Prussia is the stronghold of heathenism in Eastern Europe. It is a savage land,
filled with savage people, unsafe for any Christian. To defend his borders, the king of Poland appealed to the most glorious warriors
of the time – the Knights of the Teutonic Order. In the distant year of 1230, they founded the castle Thorn, their first fortress, on the bank of the Visla river.
Thus, the next chapter of the Teutonic Order‘s glory opened…Welcome to Prussia, Teutonic Knight commander. The good news is that it’s cooler up here than it was in Palestine, the bad news is that we’re out of Latkas.
Back in the summer, I left FPS behind for a while and headed into the heady world of real-time-strategy. I had a lot of fun with a few Total War titles, but admittedly, nothing really captured my attention for long and I returned to the shooter scene. Recently, I made yet another foray into RTS when I was introduced to the Real Warfare (RW) series. Today, Unicorn Games’ Real Warfare II Northern Crusade released and I was able to wrangle an advanced copy from the publisher 1C for evaluation.
Real Warfare is a serious historically accurate RTS in the same spirit as the more popular Total War franchise. RW II is the second game in the franchise. Unicorn Games’ released Real Warfare 1242 back in 2009. The original game was based on the story of Aleksandr Nevsky, the nordic leader who would defend proto-Russia from an assault by the German Teutonic Knights. The game was not well received by critics who felt that its AI was as dense as a Livonian fencepost, nor by gamers who simply thought the game strayed too close to Total War.
With the release of RW II, Unicorn Games has the opportunity of showing everyone that it can learn from past criticism.
Premise
Set in the 13th century, the game focuses on the Teutonic Order. Fresh from fighting in the Crusades, these German knights are now storming around Prussia looking for Pagans to convert. Portrayed as the bad guys in RW I, the Teutonic Knights get some love here in RW II. In the single player campaign, you take on the role of Commander (Komtur) of the Teutonic Order and lead your Germanic brethren against all the heathens lying about.
The campaign consists of a series of missions which offer you a chance at experience points, leadership points and of course…money. The missions are strung together in such a way as to form a narrative that allows you to better understand and know the Komtur as he leads his men to conquer Prussia on behalf of Christianity. When the campaign starts, your icon is shown on the brand new three-dimensional, highly-detailed strategic map that is the centerpiece of the campaign. You begin the game with 20 Knights of the Order and 150 Militia in your army and are soon commanded by the Grand Master himself to your own castle at Thorn.
The campaign storyline kicks in earnest once you move your icon into Thorn castle. From then on you receive primary missions/quests from the Grand Master and every once-in-a-while, secondary missions which break up the monotony. The developers cajole the player to go through the campaign their way by jacking up the experience points for successfully completing all the main quests…all other activities don’t provide enough experience points for you to rank up.
Strategy and Tactics
Back in Real Warfare I, there was no strategic map and thus it was all about the battle. Now we get the best of all worlds as players can think about waging war in the strategic and tactical sense. This is not a case of Unicorn simply hijacking yet another element, the strat map in this case, from Total War. RW II’s strategy mode is extremely complex and takes the strat side of the game much farther than Total War has ever attempted. What really stands out on the 3D map is just how gorgeous it is. Your character can interact with AI elements…hire mercenaries, reinforce units. Of course, you can travel around from town to town, in real time and interact with locals. Heck, there are even elements of role-playing and a quest-system embedded in here. All-in-all, a very ambitious and detailed foray into the strategy side of gaming.
RW II will allow you to set up custom battles as well as a single-player campaign. In addition, it has an online component which lets you battle it out in a multiplayer universe.
Here’s some gameplay from Gamescom 2011 that gives you a feel for the game.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
Teutonic Knights weren’t exactly vegetarians, so unsurprisingly, it took a lot of money to keep them fed. And geez, talk about a dry cleaning bills! Do you think it was cheap to keep those white table cloths they used to wear clean? In strat mode, you can make money to pay all those bills your Knights are incurring by collecting taxes from your own territories, alternatively, you can bring in a few shekels by selling booty captured in battle, but trading with others in the marketplace is usually the best way to get you food, weapons and armor…everything you need to keep a modern 13th century army ready to go.
