SkeleTony
Augur
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2006
- Messages
- 938
http://www.battlesofnorghan.com/
It is a turn based Gladiatorial combat/management type game. You start out with 'X' gold pieces to buy your initial gladiators with and there are several types of contracts you can offer, ranging from paying 'X' amount(based on how deadly/tough the gladiator is) for a single battle to a permanent "membership" contract(which costs a lot more.
There are several factors that go into determining a gladiator's worth as far as contracts go such as his actual age vs. his 'retirement age'(an age at which the gladiator will hang up his proverbial shield and call it quits). This makes elves very expensive and popular since they are in most cases effectively immortal whereas your human and minotaur gladiators will be turning over like McDonalds employees sometimes.
You get money just from participating in a battle and of course you get a lot more by winning. You advance through "Divisions" ranging from "Division 8"(the worst one...kind of analogous to lower division college football team) up through to "Division 1".
I am in Division 2 right now.
The different types of gladiators you can hire basically boil down to 3 or 4 archetypes: Melee fighters, archers, wizards and healers, as well as various hybrids(Druids are kind of like a Healer/Wizard hybrid whereas elves are an archer/fighter/wizard hybrid).
Archers are fairly overpowered in this game adn that brings me to my first gripe with the design.
The game's creator should have severely limited the inclusion of ranged attacks. It is just plain wonky in a 'Gladiatorial' game for every successful team to feature a few melees serving no other purpose but meat shield/distraction for enemy archers and wizards while the business of actually killing is left to the bowmen and mages.
My second gripe is one that I have with a ridiculous number of indie/shareware/freeware CRPGs: The inability to understand what the term "race" means in the genre of heroic fantasy.
Some of the "races" your gladiators can be in BoN:
Archers
Priests
Rogues
Wizards
Drakes
Elves
etc.
Elves, minotaurs etc. DO belong on that list. Because the term "race" is an indicator of both species and culture. Races can be of several to many different professions/classes/careers("barbarians" are also a "race" and not a "class" for this reason and this game gets that correct at least).
But "wizards" and "rogues" and such do not belong on this list, especially when the game already has a designation for "type"/class that indicates what type of professional gladiator one is. This gets really fucked up when you see someone of the "rogue" race who is a "fighter" or "fighter/mage".
Just poor understanding and design.
MY third gripe is the bugs. There are not a ton of them but the ones that do exist are annoying. On occasion when trying to have your priest cast a healing spell the game will not respond...as if you simply selected no action. But if you then try to select the "cast a spell" action from the menu you will get a "You do not have enough movement points to do this" message(movement points being like AP) when you never even moved anywhere. Also there seems to be some weirdness in how chances are calculated. Most of the time a caster with a 50% ability in casting a specific spell will succeed just under 50% of the time but one with over 85% will fail more than half the time(you will find this out if you have any priests with a "Prayer" spell skill over 85).
My 4th gripe is that the AI itself is not tremendous but they make up for this(as so many games try to do) by cheating. The computer is aware of exactly how far/how much/how little/who is what kind of threat/etc. and on top of that gets an absurd financial advantage over players.
My 5th gripe(and this is a major one) is that terrain plays absolutely NO role in this game. There is no "cover" getting behind a tree for example. An archer has the same exact chance to hit you from his maximum range when you are being a grove of trees as he does when you are out in the open ten feet in front of him. In fact there are very few tactical elements at all in this game(which is surprising considering it is supposed to be a gladiatorial combat game). You can aim shots at the head or torso(head is more difficult to hit but may do a little more damage or the opponent may have less armor there) but that is as good as it gets.
Also shields and shield blocking skill are ridiculously overpowered! if neither side has archers or mages and it gets down to two highly skilled gladiators slugging it out in melee, you could be there for hours waiting for someone to score a hit.
Last gripe is that they cram like 20+ teams/clans into a division and you have to sit and wait for ALL those battles to simulate before you can do your 'between battles' stuff.
having said all that the game IS still pretty fun. My only real regret in buying it is that I paid for the "Gold" version because it was advertised to have so much more modding potential but without access to the graphics resource files and ability to do your own custom graphics, it does not mean much to be able to mod and create your own units/races etc(which is about the only modding you CAN do as far as I can tell). Like having a map editor(which this game does not have) but no ability to save the maps you create.
There are other good points such as the skills increase as you use them(ala Jagged Alliance 2/Nahlakh). With a bit of polish this would be a truly great game. AS it stands though it is a good game...worth buying(arguably).
