Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat

While there are a lot of reports of the game not working at all, the GOG edition works fine for me. I also have the original CD sitting not 3 feet from where I sit, but I could never get that to work on modern systems so it's worth the money just for whatever magic GOG has done to get it running. If you want to play it, buy it and rely on GOG's money back guarantee if you're one of the unfortunates affected by the bugs. The game itself is a type we never see these days, an RTS where troop losses carry over to the next battle in the campaign. Poor performance in any single battle has a cascade effect where you lose more troops than you can replace leaving you that much weaker in the next battle, meaning you have to perform even better to keep yourself in the game. Perform badly enough and you'll run out of gold, and your remaining troops will be easily put to the sword. Compared to even the highest difficulties of modern RTSs, SotHR gives a level of challenge that is unequalled, without even once seeming unfair. While the UI is clunky by modern standards, it hasn't aged as poorly as some of its contemporaries. I consider Warcraft 2, released the same year as SotHR, to be borderline unplayable now. In comparison, once you're used to the controls, this game is still a lot of fun. If you're interested in a game that requires you to make tough tactical and strategic choices, and keeps you on your toes every moment, this one could be for you.

I've been waiting to play this game since 1996...back then we didn't have a computer powerful enough to run it so when I saw GOG had it, my jaw dropped. Sadly, I can't get past the "Prepare For Battle" screen before it crashes. Windows 8. Does anybody (GOG?) have a fix for this?

like most people it just crashes cant get past prepare to battle. Should be prepare to see blue spinning circle.

Found in forum. Helped for me, and I think that it's the cure for the problem. Also it answers why problem persists randomly. "Found an easy way to figure out what program is currently causing an issue (since it seems to be different for different people). When the game freezes, don't kill the process. Open the task manager and go to the "Details" tab. Scroll down to WHSHR.EXE, right click it and click "Analyze wait chain". A window will pop up with the culprit that's causing the game to stop. I'm on Windows 10, and I don't remember if older task managers have the same option, but this is what I did. Funny thing, the game is still alive at this point, and brings up the battlefield immediately if you stop the other process instead."

Win7 x64 , game runs fine. And this game is damn hard. Hope they will adopt Dark Omen too.