Politics and Diplomacy
All politics is local, goes the phrase and in this game, it’s no exception. Politics has a significant role to play in the strategic game and consists of the interplay between the many factions depicted:
- Teutonic Order
- Prussia
- Poland
- Holy Roman Empire
- Scandinavia
- Lithuania
- Rus
- Mongols
All of the factions above have diplomatic relations with you and each other (pardon my French). Diplomatic relations primarily affect the way each faction behaves. Unsurprisingly, the worse the relations with a faction, the more often it will attack you. Naturally, factions at war will not want to trade with you. Isn’t that always the way?
Gameplay
Ultimately, you will play Real Warfare II because of the battles, not the high-level strategizing.
The Battle gameplay, in a nutshell, has not changed too much from the original RW I. However, to make a more relevant comparison, let me relate this game to the Total War series, which as I mentioned earlier, will always be the standard to which this game will be compared.
First off, it seems to take longer to engage the enemy in RW II than in TW and this might deter some of the more casual RTS fans. I didn’t find the delayed gratification too annoying given that the scenery is rather nice to look at and I spent the time thinking about how to array my army. Once I did eventually engage, I found that the battles themselves were rather quick, messy affairs. The brevity was a shock given the slow, methodical build-up.
Let’s be frank, those that play historical-RTS tend to be rather…um, anal. They like to be in total control over their units and they like seeing their men holding nice straight lines and behaving orderly. Even during a skirmish, RTS fans like to make little tweaks here and there to their units to make sure they succeed…going “micro” is the term I’m looking for.
For me the unit control interface was rather clunky, complex and unintuitive and I found it difficult to control my units.
As well, the unit on unit clashes seemed to be over far too quick and are confusing to watch.
The thing I missed most in battles was the simple “status-bar” found in Total War. When two units duke it out, a color coded bar appears to indicate who is winning the encounter. It was this lack of instant feedback that made the battle experience very frustrating for me. But perhaps, this “fog-of-war” is a more realistic portrayal of what it would be like to command men in the field. Unicorn Games eliminates the status bar and replaces the on-hover unit card with an overly complex table of parameters. You cannot possibly take in all the data that appears in this table during a match…the idea might have been a good one for a board game, but in a video game? Not so much.
Overall the battle gameplay is an area I think Unicorn should be looking to improve and I think they can do so rather easily.
Sound
There are two armies facing each other. Their leaders throw down the gauntlet and hundreds of men race towards each other. Hooves pound the earth. War-cries fill the air. Then…*crash*…iron strikes iron as swords cleave deep creases in armored breastplate. Screams of the dying compete with the excited shouts of men.
And yet, it’s quiet…too quiet.
Sadly, RW II’s sound is not on par with the visuals. Sound effects that should have augmented the stirring battle scenes on offer, falls completely flat. Very disappointing.
On the other hand, the musical score was perfect for the subject matter, but that’s the only good thing I can say about in-game sound.
Graphics and Animation
The units are impeccably detailed; heck, you can almost see each link in the chain armor on the horses. Sadly, the heavy graphics come at a price. I was surprised to see sub-20 FPS (maxed out graphics). In comparison, I don’t go below 60 FPS in Total War (I’m running a Quad, nVidia GTX 280). While the low FPS was not a hindrance in game, the “Pseudo HDR” mode was. Damn that bloom crap is nasty to say the least. As well, textures were nothing to write home about.
Though most unit animations, especially the cavalry were done well, the archer bow shots were not. I can imagine that rendering hundred of arrows in flight would be difficult, but I didn’t expect them to be this poor. Ditto for the trebuchet and catapult animations.
Overall I would give the graphics a meek thumbs up.
Units
In the 13th century, the cavalry owned the battlefield and this game captures this fact perfectly. In RW II, your cav can be either foot, or mounted. The natural enemy of calvary units is of course the pike. A dense forest of sharp sticks is the only thing that keeps the horse-set in check. The game also employees sword swingers and the dreaded archer units and their somewhat less effective cousins, the crossbowmen. Units are identified as Light, Medium and Heavy, depending on their armor. Another way of differentiation is based on experience and in this game that is done by classifying units as novices, veteran, and elite.
Summary
A richly detailed game, I think Real Warfare II will be well liked by the hardcore history-RTS players. On the flipside, it may be a bit too complex for the casual player. Long term playability might be questionable given the frustrating interface which should be reviewed. Battle game-mechanics need to be slowed down and better real-time unit status should be provided to the player. Sound is sub-par, but the musical score is good. The game blends elements of RTS and RPG. It has a sandbox mode and modding support which would make any ex-CoD modder drop dead with envy.