It is a turn based Gladiatorial combat/management type game. You start out with 'X' gold pieces to buy your initial gladiators with and there are several types of contracts you can offer, ranging from paying 'X' amount(based on how deadly/tough the gladiator is) for a single battle to a permanent "membership" contract(which costs a lot more.
There are several factors that go into determining a gladiator's worth as far as contracts go such as his actual age vs. his 'retirement age'(an age at which the gladiator will hang up his proverbial shield and call it quits). This makes elves very expensive and popular since they are in most cases effectively immortal whereas your human and minotaur gladiators will be turning over like McDonalds employees sometimes.
You get money just from participating in a battle and of course you get a lot more by winning. You advance through "Divisions" ranging from "Division 8"(the worst one...kind of analogous to lower division college football team) up through to "Division 1".
I am in Division 2 right now.
The different types of gladiators you can hire basically boil down to 3 or 4 archetypes: Melee fighters, archers, wizards and healers, as well as various hybrids(Druids are kind of like a Healer/Wizard hybrid whereas elves are an archer/fighter/wizard hybrid).
Archers are fairly overpowered in this game adn that brings me to my first gripe with the design.
The game's creator should have severely limited the inclusion of ranged attacks. It is just plain wonky in a 'Gladiatorial' game for every successful team to feature a few melees serving no other purpose but meat shield/distraction for enemy archers and wizards while the business of actually killing is left to the bowmen and mages.
My second gripe is one that I have with a ridiculous number of indie/shareware/freeware CRPGs: The inability to understand what the term "race" means in the genre of heroic fantasy.
Some of the "races" your gladiators can be in BoN:
Archers
Priests
Rogues
Wizards
Drakes
Elves
etc.
Elves, minotaurs etc. DO belong on that list. Because the term "race" is an indicator of both species and culture. Races can be of several to many different professions/classes/careers("barbarians" are also a "race" and not a "class" for this reason and this game gets that correct at least).
But "wizards" and "rogues" and such do not belong on this list, especially when the game already has a designation for "type"/class that indicates what type of professional gladiator one is. This gets really fucked up when you see someone of the "rogue" race who is a "fighter" or "fighter/mage".
Just poor understanding and design.
MY third gripe is the bugs. There are not a ton of them but the ones that do exist are annoying. On occasion when trying to have your priest cast a healing spell the game will not respond...as if you simply selected no action. But if you then try to select the "cast a spell" action from the menu you will get a "You do not have enough movement points to do this" message(movement points being like AP) when you never even moved anywhere. Also there seems to be some weirdness in how chances are calculated. Most of the time a caster with a 50% ability in casting a specific spell will succeed just under 50% of the time but one with over 85% will fail more than half the time(you will find this out if you have any priests with a "Prayer" spell skill over 85).
My 4th gripe is that the AI itself is not tremendous but they make up for this(as so many games try to do) by cheating. The computer is aware of exactly how far/how much/how little/who is what kind of threat/etc. and on top of that gets an absurd financial advantage over players.
My 5th gripe(and this is a major one) is that terrain plays absolutely NO role in this game. There is no "cover" getting behind a tree for example. An archer has the same exact chance to hit you from his maximum range when you are being a grove of trees as he does when you are out in the open ten feet in front of him. In fact there are very few tactical elements at all in this game(which is surprising considering it is supposed to be a gladiatorial combat game). You can aim shots at the head or torso(head is more difficult to hit but may do a little more damage or the opponent may have less armor there) but that is as good as it gets.
Also shields and shield blocking skill are ridiculously overpowered! if neither side has archers or mages and it gets down to two highly skilled gladiators slugging it out in melee, you could be there for hours waiting for someone to score a hit.
Last gripe is that they cram like 20+ teams/clans into a division and you have to sit and wait for ALL those battles to simulate before you can do your 'between battles' stuff.
having said all that the game IS still pretty fun. My only real regret in buying it is that I paid for the "Gold" version because it was advertised to have so much more modding potential but without access to the graphics resource files and ability to do your own custom graphics, it does not mean much to be able to mod and create your own units/races etc(which is about the only modding you CAN do as far as I can tell). Like having a map editor(which this game does not have) but no ability to save the maps you create.
There are other good points such as the skills increase as you use them(ala Jagged Alliance 2/Nahlakh). With a bit of polish this would be a truly great game. AS it stands though it is a good game...worth buying(arguably).
