Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
Published By: Cavedog Entertainment

Reviewed by Strider
7/16/99

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First Impressions:

Being a freak for real-time strategy games (my favorite is StarCraft), I rushed to the store to buy "Dungeon Keeper II". As fate would have it, sitting on the shelf right next to "Dungeon Keeper II" was "Total Annihilation: Kingdoms" (Kingdoms). Frankly, and I know I'm probably in the minority on this one, I did not enjoy the original "Total Annihilation". But, when I picked up the box, I failed to notice the "Total Annihilation" part of the title because the lettering was so much smaller than the "Kingdoms" lettering of the title. If I had seen the "Total Annihilation" part, I seriously doubt I would have even bought the game. That would have been a mistake.

I arrived home with a copy of "Dungeon Keeper II" in one hand, and "Kingdoms" in the other. Ten days later I managed to drag myself away from "Dungeon Keeper II" to try out "Kingdoms".

Bluntly put, my first impressions of "Kingdoms" was : "where is my receipt?". However, if you have been paying attention, you know I just told you that it would have been a mistake to have not bought the game. Let me explain.

Graphics:

Graphics are appealing and add to the game. High video resolutions up to 16bit colors are supported and added enhancements are available for those with 3d acceleration. A high level of detail with regards to both the map terrian and units can be achieved if you have the monitor and video card to support it.

Sound:

When I initially installed the game, the sound from the game coming out of my speakers could have been mistaken for a badly tuned AM radio station. I realized it had been a while since I updated the drivers for my SoundBlaster Live. Thirty megabytes of downloading later, my sound card had the newest of the new drivers from Sound Blaster. If the only reason for downloaded the update to my sound card was to hear the music and unit sounds from "Kingdoms", I would not have bothered.

It's not that the sounds were BAD, it's just that they weren't all that GOOD. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh here, but after hearing the incredible sounds from "Dungeon Keeper II", my expectations were high. In fact, a friend of mine who works with sounds in games and played "Kingdoms" with me, thought both the sounds and music were pretty good.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is very good. The game consists of four different groups of units, or "Realms":

• Aramon - a realm of humans whose strengths are in artillery, cavalry, and infantry
• Veruna - a sea faring realm of humans whose strength is in their seaborne fighting force
• Zhon - a part human - part animal race that has more mobility than any of the other realms
• Taros - composed of the dead and undead, the realm of Taros have harnessed the powers of magic like no other in Darien

Like its predecessor, "Kingdoms" will allow you to integrate new units into the game. This should add to the appeal of the game, and keep things interesting for the player. At the time of this review, a new unit was available for the Aramon realm at Cavedogs website.

Playing as the Aramon, you can literally blast your opponents with artillery. The trebuchet, described in the manual as "the ultimate in medieval archery", is one serious piece of weaponry. It has probably the longest range of any weapon in the game. Using either a Spyhawk or an Assassin (an Assassin can turn invisible for a limited period of time), you can target your enemies defenses or buildings deep within their territory and turn them to rubble in no time.

The Taros have a wide and deadly variety of creatures that can inflict some serious damage to your enemy. I enjoyed the Fire Demons, whose slow gait was more than compensated for by their long ranging and powerful fireball blast. A large group of fire demons can wreak havoc. The Weather Witch was also fun to use. She has spells that include a tornado, thunderbolt, and ice storm. It can be hard to use one in a large attack group, because she has to be relatively close to a target to launch her spells against it. However, the ice storm can turn an opponents defenses to debris, leaving a doorway open for your offensive attack group.

If it's a sea battle you are looking for, pick the Veruna. They have an impressive armada of warships to choose from. Remember the trubuchet I mentioned from the Armon units? Well, the Veruna have a sea borne trubuchet. While it does have a slower cyclic rate, it is mobile. Wham! It does seem a little strange to me that this is the only realm that has any navy to speak of. I'm more used to games where, although each race had different strengths and weaknesses, all could build air, land, and sea units.

The half human/animal forces of Zhon are a bit more challenging to use than any of the other races. For one, they don't have near the defensive capabilities of the others. I did enjoy pummeling my opponent with Stone Giants, but I didn't experiment with the full range of Zhon units. One clear advantage the Zhon have is the ability to summon units anywhere on the map. Place a Beast Tamer or Beast Lord where you want to create units and go to town. Hint: use the shift key when you select the Tamer or Beast Lord; you can then assign the character multiple tasks (enabling you to queue up the building of units).

