Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat

I haven't played Shadow of the Horned Rat back in the 90s, but I did play the sequel, Warhammer Dark Omen. Having played SotHR now for the first time, I'd say that it really excels in the atmosphere department but suffers from a very poor user interface. From the truly weird, handmade cutscenes to the intermission screens and voiced mission briefings, the game creates a uniquely dark, imaginative vibe. The original weirdness of the Warhammer Fantasy universe is very well depicted here. Later Warhammer games like Mark of Chaos are quite a bit less unique. The characters and the harsh game mechanics (any losses to your units are carried over to the next missions, and you have to earn enough gold to resupply and pay your troops) make it a believable mercenary simulation. The campaign management actually even seems to be more involved than in Dark Omen. I had to play even the first mission multiple times in order to beat it with small losses to my units. I wonder if the later missions will still be enjoyably challenging and not painfully hard. Replaying a mission is part of the appeal, though, and results in very satisfying maneuvers. The flanking tactics are believable. One essential tactic is to attack enemy troops from the front and the back to rout them, then go for the next one. What really mars is the game is the very poor user interface. After learning it from the manual you'll find that it's simply needlessly cumbersome. Even simple things such as selecting units or turning them around feel clumsy and counterintuitive. The camera is too close. In contrast, Dark Omen has an excellent user interface. This GOG release has a couple small bugs. Sometimes the Windows OK/Cancel dialog displays random characters. When finishing a mission, an intermission screen is shown but disappears after a split second. Since it's still a unique and fascinating game, I can't help but to give it 4 stars still, though compared to Dark Omen it's probably rather a 3-star game.

I play this game now for the first time. I used to play Dark Omen which I have always really enjoyed. This game preceded it but I never really got the chance to play it. Now I finally started and its pretty good. Ofcourse the mechanics are a bit clunky, but there is a lot of atmosphere in this. I hope they make some sequel to Dark Omen to honor this series. Its a lot different from the Total Warhammer games as far as I've seen. Works for me on Windows 10 without trouble.

Hi No problem at all loading and playing in windows 7. Graphics show their age, but what a great gameplay ! A must buy, IMHO

I was reading the comments, got excited to find back this game I love dearly (Dark Omen has the superior visuals, UI and banter, but SotHR has a much better campaign, and much more variety - both are great games) because someone pointed out that the "doesn't work" comments date back from 2015, and it works fine now. I blindly believe it, I get the game, start it, "prepare for battle" and... "points at score"

The game still crashes at the "prepare for battle" screen. For the sake of the Horned Rat fix it!!!!!!!