Celtic Kings: Rage of War

Had a hard copy of this game back in the day, the second I got GOG, this was the first game I looked up. Love it. Played through the campaign three or four times. It isnm't like most RTS games out there, with unique game play that involves pre-built buildings, so no need to spend the first twenty minutes of gameplay creating your village. The Campaign foscuses on a hero protagonist, who can level up and gain special items, which is great. Youy could speed thropugh the campaign in five hours if you wanted to, or you could spend time exploring the maps and solving hidden side quests. Fantastic game that concentrates on lore and strategy, versus formulaic empire building.

Note: I have played much of the adventure at this point and am writing this review off of my experience with that and the tutorial. Graphics (3/5): What's there is good, but I'm left wanting more. I want moving details on these buildings - rather than seeing a static forge attached to the blacksmith, I imagine seeing a man come out and work it - little details like that make any game a whole lot better, and the lack there-of in Celtic Kings disappoints because the rest is so promising. In addition, the terrain doesn't change much and, while that may be realistic (not sure), it's not very pleasing to the eye. That said, animations are beautiful and the game looks wonderful besides the lack of any animation to buildings. Sound (2/5): I'm a student studying and learning sound design for films, and this game just plain disappoints in the sound department. Vocalizations are strange, awkward, and often become annoying. The music, while good for a while, becomes repetitive and stays repetitive (from what I've heard in the adventure there is one track of music for this entire game). Combat sounds serve their purpose, but are also extremely limited in variety. Gameplay (2/5) : Units run out of food too quickly. Way too quickly. In addition, they move too slowly. Sure, you could turn game speed up. And then everything looks like it's fast-forwarded. Your old druid looks like a robot trying its darnedest to walk as fast as it can without running. For the animations to look good and function correctly, you basically have to play the game at default (very slow) speed. It becomes tedious (especially in a game that tends to encourage so much exploration but often leaves that exploration unrewarded for long minutes). Often, unit type and description don't seem to make much sense. For example, today I sent a mixed group of spearmen and axemen into a group of teuton raiders. Not a single axeman died, but they cut through the spearmen (which, even in the in-game description, are supposed to counter cavalry) like an obese child through chocolate cake. I was excited about the Druid unit, but for all its cool abilities, it's is also about as tough as I am - it crumples after a few hits from some horsemen, and I've yet to find a mass that can block a unit's beeline toward the weak old magic man. This makes investment in it and its abilities costly and risky, and overall too much of a trouble to bother with - there is no reason to use them unless they're contrived for the adventure objectives. Summary: The 2d is beautiful, but will also leave you wishing that it were more-so. It's a tease that doesn't ultimately deliver. The sound is mediocre to bad. The gameplay can be summarized as tedious. It's a fun game to look at but not very great to play, and with its limited palates and unit variety, it probably won't last you very long.

After reading around on the net for some reviews for this game, it sounded like they'd managed to pull off the whole RTS / RPG crossover rather successfully, so I had high hopes. The game looks good (for a sprite based game), the presentation was pretty slick, and everything worked smoothly on Vista straight away. Everything seemed pretty kosher, but then at Map 2 in the Adventure mode the difficulty for me just sky-rocketed. I got slaughtered over and over again and just couldn't seem to progress. When I finally did, the next mission got me slaughtered over and over... Its entirely possible I missed a trick somewhere (I'm not a hardcore RTS fan normally), but it just seemed there was no way I could progress without adhering to some kind of "magic solution". I've read stories of people loving this game, and it's supposed to progress well and be a great laugh with some pretty deep later game play, but for after 2 days of frustration, I had to un-install. If anyone would care to message me or the like with advice and a basic getting started guide (the tutorial didn't really seem to cover all aspects..), then I'd be happy to hear it!

This looks like a neat RTS city-building game, and the play control is pretty enjoyable. Getting your warriors to shout their battle cry at buildings to weaken the defenders is pretty cool, too. But the game has a huge stumbling block very early on - you have to pretty much perfectly maneuver and execute an attack on a massive enemy force, and if you lose, you lose! Lame. I want this game to be cool, but it just doesn't execute itself well.

I was honestly surprised that I really liked such a small game and that it had so much to offer. The story is good, I especially liked that the Romans are not the main characters, it has a level up/training system, small details (for example, in the animations or the animations of the icons), it is easy to learn and there is a system to it. In Camelius' campaign, defeating the mad druid and the final battle against Tiberius Livius was quite nerve-wracking, but the character himself and the rest of the campaign are very good. What I didn't like was that there were parts where the game was too difficult, the enemies kept coming infinitely numbers and there wasn't really any strategy, the battle was decided by how many and how strong the units or heroes were. Furthermore, I think the 2 factions were a bit lacking, for example, they could have made separate factions for the Teutons and the Vikings, luckily, this was done in the second game, only with different nations. I still have 3 small problems. The hunger system is a bit confusing sometimes, and also the landscapes themselves. Some of the voice acting is quite weak, the levels themselves are really huge, beautiful, and there's a lot of work on them, but outside of the main missions and storyline, most of them are pretty empty. Overall, I can only recommend it. Considering that it takes up so little space and isn't expensive, I think it's a really good game and has a certain atmosphere, so it definitely deserves a chance.