this land of destruction and choas, in this realm of battle, we have to fight… or lest be swept away.

Well, you can usually tell that a fancy introduction introduces one heck of game, and that almost-axiom is true once more. Battle Realms is quite great.
With Battle Realms, we get yet another 3D RTS, this time from Liquid Entertainment, yet another small development team grouped around one kingpin: and for Liquid, that’s former Westwood Ed del Castillo. While 3D in real-time strategy was revolutionary one year ago with Dark Reign 2, Ground Control and Earth 2150, other 3D RTS’s were relatively mediocre, with exceptions Emperor: Battle for Dune and S.W.I.N.E. Battle Realms was quite hyped though, and it caught my eye too as well with fresh screenshots and the promise that gameplay would be key. Ed del Castillo has never denied that StarCraft (the best rts ever) and WarCraft were his main inspirational sources, something that can only be cheered on of course: Star Trek Armada was also largely inspired on StarCraft and the result was quite good.

Battle Realms is set in a fictional feodal Japanese age, pretty much related to the setting of Shogun. Battle Realms has been designed as being a standard RTS: you have your base and its economy, your units, your resources. Rice and water are the two resources, so it’s kept simple. Another basic resource you have are peasants. They are, much more than in WarCraft and Age of Empires, the true cornerstone of Battle Realms: not only they construct all buildings, they also train into units. Villagers frequently come out of Peasant’s Huts, but this frequency slows when reaching a certain unit limit, making peasant spawning as fast as harvesting mana without Lodestones in TA: Kingdoms. Peasant can, as I said, train into numerous units. For all 4 races in Battle Realms (the noble Dragon, sneaky Serpent, barbaric Wolf and the dark Lotus clan), there are 3 main structures for forward units: one for melee fighters, one for ranged attakers and one for mages or chemists. If you send a peasant to one of these buildings, he will train into a certain unit. But these units can be sent to the other facilities, allowing, using different combinations, in total 7 units. A peasant sent to all buildings will create an elite unit. The Samurai of the Dragon Clan for example are both deadly in close quarters and with bow and arrow. Peasants can also be sent to bathhouses, which will train a geisha. These buxom ladies are healers and serve as support. There are other structures in the game, which usually result in a possible perk or technique for a unit if he’s sent to them. In the stables you can keep horses caught by peasants (and which appear randomly on a map). Any unit (with a few exceptions) can mount horses. These will greatly increase unit speed and will also act a shield: a foe has to kill the horse first before he can kill the mounted unit. Next, the dungeon or keep can summon heroes and monks. There is a fourth (next to rice, water and peasants) resource: the yin/yang balance. These are alloted when making a kill. These yin/yang points are required for specific action like hero summoning.
All in all, this mo is a good balance between managing an economy and construction vs battle and strategy. The fact that the unit count is relatively low (you can’t have more than about 25 battle units at once) will force you to diversify and organise your army. The elite unit of the Serpent for example are the Ronin, who are two-blade melee killers, but who do not have a ranged attack. Result: my squad of 10 fancy Ronins was trashed by 5 Powder Keg Cannoneers.

The AI of pc controlled adversaries is rather tough. He will seldomly make mistakes and is quite sneaky: I had a contingent of Samurai guarding my town. Then, from 1 direction, I see an enemy Ronin coming in. I sent all my Samurai to that lone warrior. Big mistake of course. Because I didn’t have any guard towers, the enemy attacks with his main force on the other part of town. Result: a bloodbath amongst my peasants and half of my Samurai killed (the bastard had Cannoneers and archers). You yourself can be incredibly tricky too, with a unique blend of techniques and units. Serpent Ronins for example can learn a skill called “Blood Bond”, something like the bond of a Necromancer with a Blood Golem in Diablo 2. But in Battle Realms, Ronin can use this “Blood Bond” to transfer received damage to another unit. The strategy to follow is of course logical: “Blood Bond” your Ronin with a unit with a unit with many hitpoints, send the Ronin out for adventuring, and surround the unit that stays behind with Geisha’s. The Ronin is then virtually invincible, because all his damage is transferred to the unit who is on his turn continually healed by mulitple geisha’s. Of course there is a limit to this mo. Healing (and running and using techniques for other units) uses stamina, say mana. The latter is an example of how diversivied yet superbly balanced, controlled and streamlined Battle Realms is. Just like StarCraft. Only remark I wanted to make that sometimes the battlefield can get too crowded, with you having difficulty ascertaining which unit is attacking which one. Luckily you have unit grouping, or else this would make in-battle command very stressfull. The relatively low camera viewpoint doesn’t make things easier either.

