Battle Realm's rendition of Oriental themes may be odd, but underneath this are gameplay designs of surprising caliber.

User Rating: 8 | Battle Realms PC

It is not often that a Western game developer would think of making a game with Oriental themes; it is even rarer to find one that makes games with these themes AND infuse them with punky anime styles, complete with characters with outrageous hairdos.

Liquid Entertainment is one such game-maker, and their game is Battle Realms, which is a real-time strategy title, of all genres that would have such themes.

Unless the player doesn't mind (or even like) characters with stupendous/fabulous aesthetics, the first impression that he/she would have is that this game is very whimsical. Yet, the intro sequences of this game do not suggest that it is so - for better or worse. However, if the player can overcome any apprehension of such character designs, there is very engaging gameplay to be had from Battle Realms.

Before describing the gameplay, the premise of the game has to be mentioned first. As expected of a game with Oriental themes, it takes place in a fantastical world with pseudo-Asian cultures. The powers that rule over the main continent of this world (which is unnamed) consist of four different factions: the treacherous Serpent, the honorable Dragon, the vile Lotus and the defiant Wolf Clans. These clans vie for control of the bountiful lands of said continent, often through bloody battles between armies of individuals with awesome and terrifying capabilities.

However, the story of the game does not have the four clans at loggerheads with each other right from the start; in the campaign, the player guides the path of a certain Kenji, who is an heir of the Serpent Clan that had exiled himself under dark circumstances.

Having returned to his homeland after his time of self-reflection, he is faced with a situation in which he decided he has to resolve with either one of two ways, which will also (oddly enough) set his personality in stone for the rest of the game. One will have him going down the path of blood as is the way of the Serpent, while the other will have him leading his fractured people into rebirth as the Dragon Clan of old. Along the way, he will meet new friends and allies that will form the elements of his army to fight the enemies that he will also encounter along the way.

Other than advancement in the story, the twists and turns in the campaign missions serve to introduce new units into the player's army and also new types of enemies for his forces to battle. The missions in which new units are introduced into the player's army conveniently have scenarios in which they will be handy to have around.

In other words, the player will find that much of the campaign is not really that much different in design than those found in other strategy titles of fictional fantasy - except that just about every character has stiff, spiky hair that is as long any one of his/her limbs.

The four factions in Battle Realms are diverse from each other, but like the factions in many other strategy titles at the time, they require similar resources to build their bases and raise their armies with. They also happen to share the same fundamentals at doing this. The game's excellent (if sparsely voiced-over) tutorials will impart on the player this knowledge and more.

The backbone of every clan is the humble Peasant, which fulfills the role of serf to these clans. Every base will start out with only one or a handful of Peasant Huts, which will generate Peasants automatically without any cost. Making this worker unit completely free is a bold design on the part of Liquid Entertainment, and one that sceptical veterans of the genre would suspect to be unbalanced. Yet, the expedience of automatically generating peasants is limited by a hard-cap on the number of peasants and a diminishing rate of generation as more units enter (and stay in) the player's service. These restrictions are handled surprisingly elegantly, resulting in less need for the player to micromanage the number of Peasants.

To have the Peasants build bases (called "Towns" in Battle Realms), the player has to direct them to gather rice and water, which they apparently need to consume in order to have the sustenance to build structures. Rice and water have to be collected from rice fields and bodies of water respectively. Otherwise, the world of Battle Realms is so bountiful that other resources, like wood, are not an issue (though there were hints that the game could have tried to implement them, such as the inclusion of models for neatly sawn tree stumps in this game).

Rice and water are also given as payment to dojos and other specialty houses (more on these later) to accelerate the training of the students that are residing in these places, so that they could join the player's army as an actual combat unit.

So far, it would appear that Battle Realms follows the same formula that other RTS games do, but there are many, many nuances - more than just the "free Peasant" mechanic mentioned above - that make it quite different.

Firstly, paddy fields (which produce the grain that is then harvested for rice) have to be watered with the same water that the Peasants collected. Otherwise, the plants simply do not grow and could not be harvested. Fortunately, having the Peasants do the rounds is a surprisingly painless effort; the player needs only direct the Peasants to the most convenient source of water and then to the paddy fields. Their AI scripts will do the rest. Of course, the player will have to assign Peasants to exclusively gather rice from the fields.

