TA:Kingdoms

reviewed by WizZard

Introduction:

I had played some TA and thought it was a good game. So I was pretty exciting when I saw that TA: K was released. I bought the game when it came out here in Norway and rushed home to try it.

My first impression was very good. At first, after I had installed it, I just played around with the main menu interface for a second. I started to play a custom, didn't bother to play the campaigns yet. I played as Veruna, a race that I quickly became fond of, my opponent was the Taros. Even though my experience from TA is minor, it was enough to understand what to do. The interface is very easy to understand and use, but it took some time until I knew all the units, and their functions.

Game play:

I am a StarCraft: Brood War fan but the game play in TA: K is very nice. There is some things I don't like though, such as being able to shoot things inside the fog. How can you shoot things you can't see? And that when you click and drag to select units that stand in between your buildings, you'll have to click ctrl + d to only select the units. This might be a good interface for those who like it, but I don't. There is a lot of ctrl + commands to select and do different things, like pressing ctrl + d (again) when you have selected a building or a unit to self-destruct it.

I really enjoyed the 3D effects in this game. If your computer are of high quality you can see this gray fog that acts like clouds instead of the common black fog (the black fog is also available). And the 3D terrain is very well designed, with high mountains and plains of grass or deserts. There is many different tile sets to explore, and most of them are of very high quality.

Four different races means war:

There is four different races for you to play:

Veruna, the dominators of Water
Aramon, the dominators of Earth
Taros, the dominators of Fire
Zhon, the dominators of Air

And I must say I'm very impressed of the design of the units and buildings. It is one of the things that makes it fun to play this game. When you play it for the first time, it is very fun to explore the different races, and it may take you some time to know them all... All races have different units and buildings and you have to lay your strategies from there. From long range cannons to melee Berserkers, there is also a lot of units with different spells, from Mind Control to Paralyzing arrows.

Mana is the resource needed for produce your arsenal. You never run out of Mana, so you'll have to try to conquer as many "Mana places" (a small circle where you can build a building over to extract the Mana). Your maximum capacity of Mana depends of how many Lodestones you have (those buildings to extract the Mana). The more you have, the faster you can produce units.

Final words:

This is a game I recommend you to buy. It's game play is not as great is SC: BW in my opinion, but it is still worth playing. You'll need a good (a Pentium 2 is recommended, depends on your hardware) computer to fully exploit the features of TA: K. The multiplayer options is also very good.

-WizZard
8/5/99