Hesperian Wars is yet another RTS style game to
thrust itself into the overcrowded market
already dominated by Starcraft, C&C, and Total
Annihilation.
Here's a little synopsis of the plot.
After wonderful years of its great prosperity, the
Hesperian Empire suddenly collapsed with
the unexpected death of its emperor, there was no
heir for the throne. The emperor's
advisors unrightfully took power, causing great
anger among the aristocracy which protested
and soon formed their own government. Stunned
by this development, the Smarts accepted the
aristocrats' protests and invited them to negotiate
and create a Common Board. During the
night, the aristocrats and their companions were
murdered. Battle soon broke out across the
land as groups formed into armies. The ensuing
battles became the Hesperian Wars.
Not a real unique or catchy plotline, but few RTS's
have managed this. You get to choose
from four races, Giants, Mages, Druids, or
Pygmies. It says it has 40 different unit types
but I think that actually means 10 for each race and
then it's probably also figuring in
the three upgrades you can do to each type
because there really doesn't seem to be a lot of
units.
HW has some serious flaws. It has a 2d sprite
engine with poorly implemented shadowing
effects. We are talking "graphically challenged"
here since this game looks a lot like 96's
game of the year Warcraft II except even WC2 had
smoother graphics then this game. The
console is nice and detailed though, menus are
pretty enough to add a little to the game.
There is at least one night mission which adds
some placed lighting effects which aren't
too bad, but they're from lampposts and the spot
lighting still shows up if you destroy the
lamp. It also has an irratating intro avi movie which
you can't cancel out of and have to
waste 20 seconds of your life to watch everytime
you go to play it. The game also runs
surprisingly slow for the results. This game took
way too long for my P200 to load up to
start out with and the menu animations tended to
be choppy. I didn't really notice any
performance problems on my PII 300.
I don't know what Modern Games was thinking
when they did the sound. This has, by far, the
most annoying sound effects I've heard in an RTS.
Units acknowledge you with grunts no
matter what race you are. I know there's supposed
to be dialects in the game, since other
than the Giants you get coherent briefings, so I
can't really figure out why they don't talk
back instead of the mindless grunting. There's also
only one sound for each different type
of unit, which gets real repetitive and makes the
poor sounds even more annoying.
Hesperian Wars does something that's not real
common by combining RTS with some roleplaying
style aspects. Fields of Fire is one of the few
others I can think of. This, I think, should
be a way to make a hit game if someone actually
put some effort into it. Characters can pick
up items like potions and armor and use them to
do various things throughout the game. It
also has quite a few spells/special abilities that help
give flavor to the game, though it's
not enough to really give a great RPG feel. Unit
advancement is done through the "garage"
method. Spend some money, throw your guys in
the shop and they come out upgraded. It works
nicely enough compared to the "Development"
ideas used in games like Warcraft and Starcraft.
It's fun enough for an RTS but with the poor audio
and graphics, even semi-decent gameplay
won't hold your attention for very long. It's just
enough to beat out borderline dull, but
it sure isn't close to exciting.
The multiplayer supports all the usual connection
types. It has a VERY POOR interface for
setting up multiplayer. No graphics or anything, it
looks like you're in a windows database
with your gray buttons and dropdown menus. It's
not real fun either.
Overall, Hesperian Wars is not impressive enough
to go out and buy it. It has some decent
ideas but graphics and audio kill any desire to sit
there for too long. I also have yet to
figure out why they used the word "Hesperian" for
a game that has nothing to do with the
real historical time period.
Highs: Interesting attempt to make an RTS/RPG
Lows: Incredibly annoying sound, subpar
graphics, slow on older PCs
Graphics 19/20
Sound 4/15
Gameplay 18/30
Fun Factor 10/20
Multiplayer 2/5
Overall Impression 5/10
Tested on:
PII 300 under Windows95 w/ 128 mb RAM and a 8
mb Hercules Stingray (Voodoo Rush)
P200 under Windows98 w/ 64 mb RAM and a 2 mb
Diamond Stealth