In addition to being a resource in itself and a resource to grow another resource, water is also needed to douse flames. Buildings can catch fire from certain attacks in this game, and every Clan has at least one unit that is capable of setting buildings on fire for hit-and-run raids. Peasants can be a bit slow in hauling water over to burning buildings, but miraculously, only one or two buckets are needed to extinguish anything. (Conveniently, Peasants that are hauling water will automatically divert their attention from stashing away water at Peasant Huts to extinguish any nearby conflagration.)

Much like the "harvester" archetypes of other RTS games, the Peasants will gather resources into a container of sorts before hauling it back to drop-off points (which are the Peasant Huts, in the case of Battle Realms). However, instead of being inconvenienced into hauling heavy sacks full of rice or cumbersome bucketfuls of water to the Huts, the Peasants can drop their loads at any time, even during the middle of harvesting, to do something else, if the player wishes that. The sacks will be dropped on the ground and can be retrieved by other Peasants to be returned to the Huts or further filled with grain. Moreover, the sacks can be stolen by hostile Peasants. These minor mechanics inject some extra tactical depth into what is otherwise a mundane resourcing operation, especially during the early stages of a multiplayer match.

Like other strategy titles that are competently designed for gameplay balance, Battle Realms resorts to "tiering" of units, e.g. units are categorized into informal levels of status according to their potency on the battlefield. Furthermore, the acquisition of certain units is only "unlocked" after the player has built the correct combination of buildings; this is a staple design in base-oriented RTS games.

On the other hand, units are not produced right out of buildings as in other strategy titles. Instead, the player has to send Peasants over into the appropriate buildings to be exchanged for the units that the player wants, under the pretext that has been mentioned earlier. Moreover, obtaining more advanced units also requires sending already existing (non-Peasant) units over to these buildings to be exchanged for the former, under the same pretext again. Thus, units are informally categorized into tiers according to how many buildings that they have gone through in their path of progression.

Sceptical strategy veterans would point out that this would be a major hassle, especially considering that units have to enter buildings from specific sides. However, the waypoint system that can be used to direct units that exit from buildings (which has become a staple design in the genre at the time) can be used to automate this process; the player's ability to freely rotate buildings before their foundations are placed also helps. On the other hand, it is certainly not a convenient process, because in order to obtain a balanced army of different unit types without resorting to too much micro-management, the player will have to build duplicates of many buildings, which can be a major hassle. (This is especially so when the player attempts to defend a base that has been inflated just for this purpose.)

However, if the player can get past this different but sometimes frustrating army-raising mechanic, there can be quite a lot of fun to be had from creating an army in this game, mainly due to game features that allow the player to perform limited customizations of every individual unit.

Every faction can equip their units with pieces of Battle-gear specific to said Clans, usually in return for small fees in rice and water that are paid either up-front or indirectly (though these fees can add up to quite a lot if a player has many units to equip).

In addition, a third "minor" resource of sorts can be obtained from wild horses that roam the map. Like other resources, these horses are permanently marked on the map once discovered by the player. These animals are limited in number, except in multiplayer matches that allow them to respawn into the map.

Peasants (and certain units) can attempt to lure these creatures over to their bases to be cloistered into stables. (Some hero units, like the Dragon Clan's Garrin, can even summon and tame them outright.) While the game does inform the player that wild horses can be sometimes difficult to lure, it does not mention anything about them being easily spooked by anyone other than Peasants and, especially, nearby combat (namely that between rival Peasants who are trying to get at the same herd of horses).

Interestingly, the benefits that the different Clans get may differ a lot.

For the Dragon and Serpent Clans, once the horses are tamed, the player can send certain units (but not all) to stables to be mounted on horses, which grant them bonuses to their durability (the horse will help to absorb a lot of damage), speed (a horse is always faster than anything else in the game) , height advantage (more on this later) and the area-effect Trample skill. (There will be more on skills and battlegear later.) The player can have mounted units to dismount anytime by using a context-sensitive mouse-click; any (applicable) Serpent or Dragon unit (including hostile ones) may then attempt to ride the horses.

