Hesperian Wars is yet another RTS style game to thrust itself into the overcrowded market already dominated by Starcraft, C&C, and Total Annihilation.
Here's a little synopsis of the plot.
After wonderful years of its great prosperity, the Hesperian Empire suddenly collapsed with the unexpected death of its emperor, there was no heir for the throne. The emperor's advisors unrightfully took power, causing great anger among the aristocracy which protested and soon formed their own government. Stunned by this development, the Smarts accepted thearistocrats' protests and invited them to negotiate and create a Common Board. During thenight, the aristocrats and their companions were murdered. Battle soon broke out across theland as groups formed into armies. The ensuing battles became the Hesperian Wars.
Not a real unique or catchy plotline, but few RTS's have managed this. You get to choose from four races, Giants, Mages, Druids, or Pygmies. It says it has 40 different unit typesbut I think that actually means 10 for each race and then it's probably also figuring in the three upgrades you can do to each type because there really doesn't seem to be a lot ofunits.
HW has some serious flaws. It has a 2d sprite engine with poorly implemented shadowingeffects. We are talking "graphically challenged" here since this game looks a lot like 96'sgame of the year Warcraft II except even WC2 had smoother graphics then this game. The console is nice and detailed though, menus are pretty enough to add a little to the game. There is at least one night mission which adds some placed lighting effects which aren't too bad, but they're from lampposts and the spot lighting still shows up if you destroy thelamp. It also has an irratating intro avi movie which you can't cancel out of and have to waste 20 seconds of your life to watch everytime you go to play it. The game also runssurprisingly slow for the results. This game took way too long for my P200 to load up to start out with and the menu animations tended to be choppy. I didn't really notice any performance problems on my PII 300.
I don't know what Modern Games was thinking when they did the sound. This has, by far, themost annoying sound effects I've heard in an RTS. Units acknowledge you with grunts no matter what race you are. I know there's supposed to be dialects in the game, since otherthan the Giants you get coherent briefings, so I can't really figure out why they don't talkback instead of the mindless grunting. There's also only one sound for each different type of unit, which gets real repetitive and makes the poor sounds even more annoying.
Hesperian Wars does something that's not real common by combining RTS with some roleplayingstyle aspects. Fields of Fire is one of the few others I can think of. This, I think, shouldbe a way to make a hit game if someone actually put some effort into it. Characters can pickup items like potions and armor and use them to do various things throughout the game. Italso has quite a few spells/special abilities that help give flavor to the game, though it'snot enough to really give a great RPG feel. Unit advancement is done through the "garage" method. Spend some money, throw your guys in the shop and they come out upgraded. It worksnicely enough compared to the "Development" ideas used in games like Warcraft and Starcraft.
It's fun enough for an RTS but with the poor audio and graphics, even semi-decent gameplaywon't hold your attention for very long. It's just enough to beat out borderline dull, but it sure isn't close to exciting.
The multiplayer supports all the usual connection types. It has a VERY POOR interface forsetting up multiplayer. No graphics or anything, it looks like you're in a windows databasewith your gray buttons and dropdown menus. It's not real fun either.
Overall, Hesperian Wars is not impressive enough to go out and buy it. It has some decentideas but graphics and audio kill any desire to sit there for too long. I also have yet tofigure out why they used the word "Hesperian" for a game that has nothing to do with the real historical time period.
Highs: Interesting attempt to make an RTS/RPGLows: Incredibly annoying sound, subpar graphics, slow on older PCs
