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No storyline

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I just picked up this game, got it with Warlords 4 for free. After installing it, I realized why it came free - the game sucks! It seems to be an improved version of WBC1, but they left one thing out - a story. In WBC2, The goal of the game is to take over the world. That's it. You're shown a map, and asked which territory you want to take over. No real purpose to it, except mindless slaughter. I'm sure glad I didn't waste 40 bucks on money on this game. If you live for multiplayer, this might be a good choice, but for those of us that would rather play a single player game, don't waste your money.

Great way to kill some time...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I picked this up over the weekend because I had some extra cash burning a hole in my pocket, and I admit I was surprised by the quality of this game. The game is a breeze to learn, but there are some nice complexities that will challenge most gamers. I like the combination of RPG and RTS that this game employs, and I can imagine (although I have yet to experience it for myself) that this game would be pretty fun to play in a multiplayer environment, which is offered. If nothing else, it's a great way to pass the time until the next 5 Star game comes out. Enjoy!

Not as Great as I Thought.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: March 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I first played the game, I thought it was great fun; I was utterly amazed at the AI because the computer could beat me so badly every single time!! The game's a fast paced, real-time strategy game (For those who don't know: real-time strategy games are like: Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, War Craft, Civilization, Pharaoh...I hop I don't have to go on.) Anyway, the game is extremely original with it's use of heroes and guys. So that each unit has it's own identify and name! And not only can you train your hero and use him in battles to come; but you can train up even the units you produce and use them in other battles. Really cool. Besides that the resources here work quite differently; and I thought it was great; so even though I kept fighting until I won. After that I decided I would switch civilizations with the computer. I had been the Barbarians; but I decided to be the Deamons. Then I realized why the computer was beating me so badly. The Deamons are so, so much more powerful. Often one blow from a Deamon will kill a Barbarian where about twenty blow from a Barbarian would only wound a Deamon. The Barbarians have no counters for the Deamons; and most of their units are just plain in capable of even fighting back. (The Deamons are air born and throwing fireballs while the Barbarian knights just stand there and get killed without being able to reach the Deamon.) Even the ones that can counter attack are much weaker. That said: the game is unbalanced; but it is still fun. You can make the decision on buying.

Good for low end computers

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: March 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

266 Mhz CPU
64 MB RAM
300 MB Disk Space
DirectX 8.1
No 3D accelerator
Win 95/88/ME/2000/XP

Warlords Battlecry was a critical success as a deep game, but not to many gamers warmed to its weak graphics. The sequel largely leaves gameplay untouched and updates to a nicer graphics production. It's not cutting edge stuff by any means as you can tell by the very mild system requirements. Game appears very stable.

The game does boast a lot of depth, and if it's your cup of tea you're going to have a lot of fun for a long time. It has 12 playable races, 20 different hero types, a huge non-linear campaign, 140 different units, 100 spells and a ton of quests. It comes with 50 different skirmish maps, a map editor, fog of war toggles, revealed map toggles, 6 different AI strengths to play against and multiplayer support.

Resource production is a large part of game play. Players need to mine four different kinds of resources; gold, metal, stone and crystal. The map usually clusters one of each kind near the start positions, and sprinkles the rest across the map. The player's hero can covert mines and buildings to player control, and once under player control mining is automatic. Up to eight peon type units can be mass-produced to work in each of the mines to increase production. You will need to build at two central forts to build peons fast enough to staff your mines. Once production of resources is fast enough you'll need 3-4 military buildings pumping out troops to take advantage of the rate of incoming resources. At the same time you'll need to run your hero all over the map converting and reconverting all the essentially indefensible extra mines across the map.

If this all sounds like it should be named Fantasy Resource Production Manager 2 you're correct. Most hardcore players will be ultra familiar with this sort of game opening and if you're sick of it then avoid this game. The good news is that once established buildings can be set to continuously produce units so at least after running your opening book for resource production you can start thinking about having a battle. However after all that hard work the actual battles are rather uninspired affairs. Too quick, devoid of tactics and dull to watch.

