Battle Realms

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Summary: The Truth About Battle Realms
Review: BR is the most innovative game I ever played. I gives you more factor for thinking because of its great gameplay strategies. It has its certain uniqeness that gives it a great gameplay. I can't say so much more cause this game just rulez. (I'm already 19)

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Summary: Innovative RTS, a rarity nowadays...
Review: Currently beta testing the game, and it's already great. It takes the base qualities of an RTS game and adds a completely new training and upgrading system that work together perfectly. Definately worth buying.

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Summary: Fantastic Game
Review: Excellent game, great graphics, great sound affects. I also bought empire earth and have yet to play it because I cannot stop playing this game. In addition its very challenging to stay alive. Its not the type where you build a huge army and just rush in. You need to develop a stradegey or you will get killed.

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Summary: Battle Realms.....simply the best RTS created.PERIOD
Review: First of all the first thing that will catch your eye is Battle Realms detailed and lush graphics. From the units to the rivers,trees and animals that populate the world the graphics shine wonderfully. Not to mention that the animation of the units is exqusite,smooth and silky. No matter if they are fighting or just standing still surveying the area,it shows baby company liquid knows how to make a game beautiful. Still as we all know graphics do not make a game only compliments it, and the gameplay in Battle Realms is second to none. Massing units of the same type in this game is suicidal seeing as every specific unit has a unit that can either counter him or die easily at his hand for e.g Samurais are weak to magic so they should avoid magic,while dragon warriors are strong to magic but weak vs cutting,so unit variety is the key. You must have quick hands and an intelligent mind to choose whom your units should attack, and whom to avoid. Added strategy comes from knowing 2nd tier and some 3rd tier units have both meele and ranged attacks, so choosing attacks is also wise. Units are upgraded with gifts such as strength,health,range etc. which is gained through ying or yang, so turtling all the time can be costly seeing as ying/yang is gained through hard fought battles. Battle Gears are also another strategic element to the game. For e.g archers can have two BGs such as a sight enhancer to scout the area or fire-arrows to burn buildings or to use against fire weak enemies, so choosing your battlegears is also the key to victory, you should also take note no unit in their clan has the same battlegear and they have 2 to choose from. Battle Gears are your friends they can either be defensive or offensive so choose wisely. Resources in this game are simple,yet sensible. Water and Rice is collected by your peasants,still peasants are used to build and or become units,so micro is in order to select your resource gatherers,builders and whom you wish to train into your fighting force.Its a delicate system that no idiot can use, too many peasants getting resources mean less fighters,still too many peasants training mean no gatherers, the system when used correctly can function smoothly and help towards victory. Units are trained equally innovatively, for e.g an archer can be trained in the alchemist hut to become sumo-cannoneers and so forth. So remembering which cross trained unit becomes what is helpful and forces you to upgrade your units just incase they right time is called for. Horses are also used in the game,which add as your transports, the horse can either help workers collect more rice/water or can be ridden by your units for extra health and the horse trample BG helps in the attack,so horses are also a strategic element if the oppurtunity arises. Of course this game also features heroes for each clan and all of them can be summoned at once, heroes help greatly in battle as they can reduce damage,drain stamina,summoning horses,calling forth lighting,teleportation,speed boosts or increase ally soldiers strength. This game is the closet to perfect you will ever see in any RTS game. It accomdates both rush and turtle style playing,forests can be used and walked through to hide in as well as alert you of enemies presence from the birds scattering,and the music in the game is equally brilliant. Units have innate abilities (which can be learned on the website) which help in battle, and each unit has a specific counter. With four completely different clans there is a variety of strategy in here. I cannot explain everything in the game, it must be experienced first, do yourself a favour and get this awesome game, where strategy truly counts instead of massing units.

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Summary: Battle Realms is in the top 5 RTS games ever
Review: First of all, the graphics are absolutely gorgeous. They're sharp, clear, vibrant, and colorful. The animation and particle effects are fantastic, and so is the rain and lightening. I like how the camera zooms up and then back down while going over hills (although you can not manually change the camera view). The landscape is also gorgeous. It's pretty addicting too. Its definitely become one of my favorite games.

However, there are some negatives. The game had a lot of potential when it comes to spells, I think the Zen Masters should have had more then one spell. Zymeth's lightening was a really nice power, but these Zen Masters need more. There is just so much potential there with the graphics to make really awesome powers.

