Total Annihilation: Kingdoms + Iron Plague

Although this game pales in comparison to genre standards like "Starcraft," "Warcraft," and "Age of Empires," the story campaign is worth a playthrough. Note: this game should be played at 640x480, 32 bit, 144 hertz resolution. You will follow the conquests and conflicts of five mystical kingdoms, each with their own unique strengths and flavor in a rich fantasy setting: the stalwart, artillery-focused Aramon, the ferocious jungle hordes of Zhon, the horrifying undead and magic-wielding armies of Taros, the seafaring armadas of Veruna, and the technologically advanced, science-based Creon. On some missions, you even get to play with Monarchs, extremely powerful units and the leaders of these factions. The campaign spans 73 missions (48 in the base game and 25 in the expansion) and includes a rich story with fun cutscenes and narrations. Unlike other RTS games, the player character will shift factions between levels rather than playing as a single faction over many levels in row, so you feel connected to the victories and frustrations of each kingdom. What makes this game fun is that the primary resource used to build structures and units is mana, and it's in an unlimited supply. Players build special structures on mana sites called lodestones or mana refinery to extract mana. The more lodestones you have, the more units you can have and the faster they are built. Because mana is unlimited, you can raise massive armies. A lot of the levels last several hours and feature intense battles won through strategy and attrition, which I personally like. Be warned that this game is not for the faint of heart. While the game starts out easy enough, the difficultly gets harder and harder, especially in the expansion. There are some truly nail-biting, stressful levels that will test your endurance and fortitude. If you're up for a challenge, this game is for you. This game lacks some polish and balance, but it's still very fun.

playing this nowadays in my mid-30's, i realize why i wasn't capable of beating the addon's campaign when i was a kid x'D are you somewhat bored by the modern strategy games, by their AI simply playing like AI's do, by the games somewhat not being as difficult as games in the past when you really had to use ur brain and weren't taken by the hand? go grab this one. you'll love it. you'll see the ai defending environmental trash if it's the reason why the ai can mass it's troops up near your base. and you'll see the outcome of PLAIN EVIL DEVS doing campaign maps. they haven't just thrown a insane AI against you that won't allow any difficulty settings, no no, they put you in the worst possible strategic places and the ai in absolute dreamspots, with paths so narrow that your units can barely walk them. sounds like a pain in the ass? i promise, it isn't. you'll be sitting there thinking "there must be a way, something that i'm overseeing, cuz what i tried so far hasn't worked out yet" - and then, when you're laying in your bed, the game won't let go of you, pulling you back to your pc because you finally believe to have found the answer. just to find out next day that you just had to try so much harder what you tried at first, because THAT's the way. skill. nothing but raw strategic skill. you can use the numpad +/- keys to speed up or slow down the game, up to a complete halt, during which, because it's not a pause per se, you're still allowed to micromanage all your stuff. if you love micromanagement, but online RTS pvp is too fast for you whilst the pve of modern games doesn't really challenge you, here's your best shot. oh and i just love that i can send a row of knights riding along enemy lines and the knights will hit with their giant swords without having to stop their motion for battle, that really makes it fun^^ PS: i recommend 1200x800 solution. that's a fair compromise between "identifying things" and "not ordering around a clump of pixels".

I really wish I knew this. Even played this back in the day, only got for nostalgia. I've got well over 200+hrs and the fact I recently and accidentally learned about the Shift controls.. They never explained any of these controls. Granted, it is not a difficult game in the slightest (aside from DLC missions) but knowing the Shift controls allows your units builds to add to their queue, allows yo to make better parol routes and even clear multiple debris from the battlefield. Seems a bit of an over-site to not at least mention this tidbit. My first and still one of my favorite RTS games, still get nostalgia when I boot it up.

First of all, if you want to play this without issues, make sure to use the software renderer. Glide feels off and is restricted to an aspect ratio of 4:3, whereas Direct3D shows no videos or menu animations. Using the software renderer and a widescreen resolution of 1600x900, the game looks and plays great. TA Kingdoms has always had a burden, namely the "Total Annihilation" part, which came with certain expectations. Kingdoms didn't really meet those, as many key elements of TA were missing. You still construct resource gathering sites on dedicated deposits, but there is only a single resource, and things such as height advantage, sightlines, artillery fire using the radar, and so on are mostly absent in Kingdoms. That doesn't mean that Kingdoms doesn't have its own qualities, however. The fantasy scenario, which is pleasantly removed from the usual WarCraft and Lord of the Rings tropes, gives the player four rather diverse factions (five with The Iron Plague), each which their own wholly distinct (and often plain cool) units. The story is told through a length campaign interconnected through cutscenes, which has one take on a different faction every few missions. Much like in TA, the presentation is rather sober, though Jeremy Soule's excellent soundtrack once again helps create an enthralling atmosphere regardless. The main flaw with the campaign is how easy it often is, rendering many missions a bit boring at times. The Iron Plague addresses the difficulty issue and then some. Even the first few missions will already test one's abilities, and require the player to have mastered all the mechanics the game has to offer. Due to its unreleting nature, the Iron Plague finally plays more like a proper TA, and certain mechanics such as unit experience finally become important—for instance, throwing troops against defense structures is a bad idea, as they'll only get stronger with every kill. In short, if you like TA or fantasy RTS in general, do give this a try.

Well, after many years I still have it on my PC and play it from time to time. It has it's own charm and on my opinien very under-rated.