In the face of stiff competition from the home console, it was once thought that the last, best hope for PC gaming lay in the far flung lands of Russia and Eastern Europe.  Many of these plucky, young developers, who have embraced the robust, open PC architecture, have delivered some great, unique games.  And for that, we are thankful.  But the floodgates are open, and we here in the west must ready ourselves for a deluge of mediocre crap.  Heroes of Annihilated Empires rides high on that crusty wave of yuck.

You Have My Sword…

The game is really very close to executing well on all fronts.  Despite the ridiculous sounding title, the game has a story with much promise.  As the aforementioned ridiculous title suggests, there are a couple of empires, and yes, they’re mostly annihilated.  You begin the game as Elhant, a brash elven ranger.  With him, as your “hero” you bop around a very Tolkien-esque world filled with Orcs and giant treepeople who taaaaaalllkkk reeeeeaaaaaallllly ssllloooooooooooooowwww!

While the narrative tends to grate after a short while, some of the voice acting a good, or at least a shade better than we’re used to.  Sadly, the most interesting part of the plot, a neat twist hinted at in the opening cutscene and occasionally within the game, never manifests leaving the player pretty disappointed.  It’s worth noting that this is the first game in a planned trilogy.  But come on, guys.  Throw us a bone here.

…And My Bow…

Heroes of Annihilated Empires looks really good.  The 3D engine used in the game generates excellent looking terrain.  It’s clear a lot of the game’s visual style is drawn from Tolkien, or to be more specific, Peter Jackson.  That’s not really a bad thing in this case.  At the very least, it’s fun to uncover the map in each mission because there’s so much great detail to see.

The game developers are the same people who brought us the Cossacks titles.  As such, it comes as no surprise that players can have thousands of units on-screen at once time.  It’s a trick, of course.  Most of the units are 2D sprites, but it looks great nonetheless.  And it’s certainly impressive the have a vast army at your command.

…And My Axe.

Unlike Cossacks, which is a straight up RTS, Heroes of Annihilated Empires is a fusion of RPG and RTS.  Like the Spellforce games, your heroes in HoAE are far more powerful than regular units.  They also level up from time to time allowing you to boost their attributes as you see fit.  Some of this, like the ability to purchase potions, new weapons, and additional armor work very well from within the game.  The leveling process is half-baked, however.  You don’t get to choose any radical skills (those are handed to you as the game progresses), you just boost some stats here and there and move on.

Let’s Hunt Some Orc!

The RTS part of the game suffers from the same problem the Cossacks games have had from day one.  Namely, if you’re going to give the player thousands of units to control, you had better damn well be sure to make it easy to control them.  Where other games with large numbers of units have wisely divided them into managable legions or squads, HoAE requires that you control each and every unit individually.

Sure, the rudimentary interface is here. You can drag-select, group them to hotkeys, etc.  But that’s about as far as it goes.  What’s worse is that your units don’t always follow orders, order them to attack en masse and some of them will flat out refuse.  Archers, all 200 of them, will elect to focus their fire on one measly orc instead of attacking a mass of enemies at once.  The usually useful “Attack Move” command doesn’t always work.  Strangely enough, your armies appear to do a better job if you just leave them alone.  Just move them in range and let God sort ‘em out.

Total Annihilation

Battles almost always devolve one huge clump of units attacking another huge clump.  If strategy suggests you focus your fire on a specific enemy unit, good luck finding him once the battle is joined.

Finally, there are some minor, silly mistakes that really should have been caught before release.  Character’s frequently talk during battles. And when they do, these huge thought bubbles pop up on the screen covering half the battle.  If you click through them, you’ll still have to listen to the dialogue as it doesn’t cue forward.

The Empire Strikes Out

Heroes of Annihilated Empires is almost engaging.  Despite dripping with cliché, the world is a fun one to visit.  It would be much easier to stomach the numerous design flaws had they delivered on their promise in the storyline.  But they didn’t.  You might want to have a look at the series if they ever get around to the sequel.  But for now, Heroes of Annihilated Empires is for RTS junkies only.

Article by: Greg Bemis
Video produced by: Mark Fahey