If you are a hardcore history fan or simply an RTS enthusiast, I think you will appreciate learning all about what life was like in Northern Europe during the middle ages. I think a 7/10 is a reasonable rating for this game.
Stuff I liked
- Once you complete the campaign a sandbox mode opens up — really cool
- Also cool? How about the fact that you can mod the game. You even get the devs own editor. Everything can be modded including the AI. Kudos to Unicorn Games…these guys really understand PC gamers and their community.
- Graphical detail is superb. The in-game rendering is exquisite. The subdued, earth-tone graphics transport you back into time. I would like to quibble over the script-like font chosen for the in-game dialog, which is difficult to read.
- Game installed easily.
- The strategy-side of the game is very detailed that all micro-managers will love.
- I liked the fact that you are not allowed to pre-position your troops before battle. You have to organize your army on the fly. There’s plenty of time to do this prior to initial contact.
- The strategic map is alive with motion and action.
…And Stuff I didn’t
- There was so much bloom (Pseudo HDR – High Dynamic Range rendering) that I became snow-blind. I had to shut this off. I’m positive that the game’s graphic artists must be suffering from glaucoma.
- The menu system, which consists of a static window superimposed onto an ever shifting 3D terrain map, made me sick (literally). When you look at the menu items, the area around it moves and produces a strong vertigo-like feeling. For gosh sakes…make it stop!
- The tactical movement controls (W-A-S-D keys) only allow you to move in one direction at a time. Unlike Total War, where you can push both the forward and the left-strafe key to move diagonally, RW II does not combine directional key presses. If you try to press forward and left, you get a very distressing stutter. The inability to move between the four cardinal directions really caused me issues as it seriously limited my freedom.
- Overall, unit control was clunky and non-intuitive.
- By the time a map loads, the narration that accompanies the level is already mid-sentence. There should be a delay here to allow the graphics to render before the sound clip starts. It’s very irritating.
- The look and movement of each individual soldier within a unit were nearly identical. In this regard, RW II is closer to TW: Rome than it is to Shogun 2, where there is a greater visual diversity within a unit.
System Requirements
Minimal requirements*
OS: Windows ® XP Service Pack 2, Windows ® Vista, Windows 7
CPU: Intel Pentium ® IV 2.0 GHz or AMD ® 2000+
RAM: 512MB
Graphics: GeForce MX400 or Radeon 8500 or higher
Free space: 3GB
Sound card, keyboard, mouse, DVD-ROM.
Online game: high speed Internet connection 128kb/s or higher
Proper work on notebooks and PCs with integrated video cards is not guaranted.
Recommended requirements
OS: Windows ® XP Service Pack 2, Windows ® Vista, Windows 7
CPU: Intel Pentium 3.2GHz or AMD 3000+ or Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6
RAM: 1.5GB
Video card: GeForce 7900 or Radeon X1900 or higher
Free space: 3GB
Sound card
Keyboard, mouse, DVD-ROM.
Online game: high speed Internet connection 256kb/s or higher
We don’t guarantee that the game will launch and run on laptops.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Info on 1C
Real Warfare is published by 1C Company, which is the biggest publisher and distributor of computer and video games in Eastern and Central Europe. Founded in 1991, 1C Company also is known as a game developer and has several internal studios. Internal development at 1C includes the fabled IL-2 Sturmovik series. Anyone who has ever been into flight sims will of course have heard of IL-2 Sturmovik (Jock drools). As well, they make the Theatre of War series. Aside from developing in-house projects, 1C Company in connected to over thirty indie studios and has produced over a hundred projects for PC and consoles including titles like: Rig’n'Roll, Space Rangers, Soldiers: Heroes of World War II, Faces of War, Men of War series, Perimeter, Fantasy Wars, Death to Spies, King’s Bounty: The Legend, King’s Bounty: Armored Princess and King’s Bounty: Crossworlds.
Links
Download the game manual here.
Cheat Codes
Press “t”, type the cheatcode, press Enter.
moremoney
moreleadership
moreexp
morearmyexp
morehorses
other cheatcodes:
autowinon
autowinoff – enable/disable automatic victory – it will be easier to quickly go through the campaign using these cheats
freeplayon – launch of the free play without any restrictions from the main campaign, but this mode is also available upon completion of the main campaign/storyline
mongolsinvasion – can be used only with free play mode, allows to enter the mongol invasion map
