This is not a bad game: It nice graphics and sound and solid game mechanics. No bugs, no crashes. Probably runs on fairly low spec hardware. But it is not a good game either. What you do is pretty limited in decisions and actions and those repeat over and over... The beginning is the hardest and also rewarding when you manage to get past to a point where things get much easier. But then it is just grinding for XP, items and money over and over and over again. The battles themselves are well made and you have a variety of different enemies and beast coming up. But when you do the 20-100 battle vs undead it is not that fun anymore. They get better units as you progress. But it is not that different. Also a lot of time you run back to the point where you got your mission to collect money. And the distances between the goal and start get much larger later. It is not really fun. I have played until I had most of my people at level 7 of 10. And I see no reason to play on... Also the game was much cheaper, when I bought and the DLC - I have two of them, seem to be overpriced and do not really get discounted on sale.
I am still learning the game after about 15 hours played. But it is really fun playing. In the beginning easy on slow speed was very difficult. And now after learning units and strategies, the same battles that ended in the enemy massacring my armies over and over end int great victories. A few tips: WC2 has the same units as WC1 and you find most informations about their abilities if you look for the first game in the sequel not the second. In combat similar to Age of Empires 2 always have your units partrol in. The army will fight far more effective. There are very tanky units that can not hit flying units. So even a cheap flyer may take them on where you would loose a whole army of ground troops. Some units do tripple damage to heros, some do tripple damage to dwarfs and so on. Some units can not be hit by arrow towers... There is a lot of knowlegde involved to choose a usefull army composition. But that makes it so much fun. And developing the hero adds a whole new layer to this. And then there are spellcasters and heros casting spells. Which also adds a layer of possibilites. I also like the base building. You can build all around the map, if you have the ressources. And the system of ressource gathering by converting mines and increasing production by adding workers is also done well and forces ongoing confrontation. Runs stable on Windows 7. But ironmen heros can only be saved in Windows XP and before. And even though there are some high resolution options, the two highest may result in crashes, if I read this correctly. But the 3rd worked well enough for me.
It would be in the top ten of best games ever made, if I had to choose. I played it when it came out and once in a while ever since. Compared to Civilization and Alphacentauri, this one is my clear favorite. It is better than the newer Colonialization with the Civ 4 engine. The only bad thing: The larger you get, the more micromanagement there is. And it can be a bid too much before the revolution.
Ich hatte nach Siedler 4 (in deutsch) gesucht. Das angezeigte Produkt gekauft und nun habe ich nur die Wahl zwischen Englisch und Polnisch. Was schon eine Beleidigung für alle Deutsche ist, die das Spiel am meisten gekauft haben... GOG so nicht... Hatte schon keinen Bock mehr als ich das alles in Englisch sehen musste....
mit kastriertem Multiplayer... Die Beschreibung auf der Webseite ist ein bisschen irreführend: Es müsste heissen: "Multiplayer NUR über LAN möglich" und nicht "Multiplayer noch (?????) über LAN möglich. Ich hatte es gekauft, obwohl ich noch die originale CD-Rom Version habe und den Installationsprozess vereinfachen wollte... Aber da muss wohl die GOG Version runter und die originale rauf... Ansonsten eines der besten Spiele überhaupt. Ich gebe nur einen Stern, weil die Version hier keinen Sinn macht...
Ich würde zum WW1 Teil der Serie raten. Die Karte hier sieht ziemlich ähnlich aus. Die Mechaniken sind gleich. Allerdings hat der erste Teil massive Fronten mit massen an Einheiten, während hier die Karte ziemlich leer aussieht... Dazu kommt, dass da ca. 10-15 Szenarien (alle auf der genau gleichen Karte sind), die sich auf den ersten Blick sehr ähnlich sehen, ohne dass da gekennzeichnet ist, welches davon nun die Große Kampagne ist, falls es eine geben sollte. Das war im anderen Spiel deutlich besser gelöst. Ich habe es jetzt nicht sehr lange gespielt, weil mir jetzt nicht wirklich viel Spaß gemacht hat. WW1 habe ich dagegen bestimmt 200 Stunden zufrieden gezockt...
Approved for hardcore strategy players. Decent AI - takes a while to find its flaws, good challenge even on medium difficulty. And it does a good work of simulating the grinding trench war, where advancing just a few hexes may take forever... I am pretty absorbed with every turn. It is a bid hypnotic to watch through the enemy turn waiting to try to get forward. It had a good balance. While France was about to fall - so was the Osman Empire almost at the same time. So it was kind a race and very interesting to play. But pretty sure not for everyone... A game takes like 3 days full time playing.
Hello, the game would not run installing it on a PC with windows 7 ultimate 64... I found that some one pointed out that it needed direct play... It was the same error message that others got. Now I then tried it on a second PC also with windows 7 ultimate 64 and it works there... When installing on this PC I was very carefull not install any compromised windows 7 hotfix. It also could be that I had installed the necessary files, when installing other older games and finding a solution, when not running... But as it is, buying this with windows 7 is hit or miss... it should bring any file needed and run with every version... I haven't played it yet, I just wanted to contribute to the Windows 7 issues...
