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Review: Warrior KingsReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.6 Review Date: September 19, 2003 (updated September 27, 2003)
Quothe Lou Reed in his song "The Warrior King:"
Now, Lou wasn't so much singing about Macintosh games there as he was singing about—at least by my interpretation—a man's anger and jealousy over the power of God. If, however, the narrator in Lou's song was into computer games, he could take some comfort in playing Feral Interactive's Warrior Kings, choosing the route of the Pagan, and kicking some butt. The safest thing to do when sitting down to play Warrior Kings is to take what you know about and expect from real-time strategy games, fold it all up nicely, and stick it in your computer desk drawer with the pencils, paper clips, and photos of ex-girlfriends you pretend you don't think about anymore. This way, you won't have to spend the whole game thinking, "Man, I wasn't expecting this...this is so cool!"  Warrior Kings is one of those rare games that really takes you by surprise. At least, it took me by surprise. Perhaps it's because I play so many games for review, and many of them really do start to look and feel the same after a while. On rare occasion, a game will comes along that's so distinct and refreshing, it makes me want to push back all of the other titles I'm reviewing just so I can spend more time with it. Warrior Kings is nearly one of those games. You play Artos. You also play everyone Artos leads, but the story follows Artos, and we'll follow the story. The only real set-up here is that dad's the duke of your kingdom (the House Cravant), and all is peaceful. Oh boy, you just have to know that's going to change. In the opening level, as you're off defending carts from barbarian attacks (more on that later), Lothar (and the Hand People?)—your standard, evil Bishop—comes in and executes your father on trumped up charges. He then destroys your city, but lets you escape. Never a good idea. With only a few warriors and a heart of gold (maybe), you have to build your army and its resources so you can reclaim the land.
First and foremost, you get decide how you want to play the game. There are three tracks you can take, defined by the decisions you make. For instance, after capturing the Baron at the end of level two, you're asked if you want to kill him or let him live. The game warns you that this is an important choice to make, and it really is, affecting the levels you'll play ahead. The added benefit here is that it greatly increases the replay value of the game; you can easily hop back to this point and take another path. The paths presented are those of the Imperial (religious), the Pagan (demonic, I suppose), or the Renaissance (science). Each presents different buildings you can construct and capabilities you wield, closing off those available in the other paths. This has a hidden benefit as well...it makes the game a bit easier to grasp. Playing through it the first time, you don't have to concern yourself with learning about every type of building available to you, because they won't all be available to you. And believe me, anything to make this game easier to get through will be a welcome respite. Unfortunately, the complexity doesn't come from where it should. Especially in the early levels, the quests before you are actually quite simple. For the first two levels, especially, I managed to make it through them without having any idea what I was doing. The tutorials are useless, and the manual doesn't seem to be very accurate (be sure to check the CD for more comprehensive PDF manual). It describes how to perform various functions, but their suggested methods always work. Oddly, I couldn't figure out if this was because the game was buggy or if the procedure just wasn't accurately explained.
My soldiers were the same. As in Myth, you can assign a number key to a group of soldiers for easy control. I assigned a group of archers to number 1, then added more to that group. When I'd hit 1, they would all be selected. However, when I'd tell that group to attack, only those originally set would do anything. The others just stood there. Even Artos seems to have trouble with this. At one point, he was being attacked by a giant monster in an early level, and I kept telling him to leave the area. Would he? No. He kept turning around and fighting despite getting his butt kicked badly. Considering that Artos must live throughout the whole game, this can become extremely frustrating. The deeper you get into the game, the more there is to do, and these little annoyances quickly start to drive you nuts. Luckily, some of the odd behavior helps you out. For instance, your enemy will follow their orders no matter what their chance of success, so you don't really need to worry about them outsmarting you. You're also aided by the environment. Yes, height is good, water's bad, etc., etc. We know this. But, did you know that you can quite often shoot arrows through trees or over hills onto enemies you can't even see? Yep. Even better, your soldiers can walk over fire without fear of getting burned, and carts can drive right over top of them without causing injury. That's helpful, don't you think?
And finally, there's one more problem I'd like to address: the controls. Again, they're set up mostly like Myth; you use the mouse to order your troops about by clicking on the screen. Here, right clicking is where most of the work is done. You'd better have yourself a two-button mouse (and what self respecting gamer doesn't?) or your control key is going to get quite a workout. The camera viewpoint is altered by moving your cursor to the side of the screen or by using the traditional WASD keys. Unfortunately, these only move the camera up, left, down and right, respectively; there are no keys assigned to rotating the camera. Warrior Kings offers three methods of doing this. The first method is by hitting the zero key on the number pad and moving the mouse. This is fine, except that the zero key is as far out of the way as humanly possible. Only those gamers lucky enough to have a third arm will be able to do this. The second method is to hold down the mouse wheel button while moving the mouse, provided you have a mouse wheel button. I have a Logitech MouseMan Wheel, but the driver for this conflicted with the game's instructions. In the Logitech Control Center, I had assigned the wheel button to serve as a click-lock, which overrode the game's controls. Shutting this off in the Control Center worked, but that's not something I'd like to do each time I launch the game. Finally, Caps Lock works as well (although it's not documented in the manual), but you have to hit the key twice—once to turn it on, once to turn it off—instead of simply holding it down and then releasing it. Even with these three options, I'd still prefer to control camera rotation with the keyboard as in Myth. Despite all of these issues, I had a lot of fun playing Warrior Kings. I enjoyed battling through the scenarios presented in each level, and I got a kick out of the successful combination of medieval warfare and mythological characters/creatures. Perhaps I'll have fun with the multiplayer options once there are enough people online with whom to play (Warrior Kings supports LANs and online play via GameRanger, but only versus other Macintosh opponents). Warrior Kings: Battles was recently released for the PC, a sequel that promises to, at the very least, improve the AI of the computer controlled armies. Hopefully, it'll address some of the other issues as well, and hopefully, Feral will again bring this game to the Macintosh. If the sequel can improve upon the original as Myth II improved upon Myth, then we're looking at an all time classic. Who knows? Maybe even Lou Reed will want to play.
I just hope he doesn't want to play me.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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Of course, this is going to be a lot of work. A lot of work. Unlike in Myth, which the gameplay here closely resembles, it's not just a matter of waging battles across the countryside. You must also gather resources, tax merchants, establish trade routes, research technology, recruit spies, etc. Sound like every other RTS game? Don't worry. Warrior Kings brings quite a few innovations to a fairly polluted genre.
As an example, we'll look at carts (one of the other unique features to this game). Carts set up supply lines between your villages and your manor, allowing for the movement of wood, food, etc. Not only can you set up your own supply lines, but you can also attack the supply lines of your enemies and steal their resources. Likewise, then can do this to you. Unfortunately, my cart drivers were either lazy or stupid, because they didn't always do what the manual said they should. Although I'd set up my supply lines as instructed, the cart drivers would sometimes just stop at one location and not move again until I told them to, even if their carts were full.
These graphical glitches don't detract from the look of the game, though. Unlike Myth and its sequels, which were fairly dreary, Warrior Kings is bright and fiery. It's not the most attractive game I've seen, but it's up there, especially for an RTS. The ambient noises are okay, but I quickly grew tired of the dorky comments the individual units (especially the peasants) made when being selected or told what to do. It made me realize how much I miss the dwarves from Myth. The music, however, it top notch. Warrior Kings has the type of soundtrack I'd be curious to hear outside of the game. I think it's strong enough to stand on its own.