The Lotus Clan also gets steeds to run, but true to their vile nature, the horses have been corrupted into demonic versions of themselves, exchanging some of their speed for resistance to fire and the Trample skill for Infernal Breath, which roasts anything caught in it. In addition, rider-less Shadow Steeds can only be captured by Lotus units.

A minor caveat with mounts is that their riders can be knocked off if enough damage has been inflicted on either the horses or their riders, or if certain skills have been used on either.

The Wolf Clan, on the other hand, are too fiercely independent to condescend themselves to riding horses. Instead, the equines are fed to their wolves to breed more of the lupines, which can be brought into battle alongside certain Wolf units, such as the Pack Master.

Surprisingly, horses can change the tides of battle (and perhaps game balance) in the early and middle stages of a multiplayer match; experienced players would have learned that having a mounted army (or lots of Wolves, in the case of the Wolf Clan) can be a huge advantage over enemies that have yet to advance up the tech trees. The game designers may have inadvertently turned a minor resource into a very important one by having them available from the start of a match. (Fortunately, for players who would rather not have horses in a match, they can toggle their presence off.)

Like other RTS titles of the time, Battle Realms has the mechanic of upgrading units to improve their competitiveness on the battlefield. However, instead of spending rice and water on these upgrades, the player will have to make use of another game mechanic to earn the currency that is needed to purchase them.

The currency concerned is Yin or Yang, which is an incorporeal resource that is added to the player's account in the form of black or white tokens (respectively) as the player's units do battle with enemies - or more precisely, deal damage to whatever that they can harm. Furthermore, the player can gain tokens more rapidly if his/her army is further away from his/her town. The player can only hold a limited number of tokens, so the player is encouraged to spend them in order to prevent additional tokens from being wasted.

This game mechanic is intended to encourage opposing players to aggressively battle each other throughout a match and to discourage the often dull strategy of "turtling" (which is not very fun to players who do not adopt it). In fact, another game design intended to discourage turtling is that there are little to no defensive structures in this game. There is the Watchtower, of which every Clan has a variant, but it has to be occupied by a ranged unit to be effective and even then it is not enough to turn away a hostile army. Furthermore, the player can only have a few Watchtowers at most.

The goal of discouraging turtling with the Yin/Yang system would have been a success, if not for some glitches that it has.

Certain units have skills or Battlegear that allow them to gain Yin/Yang tokens by hitting trees or pools of water instead of enemies; a case that was confirmed is the Serpent Ronin's Yin Blades, which can sap Yin from trees though they were supposed to be designed to be used against flesh-and-blood enemies. This exploit was eventually removed in a later update, but it had marred an otherwise intriguing system that made Battle Realms quite different from its peers in the genre.

Of course, if players can refrain from exploiting this glitch - or had installed the updates - they will find that this system is excellent for risk-versus-reward play-styles. If a player conserve his/her forces (and thus save rice and water for working up the tech ladder), he/she risks having lower tier units being rendered obsolete. Sending units on raids risks them being annihilated, thus leaving the base open to attacks, though the Yin/Yang tokens gained can be quite substantial such that any counter-raiding party that comes over would be facing upgraded units.

Moreover, there are certain skills and battle-gear that make use of the tokens that the player has; the benefit is usually in the form of damage levels that is proportional to the number of tokens in the player's account, such as the Dragon Samurai's Yang Blade. Therefore, there is fun to be had from balancing between spending and hoarding tokens if the player wants to make use of this feature.

Battlegear is essentially a skill for a certain unit. Certain kinds of Battlegear, such as those that obviously require the use of items, are niftily shown on the units' models; they can be quite impressive to look at too. However, units do not enter the game world with Battlegear already equipped. Instead, most of them have to enter buildings, such as the Dragon Clan's Shrines and the Wolf Clan's Shalery, to receive Battlegear (in return for fees as have been mentioned). For the Lotus Clan, they gain battlegear through entirely different means instead (which will be mentioned later).

