Heroes of Annihilated Empires

This game is worth a go for sure. It has some fun, interesting elements to it that I enjoyed seeing combined and brought some life to the experience. The plot is.. or was, very intriguing. As said in another review, when you finish this game you get the feeling that the creators were just beginning to tell an extremely interesting story. The hints at sci-fi throughout the game really make you start to wonder what is coming around the next corner as far as storyline is concerned. I remember playing through this game for the first time and when I was finished I just could not wait for the next one to find out what these insanely out of place modern elements were going to mean in this classic fantasy setting. Unfortunately the developers never had a chance to fully realize their dream.. but the game stands on it's own nonetheless.

The heroes are tons of fun, a lot of customization for a real-time strategy game. The factions are neat and all play reasonably differently. Unfortunately, the maps are stale and boring, and the real-time strategy part of the game is effectively "throw units at your enemy until they die." Get it if you like the idea of laying waste to armies with your powerful hero for a few hours, but don't expect much beyond that.

90% of this game is a Diablo I clone with 10% of it an actual RTS. The RTS elements are pretty light when used, and they are only used on a few maps. So if you are looking for an RTS, you might want to look elsewhere. It really plays more like an action RPG in the vein of Diablo. So for most of the game you have an RTS map with a single unit to control, and you run around killing everything looking for decent drops. Drops are usually potions, some of which help increase your stats. There are also chests scattered around usually guarded by creatures you'll have to kill, which contain money, potions, armor or weapons. There are also shops available on most levels. Some shops sell potions, others sell magic spells, while some sell equipment. You'll usually have to clear out an area to be able to access the shops. You guide your main character through level after level of baddies, mostly huddled in bases or occasionally paroling an area. These will remind you of RTS style maps where you need to roam around to lift the fog of war. The maps get a little repetitive, but its not horrible. You're character can equip a sword or bow, and also has a selection of spells used to help defeat your foes. The enemies are somewhat varied although in the middle of the game it was a lot of the same. As you gain in experience the baddies get harder to defeat, and you'll have a lot more of them on your hands. As you kill things you gain experience, and when your experience hits a level you get to upgrade your stats. The stats system is unique in that you can either choose from a selection of boosted upgrades, or wait and pick your stats as normal. The spell selection is pretty interesting. There are roughly 18 spells to choose from and you gain new spells as you progress in the game. Some are just plain useless, but other are interesting. You get a mix of damage spells, area effect spells and summoning spells.

Well, not exactly, though it does resemble some things from the Cossacks and American Conquest series. But this has enough unique features as RPG elements, besides the RTS mode you control a hero, who evolves and you shape his abilities, choose whether it should be a wizard or a melee tank, though mainly he will remain a shooting ranger. Story is interesting and the world is teasing you to explore every corner of every map to find that potion or artifact or just pump experience a bit more. Selecting what items to use can be hard and confusing and i personally felt the lack of really good items. Some of them have good stats, but usually they have enough bad stats to not want to wear that helmet, boots or else. Spells are interesting and many of them are useful, but not all. Also it is very cumbersome to change spells in your spellbar, as it uses mana while you swap them in you spellbook and i didn't find any other way. About the story. I thought it will end at mission 10 or like that, but it started to build up further, introducing new interesting races and lands and it is really pity we won't get a sequel for this game. Game has some minor glitches and menu is using 800*600 i think, but it was rather stable and din't crash on me at all (Win7 x64). Good game. I will never forget crashing gazillions of skeletons with one mighty spell blow :) Or that nasty ogres chasing me all over the map :)))