The depth angle largely comes from having a hero that increases experience over many games and slowly develops into an awesomely strong unit. Kind of an RPG addition to a RTS game.

There's basically nothing actively wrong with the game. For all intents and purposes it does what it sets out to do, and is executed competently. I think it's only going to appeal to people who played and enjoyed the original Warlords Battlecry though. I really want to give 3.5 stars, but there's no option for that.

Personally I'd suggest you take a look at Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns before you spend money on this. Kohan has a similar theme, but largely removes micromanagement, has better tactical considerations and epic thundering battles. Other options to consider would be Heroes of Might and Magic 4, or even wait a couple of months for Warcraft 3. (Also Warlords Battlecry is out in a Jewelcase version as well, so maybe give that a spin)

GUIDE TO PARENTS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 21
Date: October 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a review from an adult who cares about kids. This is a very fun game for mature teens and adults. I would not recommend for younger children without strict parental guidance. Here's why: This is a fantasy role-playing game. Reminiscent of Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons. It can be great adventure for those wanting to see good defeat evil. But game also allows player to play evil characters such as Daeman, Undead, Dark Dwarf, Dark Elf, Orcs, etc. Which might be harmful to young inpressionable pre-teen or immature young teen. Game also has a few minor characters with somewhat sexually suggestive character traits and graphic images.

For the mature teen and older this game is harmless and could be very exciting. I'm thirtysomething and enjoy playing.

Just thought some of you parents out there might want to know the other aspects of the game.

The Best Games You've Never Played

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

WBC2 is one of the best games to be ignored by the game-buying public. As such, it's also become one of the best values for your RTS dollar. The graphics and sound are decent, and will hold up for another few years, at least.

Game highlights:

* 12 distinctly different playable factions. If you have a particular style of play, there's probably a perfect faction for you. If you like to switch play styles, this provides more variation than any other RTS (except perhaps Seven Kingdoms 2).

* A randomly generated campaign. No, there's no story. And if you absolutely require one to get into a game, give WBC2 a miss. The random campaign generator (also reminiscient of 7K2) gives a much greater replayability than a fixed linear story-based campaign. And you can make your next move based on the bonuses you'll receive from victory in a particular scenario, which is very cool.

* RPG-esque elements as you build your hero up from a level 1 weakling to a level 50 one-man-army. This is fun. It's can be imbalancing, too, as, toward the end, a well-designed hero can literally wipe out an entire faction on his own.

Game lowlights:

* It's probably not very well-balanced. This isn't Starcraft. Certain factions are going to get their butts kicked by certain other factions, depending on how they're played. This isn't as bad as it may sound, though, because the truth is it's hard to know whether the factions are balanced or not. There are too many possible combos and techniques and much rests on the player.

* It's not as stable as it should be. It's reportedly quite stable, but in my experience (on multiple machines) crashes to the desktop are pretty standard fare. Some scenarios seem to generate conditions that cause frequent crashes--and a crash counts as a loss for your hero.

* The problems with instability compound the fact that you can have only one save game for your hero. The one save game makes sense from a technical standpoint: If your hero levels up, he can't go back and replay an old saved game where he was a lower level. But it combines with the instability to make a particularly annoying low point.

In fact, really, the only thing that keeps this from being a five-starrer in my book is the stability issues. If you keep coming across a crash-point in a scenario, and this counts against you, it can take the fun out of what otherwise is a wildly imaginative and truly different entry in the glutted RTS genre.

Gaming bliss

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The Warlords Battlecry series is a great batch of RTS games that constantly get overlooked by gamers who take the more commercial successes like Warcraft. Their limited commercial success is unfortunate considering the high quality of the games.

The Warlords biggest success is in its incredible variety of options. There are tons of hero classes and plenty of offerings for your race. These options allow for tons of replayability and all of the various combinations are fun to try.

