Celtic Kings: Rage of War

I'm an avid gamer of all genres and Celtic Kings is my all time favourite . The graphics and the music and general aura has a certain magical mystical charm . A charm of the kind we find in books like Lord of the Rings . I like RTS games , but I get bored halfway through with all the repetitive building , farming and mining . In this game we only capture enemy building and make them out own . It is more realistic. You can actually have hundreds of soldiers in your army - all in perfectly ordered formations . Its quite cool to watch your massive army clashing into your enemy's massive army amid touching heroic music . It sure reminds me of Lord of the Rings. This game has only two civilizations - Roman and Gaul . There are Teutons too . But they only live in tents which you can capture and make the teutons there serve you . Other games like Age of Empires may have dozens of civilizations . But they all have the same units who look the same , except the a single special unit unique to that civilization . But in C.K each civilization is completely unique . Unique units , unique buildings , unique names etc . Everything is very detailed . There are magical items hidden in tree stumps , caves etc that units can take to enhance their abilities . It is all in all , a world of mystery . You never know what you will see behing the fog . Maybe a cave full of magical artifacts guarded by ghouls and evil monks , a cursed mountain , a secret druid sanctuary or perhaps a loyal army waiting to aid you when you despair of all hope . The AI is pretty intelligent . They are known to lure you away with a small force right into the enemy ambuish . Most importantly the AI Don't Cheat . Yet it is quite challenging . And the RPG mode is just fabulous. You play the Hero Larax who trades his soul to the war godess Kathobodua for highly enhanced strength and combat inorder to exact revenge on the teutons who destroyed his town and killed his wife. The saga goes on for 30 epic missions . In conclusion , this is an EPIC game that shouldn't be missed by any gamer .

Several years ago I mostly stopped paying attention to the RTS genre as my attention shifted to RPG games instead. So granted, I might not be able to compare to all of the latest RTS games, but I still know my basics of the genre. First off, graphics. Personally I love them. IMO good sprites are still able to kick the behind of mediocre polygons anytime, anywhere. And good sprites this game has for sure. The art is among my favourites of all RTS games I played. But what really matters is the gameplay. I have some mixed feelings overall. I played the tutorial and the first few levels of the adventure mode so far, so keep that in mind. It's possible that things change later on. The basic gameplay is quite good IMO. I like the concept of the heroes and how they interact with the regular troops. I also think they did a very good job at mixing RPG and RTS elements into one playable game. What I do think is a bit of a failure, is the actual battle tactics. As a player you have access to three different formations. No matter how much I try though, they don't seem to make any difference. In fact, my units don't even change where they stand when I change the formations. Did someone forgot to link these buttons so they actually work? The AI seems to be ill in the same bed. Apparently it's never heard of tactics or formations either. Instead, most combats come down to the same technique, namely endless waves of enemies crashing onto your troops. Like the Russian armies in the 20th century, it seems the AI just throws as many troops as it can against you, without bothering to use them properly. This makes the combat get dull quite fast, at least for me. Overall I'm still enjoying the game so far, or at least the adventure mode. But I have my doubts whether it can keep my attention until the end of the game.

I played this game a few years ago and it was a fun ride (the campaign anyway) with an interesting story, especially playing as the gauls. I fully recommend buying the game for this alone, however the mechanics are iffy and controlling large quantities of soldiers on the battlefield is a pain, added to less than awesome opponent AI means that when it comes to playing the game long term it gets boring and repetitive.

I have the Bulgarian physical version of the game. It's really really awesome. The campaign is just beautiful. I might actually pick it up here as well, since I always have to put the disc in the drive in order to play. I've played hundreds of hours against computer AI, which btw was quite challenging.