Reviewed: September 25, 2002
Reviewed by: John Carswell

Publisher
Strategy First

Developer
Haemimont Games

Released: August 30, 2002
Genre: Strategy
Players: 8
ESRB: Everyone

8
8
7
7
7.9

System Requirements

A few highlights from Celtic Kings's lengthy features list:

• Large world consisting of many maps that the player can navigate at will
• Integration of character development and major battles
• Combined RTS and RPG experience
• Numerous characters and conversations
• 40-60 hours of game time in one large-scale adventure
• LAN and Internet games with up to 8 players
• GameSpy Arcade support
• Random map generation
• In-game scenario/adventure editor
• Large maps with up to 32000x32000 pixels
• Support for 5000 units on the map
• Support for 1024x768 or 1280x1024 with thousands of colors
• Total of 45 different units with many animations

The action in Celtic Kings centers around the game's greatest asset: Heroes. Performing many of the same roles as the main character in an RPG, Heroes interrogate NPCs, gain experience, level up, collect magical items, and so on. Because of this, a hero starts off as a generally weak character but can become a one man or woman army whose proper use is key to winning any map. The magic objects they can collect range from damage-enhancing garments to mass-healing "spells". I would have liked to have seen more variety in these items, but as with so much of the game, Celtic Kings is really a strategy game taking its first trepid steps into the world of role-playing, not an RPG trying to introduce heavy strategy elements into its mix.

Far from being lone adventurers, your Heroes play an instrumental role in troop control. Unlike in many other games, the units in Celtic are very inefficient without the presence of a leader. By attaching your units to a Hero, your troops gain the ability to fall into formation and receive a noticeable boost to their stats. This not only makes your Heroes that much more valuable, but at the same time, forces you to put them in harm's way. There are few things more rewarding in Rage of Wars than seeing a wave of your best units pour over an enemy encampment under the guiding hand of an experienced Hero.

In the skirmish and multiplayer modes, you start with a Stronghold capable of producing the basic units. I found it was best to create a hero first and then build up around him or her. You only start off with swordsmen and archers but better units such as axemen and spearmen require minimal research and can be obtained within the first few minutes. As your village begins to build its first army, it is time to take your Hero around the countryside to find preexisting structures and villages. Since there is no base building in Celtic Kings, the map is littered with forts and hamlets that automatically switch ownership to the first player who finds them. Although you start off with one village, you'll likely want to find more as they produce your food which is needed to keep the troops alive and can also be sold off for much-needed gold.

This food commerce is one of Celtic's greatest strength as the food must be carried to its destination by a mule which requires you to create and protect supply lines. These supply lines are then key to victory as once they have broken down, your troops with starve and die while your purse empties, leaving you powerless and penniless. The depth and complexity this adds to a generally simple game are invaluable.

The maps are incredibly large and fully exploring one can take quite awhile, especially for a defensive player such as myself. This huge expanse of the unknown can remain largely untouched, even after your territory encompasses multiple forts and villages. The effect this creates is wonderful, as an aura of mystery and foreboding can be carried well beyond the first half-an-hour of gameplay. A side affect of these immense battlegrounds is the lack of an on-screen mini-map. To compensate, Haemimont has implemented a full screen map from which you can command your units in real-time. This approach feels very natural after only a few minutes and allows the gamer to control many more troops than they would have otherwise.

Once you have built a respectable army and have fortified your initial conquests, it is time to build up and out. This includes upgrading your current arsenal, researching new units, and summoning more heroes to command even more armies. Although Rage of War does not offer a huge tech tree, there was enough there to keep me interested. In fact, it was actually a welcome break from the endless researching attached to other strategy games. Besides, the stronger units and unit-upgrades are expensive enough that it is unlikely you'll be creating the best troops until well into the game.

Of course, the final goal of any map is to overtake your enemy's stronghold. Aside from the obvious units, Celtic Kings: Rage of War offers a number of extra abilities to help you in this task. Firstly, scattered across the playing field are ruins containing power-ups. Sending your hero to fetch these enchanted artifacts will cause a huge loss of health (presumably from fighting the creatures inside) but can imbue him or her with new attributes such as extra levels or a limited ability to instantly kill targeted units. Your troops can also build catapults to knock down enemy gates, incapacitate towers, and generally wreak havoc on fortresses. The end-result is a single and multiplayer mode that is fun not in-spite of, but because of its simplicity and departure from the usual RTS formula. Of course, Celtic Kings provides the gamer with more than a random map generator to play with; there is the always-important campaign mode to be tackled.

The story mode is preceded by a brief but well-crafted tutorial that introduces you to the basics of Celtic Kings while giving the player an early glimpse at the game's atmosphere. The basics of the story put you in the middle of an escalating battle between the Gauls and the Romans. Although you play as multiple characters, you see much of the game through the eyes of Larax, a simple warrior forced into a life of revenge. Much of this tutorial holds your hand and seems to be geared towards people unfamiliar with the strategy genre, something RPG-only gamers will appreciate. Thankfully, the ambience is so rich that even the most experienced strategy fans are unlikely to grow impatient.

As the main campaign begins, the player is eased into the story with a brief scenario requiring virtually no strategy and is mainly there to introduce Celtic Kings' first few main characters. The dialogue here (as throughout the game) is the standard affair and never seems to achieve a personality of its own. The lack of voice acting compounds this problem to where I found it difficult to care about the story or its characters. Haemimont Games has also included a degree of exploration, but without an engaging story to propel the player, this meandering feels like dead time rather than adventuring.

Moving deeper into Rage of War, the missions grow more complex and include defending outposts, ransacking enemy outposts, and performing small quests for NPCs. Unfortunately; the missions are still overly simplistic and usually consist of fighting wave after wave of the enemy. Since there is no base building and often no base management, I found that too many objectives consisted of little more than my staring at a huge battle and hoping that stats and luck were in my favor. Since the game limits the player's ability to replenish troops and there are so few decisions to be made (if you only have one Hero then splitting-up your troops is counterproductive and there are only three formations to choose from), I found it hard to gather up any excitement as new maps were opened.

Units are well animated and, despite a lack of variety, move very smoothly and look excellent in large numbers. The animation can be slowed by lots of action and will at times unexpectedly speed up, but these complaints do nothing to degrade the overall polish of Celtic Kings' visuals. As for the unit models themselves, at 1024 x 768 they all managed to look excellent and were all large enough that I could tell what type of troops they were. My only complaint here would be that it could be too easy to lose track of who was on who's side in larger battles.

Celtic King's style of music fluctuates and is often at odds with the rest of the game. Although there are a few memorable tunes, many of the songs conflict with the game's essence. The end result is small but it does damage the game's atmosphere.

For RPG fans, things are not so certain; Celtic Kings adds little that cannot already be found in Warcraft III and does so with less polish. In the end, if you're an RPG fan who enjoys the odd RTS then you'll likely get your money's worth--just go in understanding that Celtic Kings is an RPG-influenced strategy and not the other way around.