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Req.: P3 400, 64MB RAM, 8MB video card, 500MB hd Reviewed On: P3 600/744, 384MB, GeForce 3ti 200, Win XP Pro | |||
Intro With the recent flood of excellent RTS's on the market it's easy to pass up a less-marketed game like Celtic Kings. That's too bad, too, because much like Kohan, this is one of those smaller games you really shouldn't miss. Celtic Kings takes place in historic Gaul during its Roman occupation sometime around 50 B.C. By "occupation" the Romans actually meant rape, pillage, burn and everything short of salt the land. In the primary single player campaign, the player takes control of Larax, a young Gallic warrior out for vengeance. Gameplay: 8/10 Things start off with a surprisingly good tutorial which explains the overall flow of a mission. Gameplay in Celtic Kings is an odd mix of Diablo, a standard RTS, and resource management not unlike the oft-overlooked Kohan. At times Larax himself will wander off and fight off hoards on his own, going on sub quests for items that improve his abilities, rescuing fair maidens, all that good stuff. Other parts of the game involve huge armies clashing, as is good and proper for any RTS. The aspect of the game that most caught my interest was setting up the infrastructure for each mission. The game is not so much about building units and jumping up the tech tree as it is balancing between production and income while keeping trade flowing between captured towns. It's all the interesting little details like guarding trade caravans and things like that which make Celtic Kings a refreshing play. Aside from the parts where Larax goes lone wolf, most things in Celtic Kings are pretty epic. The maps are huge, some supporting up to 5,000 units. There are 55 different units, lots of variety in the missions, and a plot that kept me interested. It wasn't the greatest RTS plot ever (that title probably goes to Starcraft) but it certainly got the job done. There
is a second mode of play, which is much more like a standard RTS. Again, there
is no building construction, everything is preset, and in this mode there are
no subquests or other things to distract from the objective: total annihilation
of the other side. This mode is much more straightforward, but still fun. Again,
the unique balancing act does make for fun gaming, but without the story and other
aspects that adventure mode has, it didn't hold my interest as long. This method
is the only way available for multiplayer, and it works well enough, but a co-op
adventure mode would have been really cool. That's probably because I have a huge
soft spot for co-op and mention it in every damn review, so take this last part
with a grain of salt. Graphics:
7/10 Sound:
5/10 This organization also carries
over to how groups are managed while giving commands. Assign a "general"
of sorts and the group does what he does. So that way with just two or three commands
it's possible to control several large squads at once, making big battles quite
a bit easier to handle. That's not to say the game's easy, mind you. Most times
I thought I had enough units to handle a fight I was wrong, and fleeing can be
difficult thanks to wonky path finding. Not that this is anything new, few RTS's
don't completely suck at pathfinding. Overall:
8/10 [ top ] |
