Sol Invictus
Erudite
I know. I know. I've said bad things about the beta demo. But that was the beta demo. The game's actually pretty damn good, and it's way better than that other trash EA recently developed and put out: Battle for Middle Earth - a game that doesn't measure up to the C&C franchise (well, except for Generals, which also sucks) or Rome: Total War (the game it tries to emulate in vain).
But I digress. What I wanted to talk about is how fun this game is. Really. I'd call it a successor to Warcraft 3, or if you didn't like Warcraft 3, then it's a successor to Starcraft. The developers of AOX (Armies of Exigo) even took a lot of input from Starcraft's developers (and Blizzard's former employees). I know, a lot of you don't much like the whole micro/macro/strategy stuff that features in Starcraft and Warcraft, so the game's probably not for you if you're not into that kind of game. I've always been more of a Total War series man myself, but I've room for games like these. I'd put Total Annihilation and Red Alert 2 in the same RTS category as AOX.
It's really well balanced and in that way, it beats the hell out of Dawn of War. That game would have been a pretty good 'successor' to the SC/WC games, if it had more than 1 short campaign and an actual balance between the races - oh, and actual modding capabilities. Enough about Dawn of War, though.
The game comes with 3 full campaigns (for the 3 races: Imperial, Beast and Fallen) sprawling over 36 missions. The game's biggest feature are the tunnels, which exist under the surface of every map. You can dig into them and use them to your advantage. Fortifying a tunnel would allow you to mount a good assault against an unsuspecting enemy above ground, for instance. As I recall, Earth 2150 had a similar feature, but it wasn't fully utilized. AOX is a game of counters, rather than brute force or rushing. A pikeman is going to kick a knight's ass, and a knight will kick a swordsman's ass, and a swordsman is going to kick a pikeman's ass. You get the picture. Of course it's a lot more complicated than that, but those are the basic concepts.
The game allows you to group a limited number (15) of units together, but what it has that other games doesn't have is the ability to create a Supergroup, which is a group comprising of various smaller groups. So you won't have difficulty creating a Main Attack Force (15 pikemen, 15 swordsmen) and placing them into a supergroup, and placing 15 Archers and 15 other support characters into another supergroup. It's just a lot better than having to micromanage a ton of individual groups.
AOX has a pretty flexible scenario editor comparable to the ones in WC3 and Starcraft. There's even a little Chess mission that plays very well (kicked my ass, too) within the game's "Custom" scenarios directory. You can even play that in multiplayer with somebody else.
Multiplayer's pretty good. It has support for 12 player games, and a variety of game modes including Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Team Melee and Chess. Heh, that's as almost good as Myth 2.
Overall, the game is very polished, and if I were one to judge RTS's, I'd call this the best one of the year - at least the best RTS of this 'sort'. You can't compare it to Rome: Total War. It'd be like comparing apples to oranges. It's a lot better than say, Kohan II, Axis and Allies, Dawn of War and the like - and even most RTS's of this sort for the years before it: except Total Annihilation, a game that will always hold a special place in my heart. TA had physics, ballistics and y-axis. I'm not sure if AOX has y-axis in terms of ballistics, but I doubt it.
It's developed by Black Hole Games and published by Electronic Arts (ugh). Electronic Arts has had absolutely no influence in the game's development. The only bit of EA you'll see is the game's matchup lobby.
Bottom line? It's a damn good replacement for Warcraft 3.
But I digress. What I wanted to talk about is how fun this game is. Really. I'd call it a successor to Warcraft 3, or if you didn't like Warcraft 3, then it's a successor to Starcraft. The developers of AOX (Armies of Exigo) even took a lot of input from Starcraft's developers (and Blizzard's former employees). I know, a lot of you don't much like the whole micro/macro/strategy stuff that features in Starcraft and Warcraft, so the game's probably not for you if you're not into that kind of game. I've always been more of a Total War series man myself, but I've room for games like these. I'd put Total Annihilation and Red Alert 2 in the same RTS category as AOX.
It's really well balanced and in that way, it beats the hell out of Dawn of War. That game would have been a pretty good 'successor' to the SC/WC games, if it had more than 1 short campaign and an actual balance between the races - oh, and actual modding capabilities. Enough about Dawn of War, though.
The game comes with 3 full campaigns (for the 3 races: Imperial, Beast and Fallen) sprawling over 36 missions. The game's biggest feature are the tunnels, which exist under the surface of every map. You can dig into them and use them to your advantage. Fortifying a tunnel would allow you to mount a good assault against an unsuspecting enemy above ground, for instance. As I recall, Earth 2150 had a similar feature, but it wasn't fully utilized. AOX is a game of counters, rather than brute force or rushing. A pikeman is going to kick a knight's ass, and a knight will kick a swordsman's ass, and a swordsman is going to kick a pikeman's ass. You get the picture. Of course it's a lot more complicated than that, but those are the basic concepts.
The game allows you to group a limited number (15) of units together, but what it has that other games doesn't have is the ability to create a Supergroup, which is a group comprising of various smaller groups. So you won't have difficulty creating a Main Attack Force (15 pikemen, 15 swordsmen) and placing them into a supergroup, and placing 15 Archers and 15 other support characters into another supergroup. It's just a lot better than having to micromanage a ton of individual groups.
AOX has a pretty flexible scenario editor comparable to the ones in WC3 and Starcraft. There's even a little Chess mission that plays very well (kicked my ass, too) within the game's "Custom" scenarios directory. You can even play that in multiplayer with somebody else.
Multiplayer's pretty good. It has support for 12 player games, and a variety of game modes including Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Team Melee and Chess. Heh, that's as almost good as Myth 2.
Overall, the game is very polished, and if I were one to judge RTS's, I'd call this the best one of the year - at least the best RTS of this 'sort'. You can't compare it to Rome: Total War. It'd be like comparing apples to oranges. It's a lot better than say, Kohan II, Axis and Allies, Dawn of War and the like - and even most RTS's of this sort for the years before it: except Total Annihilation, a game that will always hold a special place in my heart. TA had physics, ballistics and y-axis. I'm not sure if AOX has y-axis in terms of ballistics, but I doubt it.
It's developed by Black Hole Games and published by Electronic Arts (ugh). Electronic Arts has had absolutely no influence in the game's development. The only bit of EA you'll see is the game's matchup lobby.
Bottom line? It's a damn good replacement for Warcraft 3.
