It's especially annoying to be slowed down by the interface when you have to manage many, many forts and villages while fighting real-time battles, defending castles and exploring the countryside.Īnd rather than just telling a stronghold to keep producing a certain type of fighter as long as resources and manpower is available, you can only "order" a certain number of warriors to be trained at a time, so you keep checking back with each of your villages to refill the training queue and keep the supply of fighters coming. This requires a lot of repetitive mouse clicks for large shipments, which you'll need regularly later in the game to balance out your supplies. For example, you can send mules with loads of food from one fort to supply another, but rather than just punching in a number of food units and sending it on its way, you have to load each individual mule with a small amount of food and tell it where to take the shipment. The game is fairly complex and takes a bit of learning, which is fine for hard-core strategy gamers, but the controls can be frustrating. And the food supply from the villages to your forts is crucial - without food, your expensive fighters eventually die of starvation.
You need steady population growth so that you'll have people to train as warriors. In Strategy mode, you also have to be very protective of your villages and peasants.
The enemy has to find the druids and kill them off to stop them. For example, with enough druids, you can have them do a ceremony that gradually saps the health of your enemy. But a more interesting feature is the ability to sends groups of druids to one of the "Stonehenges" scattered throughout each game board, where they can call on mystic powers to help your cause. As well as buying armies, you can fund druids who heal your troops. Nasty.Īnd as well as fighters and working peasants, Haemimont has thrown in a Celtic staple: Druids. First, there are caves scattered around the countryside that can help you get the drop on an enemy - enter one, go underground to get past an opponent's ring of fortresses, and pop up inside the perimeter of their defenses where they least expect it. There are some interesting twists, though, as I mentioned. There are also Roman and Gaul villages that offer different types of fighters, from mounted spearmen and Amazon warriors, to Roman legionnaires.
You capture more villages and fortresses to expand your territory, and you spend the gold to add more fighters and upgrade the equipment and training of your armies. Your peasants grow food and produce gold, which you use to feed and equip your armies. You start off with a basic little village, and your goal is to build an empire and wipe out all opposition. To add some spice to the game, there's a war going on between the Romans and Gauls, and your decision about who to lend your support to will affect the outcome of the game.Īdventure mode is fun, but can be quite difficult, especially early in the game when you have few resources and allies. From there on, you guide Larax as he explores the countryside and visits towns and forts, recruiting allies and smiting the baddies. In a rage, Larax gives himself over to the goddess of war Kathubodua in return for some kick-ass battle skills. In the intro movie, he heads off to war and his wife gets killed when the enemy sacks his village. In Adventure, you take on the role of the warrior Larax.
The game has two modes, Adventure and Strategy. The world is awash in role playing games, butĬeltic Kings: Rage of War from Haemimont Games is a sharp-looking title with some interesting new twists that go beyond hack-and-slash adventure.