The only map resource you need to be concerned with is mana. In fact, mana is the only real limitation you have other than the space on the map. Each mana resource you take adds to your overall maximum mana reserve. As you create units and buildings, your mana reserve is drained. Happily, mana is restored gradually to you in real-time. This allows you to build a huge number of units rapidly.

Caveat Monarch! The more you build at once, the quicker your mana reserve is drained, so watch your reserves carefully. You can easily create a starvation problem where ALL your building stops because your mana supply can't keep up with the demand. If this happens, simply cut back on the building. In the multiplayer maps that I played, each player base had at least two mana reserves close by.

One more quick thing. As a unit gains battle experience, its abilities increase. A unit or structure that has gained significant experience will turn a gold color. Screenshot (1) shows a mage tower that has turned gold after killing 25 enemies.

Something of a tangent here, but being so involved with the web, I can't help myself. The CD comes with an html presentation that includes some Java applets, Flash, and high quality graphics (X:\atlas\index.htm, where X is the drive letter of your CD-ROM). The presentation gives you a flavorful taste of the Four Realms of Darien. However, it does not give any information useful to learning how to play, like a detailed description of each unit from their respective realms. You can download an excel spreadsheet that breaks the units down for you, but it's a bit terse. It would have been cool if the presentation detailed the units, in addition to the introduction of each Realm. The presentation is neat though.....

Enjoyment:

At first I was disappointed, but playing multiplayer convinced me of the quality of the game. The later levels in the single player game are enjoyable, and they provide a good way to warm up for multiplayer madness.

The AI can be stupid at times, and I'm sure expert players out there will find ways to exploit it quickly. Even a novice player should notice some of the AI stupidities. For example, the computer would try to attack my group (and I mean four or more ) of walled off towers with a pitifully small force. And like a dummy, it would send unit after unit toward my mage towers, only for them to fry in misery. And of course, the more a tower kills, the more experience it acquires, the more deadly it becomes.

Multiplayer:

Kingdoms has a number of options for multiplayer games. You can join Cavedogs online gaming community Boneyards, hook up with Mplayer.com, or play on a LAN using TCP/IP.

In a mutliplayer game each side starts the game with a single unit called a Monarch. The monarch you start with varies by the realm you choose to play as. Using your monarch you begin to build yourself an assault force. By default (it is a toggable option), if your monarch is killed the game is over for you. Luckily, killing a monarch is no easy task. They can take quite a pounding, and they automatically regenerate their own health. Each monarch has a variety of powerful spells that make it difficult for an opponent to eliminate you early in the game. One thing a monarch can build that no other unit can is a gate (take a look at screenshot 2). This allows you to wall yourself in with defenses, while leaving a passage out through the gate (which can be closed and opened of course).

In mutliplayer you can set the maximum number of units allowable per player. None of us reached the default maximum of 150, but maybe we weren't building aggressively enough. I did notice some game slow down when I commanded some thirty - forty units to attack my opponent.

Most of the realms of Darien have strong defensive capabilities, making it more of a challenge to take your opponent out. Of course appropriate use of artillary cat take care of that! I played multiplayer "Kingdoms" with some friends for a few hours, and we all had a blast.

Singleplayer:

DO NOT JUDGE THIS GAME BASED ON THE FIRST FEW LEVELS OF THE SINGLEPLAYER ADVENTURE. I can't emphasize this enough. When I said my first impressions were bad, this is what I was eluding to. The first few levels of the singleplayer game are to easy for anybody with strategy game experience, and will easily put someone off who has high expectations. Hang in there! Later on the levels increase in difficulty, and in enjoyment.

In single-player you will have the opportunity to play each of the four realms of Darien. With each new mission, you will be able to pick from a growing variety of units to use. Unlike StarCraft, which groups all the Terran, Zerg, and Protoss missions together, you are exposed to the different realms in an intermixed fashion. I found this much more interesting, because I was always eager to try different units from different realms.

Overall Impression:

The variety of units from the four different realms, and the ability to enhance the unit set from the web, coupled with strong multiplayer gameplay is sure to appeal to strategy game players of all abilities. An experienced strategy game player may find the AI in the game less than challenging. I would recommend the game to anyone who enjoys multiplayer gaming.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

None that I could see. It appears to be a neutral game. The monarch of Veruna and Zhon are female. Other than that, only the harpies, weather witch, and priestess are females.

Doctor K's Perspective:

No comments were made from Doctor K.