Warlords: Battlecry III review

Warlords: Battlecry III is the latest in the popular Battlecry franchise, which combines the role-playing game with the real-time strategy game to create the RPS or role-playing strategy game. This game adds five new races to the Battlecry universe, increasing the total number of playable races to sixteen. The new races come in the form of the Plaguelords, the dinosaur like Ssrathi and the Swarm. The human race has also been split in two halves to provide the Knights and the Empire. The game is structured like a real-time strategy title with tech trees, resource mining and troop creation, but adds a role-playing element in the shape of a hero who leads the troops and can be levelled up to improve his stats.

On the campaign trail

The single player game comes in the form of the campaign. This is basically just a back story to give the numerous missions a vague concept to cling to. The story itself isn’t important, or terribly gripping, but starts off with the investigation of a strange storm and leads you to battle the Ssrathi. The mission selection screen takes the form of a map with various nodes on it. As you navigate from node to node you are able to select from a variety of missions on offer there. Some of these missions are important to the story, whilst others allow you to quest to build up your hero’s abilities. Some of the missions ally you with other races, allowing you to use them in future battles if you need them. The game, then, is linear in that there are prescribed missions following a story but non-liner in the sense that you may complete them in any sequence and however you choose. The majority of these missions are based around a battle of some description, build up your army and go to war, so they do tend to be slightly repetitive.

Resourcefulness

Resources come in four flavours: gold, metal, stone and crystal which must all be mined to allow troops and buildings to be built. The resources are found from appropriate mines which are located around the map. As you find mines you must bring your hero close to it and then convert it. This will bring it under your banner and you will start gathering resources. If you produce workers then you can set them to the task of working in the mines to increase the pace of production. Mines come in three levels and this indicates how quickly the mine will produce resources for you. To be able to gather enough resources to build up your army quickly you will need to send your hero out to convert mines across the map.

Getting old

The graphics engine for the game is basically the same as the previous title in the series and so the graphics look a little dated now. That said they don’t look too bad or out of place for the genre. The character models have enough detail to be recognisable and are distinctive for their race and class and, together with suitable animation, look the part. The structures also look fitting for their purpose and race but again aren’t anything special. Whilst this helps to keep the game moving at a decent rate on a low spec machine it does bring down the presentation of the game. The sound isn’t a very different story really. The responses from selecting troops are quickly repetitive as with most real-time strategy games and the score is pretty tedious. The sound effects work but this isn’t really enough to save the presentation. As far as the real-time strategy or role-playing game genres go, however, both the graphics and sound sit comfortably towards the upper end of what was expected only a year or two ago. This just means that the graphics look a bit dated and aren’t really anything special. The user interface and feel of the game are pretty typical. In this case though this can only be a good thing. It makes Battlecry 3 very easy to pick up and play for anyone who’s played a real-time strategy title before. The role-playing elements of the title are easily picked up and explained as you progress.

When two tribes go to war

Warlords: Battlecry III presents an online game as well as the single player campaign. Supporting up to six simultaneous players the multiplayer game becomes an extension of the single player game, allowing you to take your hero online. The online battles improve your hero’s stats and they can level up in the same way that they do in the single player game. This provides a different view of multiplayer as it doesn’t need to be seen as a separate game. The multiplayer is just as important to your hero’s progression as the single player game and doing badly can affect them in the same way as defeat in the single player game.

Jack of all trades

Presenting a game as a crossover between genres presents a potential problem which Warlords has been battling against for three versions now. Can a game possibly hope to present enough of either genre to prove truly desirable to fans of both or does it present an entirely new experience? The real-time strategy side of Warlords is certainly good enough to make it desirable, although fans of this genre may be put off by the role-playing elements. The character progression is unique for real-time strategy games but for fans of normal role-playing titles there just isn’t enough to it. This leaves a problem for Warlords: Battlecry III in that it tries to do too many different things and manages to do them all well but not exceptionally well, meaning that it is unlikely to appeal to committed fans of either genre. Warlords has to rely on fans of both game types, who are prepared to compromise on each element as well as attracting new players to the series who have no preference for either. Of course, the game improves enough on the past titles in the series that it will appeal primarily to existing fans and they certainly won’t be disappointed.