Another fun aspect of the game is its risk-like campaign. Your hero begins on a province and you slowly build up your lands, gaining bonuses with each territory you take. The campaign is fun but it feels lacking without any sort of story. A story mode would have been nice in addition to the campaign and skirmish modes but I guess it would be hard to make a story mode with so many races at hand.

Skirmishes are fun as you get the chance to use the same hero you built throughout the campaign to play in regular battles. As the hero gets stronger, his options on the battlefield expand. The offerings in spells is amazing as are the various artifacts. The hero can combine certain artifacts to make sets and gain additional bonuses. Spells range all across the spectrum with polymorphing spells and lightning bolts to heal and summonings.

Overall, the game is an outstanding work in the RTS genre. Unfortunately, it grows a bit repetitive after a while and lacks any real story which limits me to only giving it 4 out of 5 stars overall.

No high end pc? No problem

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game i great if you find yourself stuck in some place that you don't want to be at and have a laptop that isn't very high end spec to play games. First of all you can have a hero that you play through skirmish battles and campaign that grow with each battle. Next is all the different races there are. Mix with quests and other abilities you can choose a few pretty cool ways to play: make your hero a one man army, a powerful magic user, a charismatic commander, a crafty merchant, etc...

Okay heres the bad part. Graphics aren't very top notch at all. Game play might get a little boring, but of course this game is only for those temporary occasions.

All in all, its a game that will run on a lot of systems, easy on the wallet, and fairly enjoyable.

Wonderful.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: February 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Warlods Battlecry II (Ubisoft, 2002?)

Warlords Battelcry II was recently damned with faint praise in the pages of Computer Gaming World as "the best realtime strategy game completely ignored by the public." Having now been caught in its grip for weeks, barely coming up for food and sleep, I'd have to agree.

Much of the problem, I think, lies with the game's demo, which gives prospective players no idea how the game actually works (the demo contains the tutorial encompassed within the purchased product to teach you how to do such things as move and build, but doesn't get into the game's strategy aspect-- which is what makes it so engrossing), and to top it off must be run with the game's most annoying character, the barbarian hero. After finding myself totally hooked on Warlords Battlecry for a few weeks after getting it free(!) from Computer Gaming World last year, I downloaded the WBC2 demo. About three minutes into it, I remember having downloaded it just after its release and finding it eminently forgettable; the strength of the first game caused me to pick up a cheap copy of this one when I found it at Half Price Books. It's the best videogame investment I've made since getting my hands on a copy of Lords of Magic back in 1997.

Twelve different races with a bunch more class/specialty combinations, loads of hero customizing, the occasional random map, and your ability (within limits) to define the strengths and weaknesses of your whole army as you go along make the game almost endlessly replayable You're liable to lose your first few heroes fast and furious when you start out, but once you get the hang of playing any given side (and the strategies for best using each are radically different from side to side, for various reasons), you can stop concentrating on just keeping your skull in one piece and start working on the more subtle aspects of offing the other guy before he overruns you.

Wonderful, and highly recommended. ****

Great RTS with great gameplay

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: October 16, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is much better than Warcraft 3. While Warcraft 3 uses a 3d graphical system and looks decent (but sometimes terrible), Battlecry 2 uses 2d graphics that look great and never cause slowdown. Units even create footprints while walking across sand. The hero-building options are really nice. You don't have to choose everything about your hero at first, he or she just develops as you play, and you choose a class, specialization, and abilities/spells. There are a lot of different fantasy races to play, such as humans, undead, two kinds of dwarves, three kinds of elves, daemons, fey, minotaurs, and orcs. The gameplay is smooth and easy to control, and the building interface never gets in the way. It even tells you what you can build or research, and how to make those options available. The resource gathering is very simple as well, with more customization than games like Total Annihilation Kingdoms but less micromanagement than Starcraft or Warcraft 3. All in all, this is a great game that is lots of fun to play, that has a lot of options (and a lot of replay value).

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