Reviewed: December 21, 2004
Reviewed by: Richard Cross
Publisher
Global Star
Developer
TimeGate
Released: September 21, 2004
Genre: Strategy
Players: 8
ESRB: Teen
9
9
8
9
9.1
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
The first game in the Kohan series, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns was released back in 2001. The new fantasy spin of Kohan was a welcome addition to the tired old RTS genre. The game truly guided the RTS genre back on track with minimal micro-management and exciting campaigns. Kohan was all about the strategy and dedication it takes to create a well designed real-time strategy game.
Kohan: Ahriman’s Gift was released in early 2002. It added new immortal heroes, new units, new spells, and a few other new features that the original did not have. I didn’t believe that this title was worthy of being a completely new release that sold in stores for forty to fifty dollars. It may have found more sales success if it had been released as an expansion pack to the original Kohan.
Fast forward to 2004 and the recently released Kohan II: Kings of War. Kohan II is every bit as fun as the original released three years ago and a worthy successor in the Kohan series. The game starts off right where Kohan: Ahriman’s Gift ended. The Kohan are rebuilding their empire after the Great War against Ahriman and his Ceyah troops. You have been informed that there is an unknown force attacking the small towns and forts around Istaria. You hope that it is not the Ceyah and thus have sent out a seeker by the name of Naava Daishan to investigate these attacks.
The game consists of a new campaign with 25 missions. You will command the Kohan, and at one point in the quest, you even get to command the enemy’s troops. The change of pace is nice since you will be very familiar with most of the Kohan units and upgrades by this time. You should play through the tutorial mode before attempting to play the campaign mode. The campaign mode is much more challenging than the tutorials, and the more practice you have before taking on the dreaded enemy, the better.
The gameplay has been much improved over the original Kohan. The developers have also added many new features and tweaks that the original did not have. One of those improvements is the ability to group your companies together when traveling into a battle. This new feature keeps your companies together so that the mounted cavalry does not outrun the foot soldiers. They travel together in an organized group and engage the enemy together, instead of having the cavalry get massacred before the rest of your troops even arrive to the battle.
Another new feature is the ability to have your city handle the structure building all by itself. You click on the structure that you would like to build, and the city selects the build location for you and begins dispatching builders to construct the building automatically. This new process really saves time and minimizes the micro-management so that you can focus on the exciting parts of the game, like combat!
The combat system hasn’t really changed much from the original, but the graphics are truly amazing in this new version. The unit models, the buildings, and even the environment have all been redesigned in a new 3D environment. The game also allows you to zoom in and out on the area of play. Once you have zoomed in, the character animations and spell effects are truly amazing.
Another area that the original game was lacking was in the ability to change the game’s resolution. The original’s resolution was locked in at 1024x768. This was great if you had a higher end system that supported this resolution, but three years ago many people did not have systems that would support this resolution. K2 allows you to select the resolution that you would like to use. The one minor complaint that I do have is related to the game’s on-screen interface. I believe that it is larger than it needs to be, thus limiting the amount of action that you can see on-screen at one time. It is tolerable if you zoom all the way out on the action, but I would like to see more of the screen at the higher resolutions. From what I could tell, it seems that the on-screen interface was the same size no matter what the resolution was set to.
The original game had great sound, and K2 doesn’t disappoint in this category either. The steel on steel sound of swords clashing is just a primer for the rest of the game. The cut scenes between missions are very well done both visually and verbally. The voice acting and the musical score are both better than the original.
The one complaint that I had with the original was when you select your company, the verbal acknowledgments became repetitive over time. The variety with which your company acknowledges your selection in Kohan II has been improved and does not become as repetitive as the original. It seems that the developers listened to their audience and improved this newest version of Kohan in every category.
As I mentioned before, there is only one single player campaign. You may think that the value of K2 would suffer because of this lack of single player missions. You are definitely wrong if you believe that this game’s value ends there. There are additional tutorial missions that I highly recommend you complete. Each tutorial mission will get you familiar with different aspects of the game. One mission will teach you how to manage your resources and build your cities, while another mission will teach you about combat and troop management. Each tutorial mission will help you gain knowledge of how the game works and what strategies are successful and which ones fail.
The game is fairly linear in the path you take to get to the final conflict. If you were to play the game through again, each mission would play out differently but end with the same final conclusion. Because of the nature of building your companies, this game really has endless possibilities of how you win each mission.
There are six different races in the game. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses. Within each race, you can choose one of five different factions. This diversity really allows for unlimited gameplay potential. Each race plays a bit differently depending on the faction that you choose for it. It is truly an unlimited system and a highlight to this game.
As with the original Kohan, this one also includes numerous multiplayer options. The game doesn’t offer the ability to do direct LAN play, but with the inclusion of GameSpy Arcade, you will have unlimited competition available on the Net. GameSpy Arcade opens up the architecture of this game so that you can go online and play any of the built in maps or you can have it generate a new unique map by using the built-in random map generator. You can also use the included map editor to create your own and share it with your friends.
I have to highly recommend that you try this new incarnation of the original. TimeGate has outdone itself this time and I only wish that other game sequels would follow this example. Kohan II: Kings of War really pulls you into the action. The storyline is very original and the gameplay has been designed to make it easy on beginners and RTS veterans alike. The musical score has been well written and coincides well with the storyline content. Once you add the multiplayer aspect to this game it truly is very hard to beat in terms of value.
Kohan II will make a great stocking stuffer for someone you know this Christmas. You will be hard pressed to find another fantasy RTS game that has the engrossing background and storyline of Kohan II: Kings of War.