Great Game...Get It!
Negatives:
1. The game needs a bird's eye view without the map. There are four views all together, two on a map (long/close-up), two in melee(mid/close-up). The game would be better if they had a third viewpoint where you could pull back the camera one step further without opening the map to see other units and manipulate them around the screen. This view could look something like a Warcraft/Command and Conquer View. The map does this to some extent, but it can become tedious manipulating the troops on the map on close-up mode. Another option would be the ability to split screens by units, so you could see what more than one of the military units is doing @ once.
2. The voices are pretty cheesy. In the future, phantagram should invest a little bit more in getting better voice actors who don't
sound embarassed to read their lines*
*This could also be viewed positively though
3. The game is lacking a bit in terms of varied gameplay. In the future, it would be ideal if we could customize our own characters, as opposed to choosing one of four templates. Additionally, it would be nice if there could be co-op modes - like in lord of the rings - return of the king or head to head modes outside of xbox live.
Positives:
1.Graphics - This game has amazing graphics that take full advantage of the XBox Platform.
2.The cheesy voices - People who take wars between fictional medieval soldiers and orcs and dark elves too seriously need to get a life. This video game has somewhat of a kill bill/B-movie quality to it, in that there are excessive amounts of blood and gore, bad language, and dark elf females fighting in thongs. The terrible voiceovers are a finishing touch to this sort of craziness.*
*This could also be viewed as a negative
3.Challenging gameplay - This is not the sort of video game which you can start and play the whole way through without ever losing. What I enjoy about it is that as your units/characters get better, you also get better as a video gamer. For example, a newbie couldn't just take your saved game from let's say the 20th mission, and just play as him. He'd die immediately b/c the missions get progressively harder with time, and in order to proceed to further missions, one needs to become a better video gamer.
4. Intense and complex battle sequences/combat. Fighting Melee Combat - Dynasty Warriors/LOTR style, while commanding your units - Command and Conquer/Warcraft style, while taking into account unconventional things such as terrain, sun, weather conditions, etc. all require extreme concentration. To the observer though, your battles will have the same sort of chaos/intensity as the battle scenes in Braveheart, especially as you shift from view to view. It's extremely satisfying to fight hand-to-hand combat with your character against an enemy and to see people dropping to the ground because of your archers, while your cavalry comes from behind and flanks them. That's only an example of three of the many units that you can fight with. This game reinvents the real-time strategy genre, taking elements from Dynasty Warriors, LOTR video game series, Myth, Warcraft, and Command and Conquer, by molding them all into one video game and taking the genre to the next level. This game's very ambitious and it works.
Although the game does have it's flaws, I do not feel that they are overly significant or that they detract too much from the game itself. One can accustom oneself to fighting using the map within a relatively short time, and even though you cannot customize your characters or go coop there are still 4 characters with over 60 missions.
On a scale of 100, I would give the game a 96. Even though it misses a few minute things, it gets the major and main things right. This game has the potential to bring real-time strategy (usually associated with PCs up to this point) to the video game console in the same way that Goldeneye brought first person shooters to the video game console.
I feel that this game will beocme a sleeper hit, and that they will make a really awesome sequel which corrects all of the minor flaws in this version if they take into account people's suggestions.