Just when you thought the oldstyle,
classic RTS was dead, Digital Integration hits you
with Rival Realms. Now lemme just start off by
saying, it's not a true classic RTS, but the flavor
definitely branches off the same tree as Warcraft.
Rival Realms is a world of knights,
wizards, mercenaries and thieves, your usual
medieval mix. You have land, sea, and air units at
your disposal. There are three races to choose
from: the versatile Humans, the magical Elves and
the belligerent Greenskins as you take your armies
onwards to victory across a fantasy backdrop of
mythical beasts, unexplored worlds and uncharted
waters. It sums up to be quite the typical
sterotyped Warcraft clone.
Adding some no-so-typical features,
Rival Realms offers you the chance to build up
armies whose troops all have their own individual
characteristics. Every single one of your, and your
opponents', troops gains experience in battle, and
can advance up to a maximum of five experience
levels - this way they live longer and their hits are
stronger and more accurate. Sounds a little more
like an RPG now doesn't it?
Graphically, Rival Realms hasn't come a
long way from Warcraft II. The ingame animations
are smooth, but they just aren't entirely
interesting. The buildings lack the charm that
buildings from other games have had. I missed
seeing animation in buildings that you get from
other games like Knights and Merchants. Some
flagwaving or smoke or anything to increase the
atmosphere would have been nice. It has its share
of burning buildings and explosions but they're
just not enough to enliven the atomosphere. You
have the resolution options of 640x480 and
800x600, but these still aren't high enough
resolutions to really make any game shine.
Granted, if you're standing a little ways away from
the PC, the graphics do look really nice, but at a
normal playing distance, they're a little too blocky
and too unrefined to hold interest.
The audio is a direct theft from Warcraft.
I've got to say I'm very disappointed with Digital
Integration for trying to basically copy the
Warcraft dialect. In addition to the audio being
cloned, it's annoying! Each character has two
phrases, and let me tell you, the human serfs are
the most annoying voices I've heard in a while. The
greenskins (aka Orc clones), are no where near
the humorous level that they were in Warcraft, half
the time you can't understand what they're even
saying. The battle sounds are pretty run of the mill
for a real time strategy game. I was also annoyed
by sounds not changing based on distance. I'd be
in a battle in one corner of the level, and I could
hear my peasants chopping away loud and clear
from the other side of the level. It got to be very
distracting at times and lowered the realism factor.
The game is interesting, since you gain
the ability to develop your characters. Each
character can carry up to four items which range
from potions and scrolls, to armor and weapon
boosters. Each unit gains experience from each hit
in combat and can progress through five levels.
After each mission you have the chance to save all
your characters so that you can use them again.
There's some very bad points to this though. You
have to "hire" these characters before each
mission. The game only allows you a certain
amount of money to spend for these hires, so if
you've got a character you've been working with,
suddenly you don't have enough cash to hire
them. This seemed rather stupid to me. When you
save after each level, it doesn't update the existing
characters, it makes new ones. This means you'll
end up with ten or so copies of the same
characters all in different levels of development.
That really takes away from the concept of
"character development" when you have clones of
the same guy running around.
The artificial intelligence isn't very
advanced either, the missions very seldom placed
you under attack. It primarly came down to going
after the enemies instead of defending yourself.
Enemy troops did not act as a group, therefore it
made it easy to pick them off one at a time. I could
take out a group of three with two other groups
standing nearby and no reaction from them at all.
Unfortunately, Warcraft's haphazard
pathfinding makes it's way into Rival Realms as
well. The terrain in most of the levels is full of trees
or mountains so my units frequently got stuck or
seperated while trying to find their way around the
level. This is a common flaw to many RTS games
and Rival Realms did not end this issue. It's not
particularly worse then any other RTS, but it's far
from being better.
Rival Realms' units themselves are
remotely interesting. The humans are definitely a
rehash of Warcraft, with knights, archers, and
mages. There are more units in Rival Realms, like
the priests. There was very little difference
between the units abilities between races, other
than some of the spells. This somewhat hampers
the replayability, because once you've played one
race, there's really not enough of a difference
between the characteristics of the other races. The
spells themselves aren't all that interesting either.
The character which I thought was the most
creative was the Fire Master. He was similar to the
lively Goblin sappers, except he didn't blow himself
up. He had the ability to make bombs, traps, create
lakes and fill in lakes. They couldn't fight very well,
but they were extremely useful. The mages also
had a mana shield which I also thought was a great
idea, it gave them a lot more versatility.
The storyline for the game is pretty
bland, following once again in the footsteps of its
big brother, Warcraft II. Elves are looking for a
homeland, and the other two groups that are
already at war don't want the elves in their
homelands either. Yes, another "everyone for
themselves" saga. I've got to say, whoever wrote
the storyline for the greenskins needs to be
executed. It looks like they tried to use Ebonics for
the languange. "We need to kill da boss guy in da
evenin." I mean, you need to make a much better
effort to create decent written storyline. The
in-game voices don't even match up with the
theme the storyline puts forth.
The missions themselves were also quite
bland, with a few exceptions. The beginning four or
five levels of each race didn't even allow you to
build buildings. You were given a group of units
and basically did seek and destroy missions where
you had to kill everything on the board. Sometimes
there were "imprisoned" units or units you could
buy to replensh your forces, sometimes you'd find
buildings where you could generate your own. I
happen to like the classic "build your own
kingdom" style, but you don't get the ability to do
it until later on in the game. The missions weren't
totally limited to seek and destroy, others included
finding a captured unit or an artifact and making it
to the X on the map in order to complete the level.
Overall, it was not exactly an intellectual mission
campaign.
Rival Realms does, however, come with
its own level designer. I'll have to say great job
here. It is virtually identical to Warcraft II's, but
nonetheless, it gets the job done and allows you to
make your own boards.
It has multiplayer and lets you use your
own maps. You also can bring in saved characters
from the single player. It's a nice feature, but sort
of makes the game a little weighted if one player
brings a 5th level guy in, whereas the others bring
in a few smaller characters. Rival Realms plays a
lot like Warcraft II did, the interface even looks
similiar. It also supports TCP/IP which gives it a
slight step up from Warcraft. This gives the game
the ability to pass as a suitable alternative to
playing Warcraft without a LAN or Kali/Kahn. In
addition to TCP/IP, it suppports IPX, modem, and
serial connections.
Plain and simple, this is a Warcraft II
clone. There are no if's, and's, or but's about it. It
does add a few "new" features/ideas to give it a
somewhat fresh face. However when it's paired
with mediocre graphics and speech that tarnishes
the classic feel that made Warcraft such a
success. If you're in the mood for an RTS and
really want a Warcraft II clone, by all means this is
the game for you. If you're looking for a
revolutionary RTS, go elsewhere. This one does
not have enough to set it apart.
Highs: Character development, a couple
interesting units, low system requirements
Lows: Terrible ingame speech, dated graphics,
way too much of a Warcraft II clone
12/20
5/15
20/30
13/20
5/5
6/10