Moreover, some non-hero units have multiple types of Battlegear. However, they can only have one type at a time, so the player will have to strike a balance for not only army composition, but different Battlegear for the same type of unit as well.

(Current Battlegear is lost if a unit gains another, or enters a building for further training. This is not documented well in-game, unfortunately.)

The health of units determines how fast that they can move outside of combat; units well into critical levels of their health are hobbled or winded, and this will show in their animation as they struggle to move. All units in the game can heal naturally and slowly over time as long as they are idle, but they cannot heal completely (with the exception of Wolf Clan units and a scant few of the other Clans', such as the Serpent Crossbowman). Therefore, there is a need for healing units to finish the convalescence; every faction - except the Wolf Clan - has at least one healing unit, and these healers work surprisingly differently from each other.

In addition to health, units have stamina bars that determine how long that they can run (or otherwise move faster than usual, if they lack legs). Running of course makes units go faster, but they also happen to have a better chance at dodging hostile ranged attacks. If they run out of stamina, they walk, which is of course far slower movement. In addition, stamina is needed to power the use of certain battlegear and skills. Stamina can naturally be regained by staying out of combat, with idleness speeding up the recovery the fastest; this presents the player with the need to know when to commit and when to rest his/her army.

Battle Realms is a fully 3D game, but unlike most of its peers which tended to merely use the 3D environments and models for purposes of graphical pizzazz, it also uses differences in terrain, namely terrain heights, as factors in battle. Generally, enemies on higher ground would have minor bonuses in damage, reach and accuracy (not all ranged attacks are guaranteed to hit their targets); mounted units also benefit from the same advantages. Unfortunately, due to a mishap in presenting combat in Battle Realms that would be explained later, this game feature is not so well-utilized.

Most units in the game also have minor intrinsic abilities, which give them subtle advantages in combat. Many of these are actually triggered through their idle animations, which is a very surprising innovation over the practically useless idle animations that other strategy titles have for their own units. Some notable examples include the Dragon Sumo Cannoneer's superstitious throwing of salt, which actually buffs nearby allies (and him) with damage resistance against the first hit that they suffer in the opening of combat. Unfortunately, the game does not document these innate abilities well in-game; they are only explained in the manual or online documentation.

If the game mechanics that have been mentioned do not already suggest that Battle Realms has been designed with variety in mind, then the units of the four Clans would. Much of the fun in this game is figuring out what each interesting unit does and how he/she/it is best used, so this review will not spoil this fun by elaborating on each of them, unless there are units that are notable for certain things (for better or worse).

The Dragon Clan consists of units that have a semblance of nobility and dignity; this shows in both their appearances and voice-acting, which are milder and humbler than those of the other three Clans.

Their first-tier units are perhaps the most balanced among the three Clans; they have upgrades, Battlegear and abilities that ensure their usefulness even late into a match. A good example is the Spearman's ability to ignore height advantages that enemies have over him, and another is the Archer's Zen Arrow battlegear, which allows him to survey the area on which his enchanted arrow lands.

One of the Chemist's Battlegear, which are Fire Rockets that he can launch at enemies for area-effect fire damage, is a good example of Battlegear that does not use stamina, but instead has limited uses before the unit needs to reload, usually by returning to a specific building (the Fireworks Factory in the case of the Chemist) and paying the necessary costs.

The Dragon Clan's Geisha is a good example of a healer unit. Through context-sensitive orders, the player can have her healing injured friendlies in return for some of her stamina. However, healers are typically bad fighters, and the Geisha is no different.

The Dragon Clan's Tier 2 units have almost the same roles as the first-tiered ones, albeit that they have better stats and would have out-performed the latter. However, as mentioned earlier, their different Battlegear and innate abilities ensure that Dragon Clan Tier 1 units would not become obsolete as the Dragon player rises through the tech tree.

The enigmatic Kabuki Warrior is worth noting here. In addition to having more than decent prowess at both melee and ranged combat, he also has an idle animation that has him juggling balls of fire, which incidentally entertains nearby peasants and (oddly enough) inspires them to work faster. However, his main attraction lies in his Battlegear, which is designed to cripple the combat capabilities of enemies. There are many units with similar Battlegear in the game that, when used properly, can easily turn the tide of battle.

