Empire Earth 2, Emperor, Spellforce

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Empire Earth 2 is on a promo here and Emperor and Spellforce have been released in a budget series. Still, I have a number of promo games that I don't want to play, so I thought someone here has surely played those and I could ask. I've heard that Empire Earth 2 has some serious problems with unit AI. I've also heard that Emperor sucks, even if it looks promising and I enjoyed Caesar or Pharaoh. Haven't heard anything about Spellforce, though. Opinions, anyone?

 

Spellforce is the only one of those I've played. The voice-acting is appalling, but the rest of the game isn't bad. It's an interesting RTSRPG, with a very generic fantasy setting, and a multiplayer quite similar to Warcraft 3, with heroes levelling, and beasties not belonging to any player sitting around waiting to be killed for their items. Since it's on budget, it wouldn't be a bad buy.

 

I thought Emperor was a great game, and improved on Ceasar 3/Pharoah style greatly. The only thing I could complain about is, that its too easy.

Unfortunately I have not played the other 2 games.

 

Too easy? That would be good, I sucked at Caesar III. Maybe I'll pick it up.

 

ahhh Cesar 3 was hard for me also, its hard to maintain the 'upper class' apartment blocks, and get the require goods circulated around the markets (even if you have enough).

 

Yeah the walker system really irritated me (especially after I had a really good 'zone' system from Caesar 2). So many things required, so many little men.

 

Indeed, that aspect of Caesar III sucked a lot. It was better in Pharaoh.

 

Did they eliminate the walkers? Or were they just easier to control?

 

More like more intelligent. I don't know how they did it, but it worked. There was still some rampant dumbness but not as annoying as in Caesar.

Got Emperor yesterday, by the way. Haven't played yet, though. Still have to finish SoU and HotU first.

 

Chev, I've played Emperor and when you get around to playing it I would like to know what you think.

In Pharaoh/Cleopatra they added ugly road blocks that gave more control over the walkers.

In Caesar III I ended up 'cheating' by editing so that gatehouse cost little or nothing and iirc used less employees. I then used them as road blocks in difficult areas.

Has anyone ever played any of the Funatics "Culture series" games? The series wasn't liked in the USA mainly because the first one was slow and took a lot of micromanagement. It was cute tho.

 

I have Spellforce (the Gold edition you were mentioning) and I like it. From rpg it takes char advancement, but lacks choice. The game story is very linear, you don't get to make choices, everything is preset. The only choice you really have is whether or not to do the subquests.

From RTS it takes the building of a base, summoning units and attacking with an army. This works quite well, but lacks the depth of strategy of a pure rts title. It's rather, make a large army and send it on a rampage, more there is not to strategy.

Now, I know this sounds rather negative, but I can assure the blend works. And you easily switch from solo exploration to phases with party exploration ala bg, with a party of 6 max, to a rts phase, building your base and such.

I also noticed spending a large portion of time equiping my characters. Everything is part of your inventory somehow, be it characters (except your own avatar), units, buildings,...... I also really like the select-and-click combat system, which works great.

The story is good too, eventhough, like said before, it is linear. There is enough alternation between the three kinds of gameplay to keep the game interesting. A nice touch is that you're not just playing missions, you're advancing in a vast world. You can freely travel back to any place you've been to, and by following the main quests (and sometimes side quests) you just access the portals that will take you to other parts of the world previously inaccessible. It's like in bg, you're totally free to go whereever you want, as long as you have covered the ground inbetween.

It runs very smoothly, and your avatar is very customisable. The graphics are good, and the interface very intuitive.

I recommend it, but also recommend to play the demo first. The demo includes the prologue, which is the tutorial, and a pretty difficult "island", since it is actually quite far along in the story already, so don't be amased if you fail it, although it does offer a nice view of the possibilities.

 

The good thing about Emperor is that labour not necessarily needs to be close to housing, place a lumbercamp anywhere on the map for instance, and it will immediately start production. In Caesar 3 and Pharao production sometimes stopped, because the walkers wandered off in the wrong direction a couple of times, and then you got a message that there weren't any employees living nearby. The bigger your city gets, the more intersections you'll have to build, and then the problems will automatically start. Roadblocks only partially take care of that problem. Not sure anymore if it was the same with Zeus, it has been too long since i last played that one.

But i definitly liked Emperor, even the aspect of combat has come a long way since Caesar 3, although i usually bribed any invaders off. I'd win most battles, but the damage that can be done to your city before the fight is over can be significant, especially when the enemy appears on a part of the map where there's no fortress anywhere nearby.