A very exciting aspect of Battle Realms is of course its graphics. These look fresh and nice but just outside being “cute and cuddly”. They seem a taste on how WarCraft 3 is going to look. The units themselves are not only sharp (which is not the case for, say, Empire Earth) and well modeled but also excellently animated. Exclusive ranged attackers like archers for example will also defend themselves in melee combat, and not keep hurling their arrows at an enemy that’s standing right in front of his nose, or even worse, stop attacking at all. But in this animation you can see that this ranged attacker is not using his most effective attack, which is not only reflected that he won’t stand a chance to specialized melee fighter but also in his animation: you can tell he’s just trying to defend himself. Unlike in other 3D RTS’s, camera control is restricted in Battle Realms, with no rotation feature and no real zoom function (zooming is a downward pan, the same is in space 3D RTS’s like Armada and Conquest: Frontier Wars). The graphics of Battle Realms are great in short, with the game even using ingame sequences as cutscenes (before only demonstrated by Dark Reign 2). The special effects too, are great. Spells and skills are portrayed rather nicely, and arrows fly back and forth in a realistic manner. But what’s best about this graphical galore is the fact that although meaty, the system requirements are reasonable. I played Battle Realms on my PIII 1Ghz and a GF2MX (see specs here), am above average yet not top-of-the-line machine, and I could play smoothly in 1024x768 with all features switched on. I must say though that solid nVidia drivers and serious overclocking have made my GF2MX (32mb!) a small GF2 GTS (3000 3Dmark 2001). I must say though that I suffered graphical glitches, but it this not as result from my overclocking: set on standard settings (both gf2mx and cpu) the glitches remained. Probably Windows XP (on which I tested Battle Realms) or a needed patch.

What you hear in this game is never intrusive and annoying, yet not strikingly outstanding. You have the usual bells and whistles you get when playing an RTS, and the nice background tunes. No real remarks here.

Lastly, Battle Realms boasts classic skirmish options, which is of course good. As it has to be, you can set various parameters from terrain, race, starting resources, handicap and AI strength,… The usual, but something that doesn’t seem to be so usual lately. The mulitplayer is of course great fun, with so much neat and dirty tricks you can play on you adversaries. You have the fact that the game won’t allow massive amounts of units but also the fact that there remains the aspect of having a base, which you mut try to protect and effectiently run.

EP sez:

Battle Realms knows how to be a decent RTS. It keeps classic elements that made games like StarCraft legendary, being the perfect balancing, fun combinations and streamlined nature but also adds a fresh design and setting and stunning graphics. I’m curious whether or not Blizzard themselves, from whom Battle Realms might be a title, can topple Liquid’s 3D RTS, which is, albeit sometimes a tad chaotic, in my view, the best RTS to date (next to eternal classic StarCraft of course).

Pros and Cons

+ Great setting and atmosphere
+ Fresh graphics
+ Diversity and balance (Yin and Yang, literally and figuratively)
+ Multiplayer
- Chaotic sometimes

Score:

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 9
Sound & Music: 8
Addictiviness: 9

Overall: 89%

(c) 2001 Erwin's Pages
Erwin "Reaper" Husin

Links

> Official Battle Realms Site