As the pinnacle of a Dragon clansman's martial ambition, the Samurai is a good example of the powerful Tier 3 category of units. He has better melee combat skills than any other regular Dragon unit, and he also has a bow handy to fulfill the role of substitute Archer when convenient. Most importantly, his Battlegear options are a good representation of the Battlegear that Tier 3 units get; they simply become more powerful and versatile with these. For the Samurai, his Dragon Skin renders him completely immune to ranged attacks, while Yang Blade allows him to generate more Yang when he fights and also inflict greater melee damage.

However, Tier 3 units may be a bit too powerful for the sake of gameplay balance. For example, it is very difficult for an opposing army to approach a Lotus army that is filled with Warlocks, who have powerful and rapid ranged attacks (but otherwise terrible melee skills).

In addition, Tier 3 units are needed for Clans' superweapons. For example, sacrificing four Samurai at the Dragon's Monument allows the Dragon player to summon a storm of magic which can devastate enemy armies. Another example is the Serpent Clan's sacrifice of four Ronin, whose combined evil essences will awaken one of the most powerful heroes in the game, the Necromancer.

The Serpent Clan would appear to be a mirror-reflection of the Dragon Clan. They act and sound scruffy and despicable; their skills and battle-gear, which often involve stealing all kinds of things from their enemies. Players who love to resort to treachery to make themselves stronger while weakening enemies at the same time would love to play as the Serpent Clan.

Like the Dragon Clan, the Serpent Clan has Tier 1 units that will remain useful throughout a match. Again, this is mostly due to their Battlegear. For example, the Swordsman has Mugging, which somehow causes nearby enemy units to lose their Battlegear but is otherwise a very potent skill. His other Battlegear has him carrying a brittle Glass Sword, which when used against a non-hero unit, kills him/her/it instantly. The Musketeer is also a notable Tier 1 Serpent unit, mainly because of his formidable damage per shot and the fact that he never misses.

The Serpent Clan's Tier 2 units appear to be more geared towards ranged combat and raids. Moreover, they have many treacherous Battlegear that makes for very sneaky tactics and special innate abilities that make up for their relative lack of close-combat capabilities.

The Cannoneer is a brute that has a powerful hand cannon. While he lacks the range of the Dragon's Sumo Cannoneer, his own shells have the advantage of higher penetration; they simply pass through anything on the way to the actual target. A crafty player with a knack for micro-management can make full use of this. With the right Battlegear, he can rig strategic locations with explosive mines or fire smoke bombs that reduce the line-of-sight of enemy units and also weaken them through asphyxiation. (Interestingly, there is also a graphical effect to this; affected enemy units will cough and hack if they stay inside the smoke.)

The Serpent Bandit is most notable for his ability to perform a context-sensitive action on corpses: he loots them for rice and water. However, the act of looting takes time that is too long to be worth the reward obtained; the rice and water gained is very little and perhaps only suitable for funding the equipping of Battlegear on units.

The Raider is perhaps the unit that is most representative of the sub-category of units that are most adept at hit-and-run raids on opposing players' economies. His speed and Battlegear emphasize his splendid talent at this: Caltrops let him drop spiky, prickly trinkets to slow down pursuers, while Brush Fire allows him to ignite trees and rice fields. Being a sneaky person, the Raider also does not suffer from any line-of-sight reduction while moving through forest cover.

The Serpent Ronin is perhaps best known (in a dubious way) for having a glitched Battlegear that can be exploited to gain Yin tokens outside of the means that the game designers did not intend.

The Lotus Clan is a sinister faction, filled with corrupt, often waif-like individuals who are armed with wicked weapons. (If they are not armed with weapons, then they are weapons in and of themselves - often disgusting ones too.) Their visual designs would appeal to players who like insidious and dark fantasy archetypes, though their voice-acting would not exactly hold the same appeal; they often sound raspy and sore-throated, or mumble and gurgle their lines (if these are legible at all).

