Kohan: Kings of War Impressions

We were graciously received by TimeGate Studios at this year's E3 for an exclusive first look at Kohan: Kings of War, the upcoming sequel to Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. The Texas-based developer has been working on the game for about a year, and according to TimeGate's Adel Chavaleh, the idea behind Kings of War is to keep everything that the series' hard-core fans love best about it, including what Chavaleh refers to as "high-level strategy"--that is, making war with organized companies and regiments, rather than micromanaging individual soldiers on the battlefield. However, Kings of War is also intended to be a much more accessible game, and it will have a more-streamlined interface that will hopefully let players spend more time considering strategies and less time clicking on tiny icons. In addition, the sequel will have much-improved, fully 3D graphics that include detailed, animated 3D units, fully 3D terrain with swaying trees and rolling hills, and special effects such as flame and smoke on explosions. Much of the game's graphics will be powered by NDL's Gamebryo engine, and what we've seen so far looks very clean and quite good.

Kings of War's streamlined interface will get rid of all "zones" except for regular unit supply, so the new game won't have a series of cluttered overlays piled atop one another (this occasionally happened in advanced games of the original Kohan). However, war companies (squads of soldiers) will still exist in the sequel, as will regiments, which are groups of companies ordered together. As in the original Kohan, you'll be able to order your companies to march in specific formations (the current version of the game we saw had three formations, but the final game may include more), and the sequel will even let you quickly recruit preconfigured companies if you don't care to continually produce individual units. Company sizes have been expanded so you can include not only one to four frontline units, a captain unit, and two support units, but also an additional two flanking units.

Cities will also be expanded in Kings of War. You'll be able to see individual buildings within each of your holdings, and the militia and townspeople from the original game will return--though this time they'll actually appear onscreen, pouring out of your town square to build structures and defending besieged buildings from attackers. In the spirit of the Kohan series' "high-level gameplay," new cities will automatically build protective walls, and these walls will increase in size and strength in direct proportion to the cities themselves, so you won't need to chase down peon units and manually order them to repair any damage. Kings of War will also feature an entirely new kind of unit--siege weapons--and each playable side will have its own set of units, with different characteristics, strengths, and attributes.

In addition to Kings of War's six playable races, including the humans and several others from the original game, the sequel will feature an all-new race of powerful villains known simply as "the fallen," who were sent by the evil lord Ahriman to finish the job he started in the original game. In addition, Kings of War will have five different political factions. Several of the game's races will have the ability to align themselves with different factions, which will grant those races specific worldwide bonuses, such as an economic boost.

Kohan: Kings of War seems to be well on its way to accomplishing what its developers have set out to do: keep the strategic gameplay of the original game, but streamline it and make it more accessible for new players. Kings of War will be released next year. We'll have more on the game soon.