Introduction
Released in November 2001 by Liquid Entertainment, Battle Realms is a conventional yet unconventional base building Real Time Strategy and received an expansion pack titled Winter of the Wolf a year later in November 2002.
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| Defending my humble village |
So what's so unconventional about it?
Well before we get to that we have to explain the conventional side of it no? You got 4 factions set into a fantasy universe, four resources and buildings and units that can be built. So what's so unconventional about it? Well while rice is the only normal resource you gather, water can be gathered, used to make rice grow faster and put out fires to prevent building from being destroyed. Then you have horses, yes horses as a resource, they are wild animals you have to capture before they can be mounted or in case of the wolf clan, be fed to the wolves. The last resource is the most interesting tho, Yin and Yang. Yin affiliates with the Serpent and Lotus clans, thus representing the villains while Yang represents the Wolf and Dragon clans a.k.a. the heroes. The only way to acquire this resource is combat, rewarding an aggressive gameplay. Then is is the way of creating units. You create peasants which in turn you send them to different buildings to train to a higher specialization. So let's say you send a peasant to become a Spearman then you send him to an alchemist's hut to become a Kabuki Warrior or a Dragon Warrior at the Target Range. The last little noticeable thing is that on some maps there might be boulders on higher ground which can be pushed over the enemy forces.
Aside from the skirmish, the game also features a campaign mode, telling the story of Kenji and allowing you to follow either the path of the Dragon or the Serpent. While the missions are quite similar on each side, going with the Dragon clan portrays a hero story while going with the Serpent Clan portrays the story of a despot/villain.
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| The beginning of Kenji's Journey, where you usually pick which province to go to first |
So the game is almost 17 years old, did it age like wine or??
While the game has taken a more cartoonish approach, being an old 3D game with few polygons means that The looks might not be for everyone but they're not really that bad for a 2001 game. If you're ok with games like Warcraft 3 then this game is just a bit worse regarding graphics. As for the sound department well you got quite a fitting ambient sound for each action, the voices are a bit studio like and despite having a pleasant soundtrack it's nothing to write home about.
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Ok so this game is so old, is it playable on my high-end pc or do I need to edit stuff?
Well by default you're stuck to a 4:3 resolution (e.g. 1024x768) but following the guide here you can get higher and wider resolutions as well at least to 3840x2160 which I was able to test. the 2D elements(like the UI) will be stretched but other than that everything acts normal. There are also field of view options for those that are not happy with the original ones. I kept the normal FoV for the screenshots.
The End?
While the game was pretty solid at it's time and ignoring graphics, it still is today, the only reason it wasn't that much of a hit was mediocre marketing, most people never even hearing of it. Should you buy it in 2018? Well if you really enjoy good RTS games then yeah, definitely, since you can find it on GoG.
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