Unlike the Dragon and Serpent Clan, not every unit in the Lotus Clan have dual but mutually exclusive Battlegear options. The Tier 1 units have only one, while the Tier 3 units have up to three. Moreover, Lotus units gain Battlegear by being granted this by a trio of special Lotus "heroes", who are the Lotus Clan's forebearers that can be summoned onto the battlefield as powerful hero-type units. Tier 2 units also have another, more sinister method to gain their alternative Battlegear.

Unfortunately, while these different methods of obtaining Battlegear for Lotus units are very interesting and very much appropriate to the themes of the Lotus Clan, they also happen to be quite a hassle of micro-management; none of these methods can be automated.

Their Tier 1 units are the ambitious student caste of their clandestine hierarchy. Considering that the power which a Lotus aspirant gains is obtained at the cost of their physical fortitude, the Lotus Clan's Tier 1 units are practically their close-combat meat-shields. Unfortunately, having only one Battlegear option gives them very limited tactical flexibility, though thematically, their limited versatility is in line with their status as students.

The Channeler is the healer unit of the Lotus Clan. However, unlike the healers of the Dragon and Serpent Clans, her healing powers come from the ravens that follow her into battle and also assist her in fighting. However, a raven dies for every healing attempt and she can only have up to three, so she risks losses in combat prowess. Fortunately, she can "regenerate" new ravens over time. Interestingly, the Channeler is also the only Lotus unit without Battlegear.

The Lotus' Tier 2 units are perhaps the most indicative of the corrupting paths of power that the Lotus offers to their subjects; in fact, they are students who have failed to control the corruption that comes as a side effect of practicing the path of Death. All of them are disgusting to watch in action, though perhaps in an (ironically) refreshing manner as there were few units with such design themes in the strategy genre at the time. On the other hand, they have little legible voice-acting; what is there can be quite annoying to players who are not used to fantasy undead archetypes.

Other than receiving it from the Lotus' Three Brothers, Tier 2 Lotus units can also gain Battlegear by attacking and eating Lotus Peasants. These sorts of Battlegear have more tactical worth, but come with damage to his/her economy. Having Lotus Tier 2 units being able to kill and eat enemy Peasants too to gain Battlegear would have been an entertaining additional design, but it appears that the cannibalization animation can be only be performed on Lotus Peasants that the player owns, which can be a disappointment.

On the other hand, these units are the nastiest that the Lotus Clan can field. In addition to having hideously effective Battlegear, their deaths can also be used as weapons. Upon dying, these units release all kinds of harmful material with different effects.

Unlike the other Clans, the Lotus has two Tier 3 units instead of just one. Moreover, these couple of units can have up to three different Battlegear options, each one provided by one of the Three Brothers.

The Warlock is the status that all Lotus disciples aspire to. Unlike the (canonical) drop-outs that are the Tier 2 units, the Warlock has mastered the diabolic and ruinous arts of the Lotus Clan. He has gained tremendous magical power which he uses to hurl devastating lightning orbs at enemies from far away. There is still the loss in physical fortitude that makes him a terrible close-combatant, though he attempts to compensate by draining the stamina of any enemy that is locking him in melee.

Yet, the Warlock is not the pinnacle Lotus unit. That would instead be the Master Warlock, who is the result of sending two Warlocks to the Warlocks' Tower. The Master Warlock has transcended beyond the physical frailty of his former self, becoming both a powerful melee and ranged combatant. However, he does appear to have traded away his ranged attack rate (and any innate ability) in return for more magical firepower per shot, as well as a new set of Battlegear options.

The Wolf Clan is a boisterous faction, too fierce and stubborn to accept any cultural influence from outsiders. As a consequence, their people, buildings and weapons all look crude and brutish, yet they would have it no other way. On the other hand, their lack of any notion of advanced civilization frees up their time to pursue their connection with nature, which gives them access to plants with aggressive growth that can be used in an offensive manner and the servitude of feral creatures like wolves.

All Wolf Clan units have relatively more health than their similarly tiered counterparts, prodigious natural healing rates and the ability to heal to full health, in return for having no actual healers at all. These traits make very powerful combatants out of Wolf warriors, but they are also rendered more vulnerable to attrition strategies. Moreover, Wolf units, with the exception of a scant few, have no innate abilities other than these, which drastically reduce their tactical versatility.