Some other negative are as follows: there are a limited amount of towers you can build. As of yet there are no cheats, and the one trainer that was made to make more peasants does not seem to work. There needs to be more characters for each clan, as well as more buildings. Walls would be nice as well. During the Skirrimsh battles the computer's efficiancy and AI tends to be pretty advanced even on easy. It's no time after a big battle for there to be yet another huge army attacking the village. A map editor would have been nice as well.

This game is just begging for an expansion pack.

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Summary: Strategy is essential
Review: First, the game is great. Incredible graphics, superb sound, easy to use interface. The real thing that sets this game apart is the need for real strategy. The landscape makes a big difference in a battle. Archers see farther when on a bluff. Units can't be seen very well when in the forest (although disturbing the birds can give you away). The limit for units is small and the more units you have the slower they are generated (all units start as peseants spawned from their huts) So, unlike other RTS games where even a unskilled player can throw alot of units at an opponent, this game requires you to plan your units and upgrades for maximum effect. The game makes me leave the computer in frustration on occasion, but it keeps calling me back. The sure sign of a great game.

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Summary: Better than WC3
Review: Graphics- Battle Realms is one of the most beautiful RTS games on the market. Every unit has several fighting animations, so battles always play out differently and never look the same. Units also have various idle animations, some which have an effect on gameplay. The terrains and maps are very detailed, with fish and frogs in the water, birds in the woods that fly out when disturbed, and insects in the desert.

Sound- The orchestrated soundtrack flows dynamically, changing depending on the current situation. Each Clan has several different songs. Overall the voice overs are fine, except for a few "weird" clips.

Gameply- Battle Realms features totally innovative gameplay. Every unit, even the strongest and most expensive have a counter and can easily be killed if they are not paired with different troops. This prevents newb- tactics such as massing. Most units have two special powers, battle gears, that can drastically affect the outcome of a battle. Since even a level 1 unit can have a very effective gear, there are no useless units in Battle Realms. There is a semi- long branching campaign with a map similar to the one in Emperor. The AI in Battle Realms is also exceptional. Units will automatically attack their last attacker, and often have two different attack types ( samurais have piercing bows and cutting swords). They alternate between weapons to maximize damage to the enemy. The unit AI never has problems with pathfinding.

Conclusion- I have played both Battle Realms and the WC3 beta extensively, and although WC3 is only a beta I can say that BR is far superior. It is a fresh addition to the tired "mass up the strongest and wipe out the enemy" formula of modern RTS games, instead focusing on micromanagement of a small amount of units. BTW, even once you reach 20 units, you will feel like you have a huge army. Thus, most games are decided by early game skirmishing of 6-8 units. The only negative thing I can name is the multiplayer, which uses Gamespy. Gamespy has the laggiest servers ever, so don't expect to find more than 10 games at a time. However, once you get into the game the lag will clear up. I give Battle Realms, Liquid's first game, a 5/5.

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Summary: It ain¿t as fun as StarCraft, but it¿s still great
Review: Graphics: VERY NICE, full 3D environments and characters. Beautifully rendered waterfalls, terrain with various slopes and elevations, and forests that hide units and buildings by utilizing fog of war. Units actually have several animations of attack, as opposed to the zealots in StarCraft (SC) which run at 40 mph at their target, only to repeatedly "one-two" punch them when they close in. Units also appear 2.5 times larger than many other RTS games, so you can appreciate more realism there. Pyrotechnics, fires and explosions look great as well, although there are very little of them compared with other RTSs.

Sound: good. Sound FX, and music are nothing spectacular in my opinion but really compliment the game. Most of the music has Asian themes either majestic, tribe-like, or even ominous. The sound of waterfalls running, horses galloping, and faraway birds squawking add to the sound quality.

Interface: This takes some getting used to. Hotkeys are quite important, as even when I was directly observing a battle, I always thought to myself at the end "what the hell just happened?". In such chaos, it's difficult to even select the units you want and time will be wasted moving your cursor around. Unfortunately, very few are displayed during game play, so many of them need to be looked up and memorized in the help menu. Those such as locating idle peasants, goto battle location, and certain buildings will be handy to know. The game lets you group units for quick reference and imposes no limit per group, but anything more than 8 and you'll need to access the rest by scrolling. Hotkeys are provided for using battlegears as well and the interface was intuitive enough to allow you to access a specific unit's battlegear within a group or all of them with the push of a button. Again with 8+ unit groupings, selecting specific unit's battlegear is more cumbersome. There are improvements that could be made. First off, there are no formation controls. Second, many of the units, even healers and peasants get "trigger-happy" and will attack enemies out-right. Commanding them to hold position or to flee without attacking won't always work, so you're then forced to micromanage.

