God knows how much time I spend playing this game. Frustrating moments were actually not very cumbersome. I look back on it fondly.
I played this game a lot in the past. Although it is very ambitious in scope and has a lot of cool elements, such as the temple-units and the rock-paper-scissor model for ground-fights, supplemented by increasingly advanced supplementary units, it doesn't live up to the idea of Age of Empires-throughout-the-ages. It just doesn't cut it. The biggest problems are the graphics, which, although in nice 3D, look absolutely ridiculously ugly up close, and the way the units work and move, which is extremely clunky et cetera.
This game, probably really long, has made already a lasting impression on me. I don't know exactly what the story is supposedly, but at the same time, I kind of do, and I feel it helps me.
Kyle Katarn's story of redemption and revenge is lovely, surrounded by mysterious characters and the gloomy vibe of post-republic, late-empire, early-whatever-is-new republic that hangs in the balance, and gives everyone a sense of purpose. This whole game echoes the earlier games of Star Wars Jedi World, but adds so much atmosphere that it stand well on its own. What can I say? I replayed it endlessly, endlessly, trying to win over Joan, trying to kill Desann. Fighting for my lightsaber.
A game were one controls a bunch of warriors and peasants in an Arcadian-Eastern setting, very romantic presentation. It is apparently made by a Japanese company, which is good; I would not play it necessarily for the history lesson, but the story has a kind of scope like you would expect from a game set in the Far East, with lots of Eastern cultural tropes making a return from time to time, and yet it is not a ridiculous or overly fanciful story. Also, a variety of clans and heroes - which are similar to Warcraft III heroes in a way, but more simple (yet at least as interestingly presented) - make every game a little legendary Eastern legend of a legend, very nice. What sets it apart is the flow, that arises out of the peasant mechanic, very cool.. There is definitely something to like for everybody then, even if it is not perfect. Maybe, despite the richness of the presentation, it falls short in this regard: Either this game is a section of a partition to be understood partly itself as completely arbitrarily 'Orientalist' - for all intends and purposes - or it is authentically, and commercially, a matter of 'scheinen im selbst' as Hegel would say, so a kind of knowingly writing one's own history through a game in a sense; "solely according to analogy, inasmuch as God is essential being, whereas other things are beings by participation." For it is a strategy game; which is one of my favourite genres exactly for this reason, that stuff seems real and is still so controllably simulated, that it combines the best of both the arcade-action worlds of game-play basically and also the best of the simulated life-games even, like The Sims perhaps even. But even is this is true, I can heartily recommend it to anyone who likes the Far East, either by way of culture or by some heroic motivation of identity, or a need to identify, with something different than what one already knew as being his own Western guise that was for them the 'being self' of being a Western person...
Right up there with StarTopia and Dungeon Keeper 2 as a theme-driven game that allows you to take an original perspective on familiar settings. It is all about that kind of pleasure that you get from listening to cynical british voice-actors and witty playings on words that keeps these kind of games from ever really getting very old. But honestly, it is mostly the music that is what gives this game its magic. Because the main menu has this weird polyphonic choral composition as a main theme that is just so creepy yet fascinating at the same time, you just have to be convinced that this is virtually a classy game, even though it might actually be mediocre - but the soundtrack by Peter McConnell (who would also do Grim Fandango) summons players to start a new game each time, simply because of these ironic spiritual themes that you kind of need from time to time, to take a distance from your own death almost. Still, as has been pointed out elsewhere, you cannot expect this game to entertain players for long, for it has only a narrow array of possibilities and promises, and honestly, as soon as the esthetic starts losing its edge and its thrill, the game's value is mostly spent - and you will have gotten your money's worth perhaps, or you will feel shorted yourself. Still, it is a unique setting and it has never been done better, and it is one of the cleverer heaven and hell simulators; and you can, for once, fight for both sides as you do not have to choose for good or for evil but get to cater to each in equal measure if you want your Afterlife to succeed; that alone makes it unique in the history of wasting time playing old games.
