Does Warhammer Battle March beat the Console RTS problems? Find out in this full review.
A few years back i was a Warhammer player of both 40k and Fantasy and iv always loved the Dawn of War series for sticking to its roots of being a fast and furious squad based strategy rather than thousands of regiments clashing like in Fantasy. Luckily This also sticks to its roots for some pretty mixed opinions.
GRAPHICS
Graphically WH:BM is rather nice. When compared to games like Mass Effect or even Halo, it does look dated however. But when compared to other games of its genre you could say it was quite the looker in terms of character detail and animation quality, which is top notch. My main quarrel with the graphics has to be the environments, whilst storming castles or forts is fun and looks nice, every other environment looks rather bland and washed out. The good news is, because of this they have added some nice effects and explosions and some seriously awesome beasts like the Daemon Prince who looks awesome to say the least. Furthermore the lack of slow down is amazing. I have done a 4 way skirmish and it slowed down slightly once all 4 armies had clashed with hundreds of troops engaged in combat, magic flying everywhere and literally thousands of arrows flying in from everywhere as well as siege artillery such as Cannons or Bolt Throwers. Its moments like these that you feel glad that they didn't make the environments look great because they can have all this carnage going on at once without a game changing hitch.
SOUND
Ill start by mentioning the voice acting. Its good, if generic but fits in with the war torn world of Warhammer with humans with posh British accents or ULTRA DEEP VOICES*capitals were for emphasis* to chaos with the grunts, snorts and magically twisted voices of the champions. In general, its good to here such generic voices in this game...because it works for once. Music is also good, if forgettable...put it this way, im listening to the game playing in the background and i cant remember any of it...despite it repeating at least 3 times during the writing of the review. One issue with the sound is the occasional voice glitch that makes them repeat there words, which is OK with Skaven...who do it naturally but when a Priest of Sigmar does it...it just sounds weird. Admittedly it only happened 5 times so far.
CONTROLS
The make or break of a RTS...and i have to say, after hours of gameplay and contemplation that.............................................
..........they actually work really well. At first they may seem awkward or confusing but after you do the tutorials and the first few missions you will be commanding your archers and spearmen to engage some regiments whilst your knights are going around the flank and getting a flank attack whilst they are distracted making your loses smaller and making them have a REALLY bad day. If your worried about the controls...don't be, they are great. Ignore Gamespot, they obviously haven't spent the time or the effort to actually learn how to play the game.
GAMEPLAY (Single Player)
In WH:BM you can take part in 3 campaigns that let you control a variety of armies, troops and monsters in your conquest against the empire/chaos/everything that moves. Each campaign lasts about 5-6 hours and contains about 9 side quests each. The story is generic, but is acceptable enough to fight through a few times because the controls work well enough to make you WANT to play more. On top of this you have a variety of missions ranging from escort this to there, siege warfare, get your skimpy white/green/slightly rat like ass over there and save that dude from total annihilation, command an army to destroy there army or command a band of heroes to take out a vampire lord or something...as well as set duels between heroes for certain side missions. Whilst the aim is generally the same, the slight differences make each mission feel fresh and new which encouraged me on.
Further more each race is unique and fun to use. Whilst the empire lacks in hitting power, armor and skill they make up for it with numbers, siege weapons and highly disciplined regiments, on the other side of the coin you have Chaos who have smaller numbers in general they make up for it in Skill, armor, strength, magic and daemons. You can also Build Your Own Army for Multi player or Skirmish which allows your to pick any race in the game and build an army within a certain points cost using any number of units as well as paint and customize there armor. These small additions make it great, and any warhammer fan will relish in the prospect of being able to make a virtual army that represents there own in full 3d.
GAMEPLAY (Online)
So i built an army and took it online. My first match(which took a while to find because of the small community) was against a 15000 Dark Elf Army. I used my High Elves to see how i would fare. I totally thrashed the guy with my superior tactical skill, however i lost because he started to exploit some of the more annoying spells such as invisibility which makes the unit the caster is in invisible and unattackable...however they can still attack you. I had killed his entire army except 1 squad of crossbow men and had an entire army left. He killed all of them in the next 15 mins or so by abusing that spell. That was my first and only online match. I may go back online later...but if they don't fix that im gonna be pretty pee'd off.
OVERALL
A fun game that has great rewards for using high end tactics and with a good control scheme makes this a must buy for anyone who likes the genre.
8.5
CLOSING COMMENTS
Anyone who has this game, send me a message over Xbox Live and ask me to add them to my friends list. We can have some online battles and whatnot this way without some noob using exploits.
Gamertag: Azeebo