Gameplay: granted that many of you may have seen screenshots beforehand, this is one area I feel I should elaborate more on. Peasants (the lowest tiered units) are auto-generated. They do their resource gathering and building, then they're sent into certain buildings to be trained. They could then be sent into more buildings to train into generally better units. In addition to creating different units in this matter, many units can also equip one battlegear at a time giving them different abilities and spells, some of which take stamina, others may only be used a certain number of times per re-equipping and others may hurt or kill the unit using it. Like previous RTS which incorporate spells, they range from defense/attack/range/speed bonuses and even provide different abilities such as fire arrows or teleportation.
One aspect that gives "building AND resource managing RTS" a lot of strategic depth (at least what I've noticed) is a motivation or strategic reason to build lesser units over high level units. Battle Realms (BR) seems to have gotten that down pact. For example, veterans of SC will understand why creating a victory fleet of capitol ships will seldom work against good, experienced players. In BR, All units inflict certain types of damages (blunt, cutting, pierce, explosive, magic, fire) and have strengths and weaknesses against certain types as well. For example, samurai, the Dragon clans 3rd tier units are extremely weak vs. explosive damage, and a cheap 1st tier unit like a Serpent musketeer can wipe it out in 2 or 3 hits. Musketeers however have good defense vs. cutting damage inflicted by samurai. In another case, archers may gain the upper hand with attack and range bonus as well as security when perched on top of high cliffs, and will be able to butcher missile units and especially melee units. Another nice aspect about this game is that even with multiple races (clans in this case), all the units of the same designation across all 4 clans don't succumb to the "same unit different name" syndrome. An example to illustrate this would be the 1st tier missile units. Even without battlegear, archers, crossbowmen, hurlers, and leaf disicples have different weapons, ranges, weaknesses, rate of fire, etc., unlike what happened in Star Trek Armada, where all units of a certain level are armed with phasers. Several places in where Battle Realms is different from many other RTS is where upgrades are handled by yin/yang points, earned ONLY by defeating enemies. Heroes can be summoned for the price of yin/yang, many of which are rather unique, NOT just regular units with upgraded stats. Resources are nearly infinite, as water never dries up and rice can grow back when watered. There is a unit cap of 20, 30, or 40 and a tower (the game's defensive building) limit of 4 per race.

Replayability: If you like the game for what it is, you'll come back to it as people do with SC and any other RTS. Multiplayer adds more dimension to the game, although there aren't as many players as there are for other PC RTS. The skirmish mode is like a single player version of multiplayer. Both of the previous 2 have different modes of play and options, such as starting army, resource growth, weather, where players start off, and how fast yin/yang is earned. Finally, there are 2 campaigns, one for Dragon clan and one for Serpent clan, and each has its own set of heroes to unlock.

Bottom line: Although SC is my all time favorite RTS, I can definitely see myself going back to this game, more so for the multiplayer. I also eagerly anticipate any new add-ons and expansion packs.

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Summary: "The world is alive"
Review: Hello, I am yet another very lucky beta tester. As soon as you enter the game you feel as if the world is alive. Horses run in fear as your units approach them, birds float around, and frogs hop along around streams, ponds, and rivers. The fluidity of everything is overwhelming. Your soldiers do many different attacks that link together so they never stop. The unit acknowledgements are very amusing at the least. Everything is just so different between each clan. The new system of training units into higher 'tiers' is no less than unique. The 'particle effects' are the coolest thing about some of the units. By far the best feature about this game is the 'battle-gear.' Battle Gear is special equipment that units use and have a dramatic affect on their effectiveness against other units and buildings. The second this game is in stores i'll be at home playing it.

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Summary: Instant fun
Review: I am amongst the few lucky who are part of the beta. I was expected a lot from this game and it seems that I was expected right!! With its user-friendly interface, its ressources management system, you enter into the game without any headache to learn how to do things. The unique training system of Battle Realms put a versatileness never reached before. All in this game is made to put the gamer in the center of action with ease and INSTANT FUN.
A fun enhanced by the high quality of graphism, the smoothness of the animation full of imagination and by the living world of Battle Realms which adds this precious "touch" that makes great games.