In terms of Battlegear, all Wolf units have access to Shale Armor as one of their Battlegear options. Shale Armor adds scale-mail like decals to their models, as well as grant them increased damage resistances, especially to magic.

All these simplifications make the Wolf army the easiest one to figure out and possibly play as well, though it is also somewhat easier to outwit by the other three, if the player treats it as an army for dummies.

As for their non-Shale Battlegear, they gain it through the blessings of the Druidess, who is otherwise the counterpart of the other Clans' healer units. By visiting the Cairn (which is the equivalent of their other Clans' Town Squares) and spending some time (and rice and water) there, the Druidess gains a limited number of Blessings that she can bestow on the men-folk of the Wolf Clan. Otherwise, the Druidess helps the Wolf's men in battle by binding enemies with vines and other slithering plants, which slow them down. She can also stand around in rice fields and invigorate their growth with her presence.

Being former slave labourers, the Wolf Clan only knows how to fight with tools that they themselves have used when they were still under slavery at the Shale mines. This tradition shows in their Tier 1 units, who wield deceptively unwieldy weapons with astonishing vigour.

The Brawler, who uses slabs of granite that had been shaped into club-axes of sorts to smash enemies into pulp, is perhaps best known for his Zen Counterpunch Battlegear, which allows him to deal devastating blows against hero-type units. Thus, this gives the Wolf Clan army a hard-counter against said units – which may or may not be a wise game design, considering that losing heroes can be a serious blow to a player's war efforts.

The Wolf Clan's Tier 2 units are those who are settling into new things that they have learned since their independence. One of these is the ballista, an unwittingly oversized version of the crossbow. The Ballistaman is the single crewman who operates it. Using the ballista, he can launch oversized bolts at enemies to impale them from far away, thus giving the Wolf Clan an artillery-based solution. The Druidess's blessing for him grants him a special totem that he can - typically - launch at another location to give the Wolf Clan a pair of magical eyes to scout out said location with.

The Berserker is a warrior who has embraced the inner feralness intrinsic in each one of the Wolf people. This grants him tremendous staying power in battle, as well as vicious close-combat aptitude. Oddly enough, the Druidess's blessing lets him embrace his feral nature even further, turning him into a Werewolf permanently, which is himself a hero-type unit.

There is an exploit to be had with the transformation: the Werewolf regains completely full health, even if the Berserker may have been badly injured before the turning. Despite how imbalanced this may be, the game designers appear to find this too entertaining to design out of the game. In fact, they worked this exploit into the scripts for AI-controlled Wolf players.

As if the units mentioned above do not give the game plenty of variety in gameplay already, Liquid Entertainment has also included hero-type units in the form of so-called Zen Masters. They are a class above regular units, as befitting hero units.

Many of them are featured in the story campaign, often in a manner that elaborates on the game's canon. Unfortunately, gameplay-wise, they are actually a liability as most missions require them to survive. This is a very old and archaic mission design in the RTS genre, so it can be very disappointing to some players who had been impressed by Battle Realms' other, refreshingly different game designs.

The frustration of keeping them alive would be reduced somewhat once the Keep is introduced in the campaign, as the Keep respawns story-centric Zen Masters for free some time after their "deaths". However, this campaign design is not compensation enough for the fuss of keeping them alive in previous missions, and it also unwittingly highlights how game-breakingly powerful that they can be (especially the main character, Kenji, who is apparently too powerful to be in multiplayer).

In multiplayer, they are recruited via the Keep, though the player has to pay a steep price in rice, water and/or Yin/Yang tokens to field them for battle.

However, there are some Zen Masters that may just be too powerful. The aforementioned Kenji is fortunately reserved only for single-player, but there are some that for better or worse have been included in multiplayer too. Chief of these is the Serpent Necromancer, whose ability to raise undead soldiers can be very devastating, especially against players that are weak at countering attrition strategies.

As have been described above, Battle Realms have plenty of innovations and great ideas that are functionally well-implemented, for the most part. Unfortunately, utilization is a different matter; many of the features in the game, such as innate abilities that units have when they are idle and Battlegear or other abilities that have area-effect properties, do not benefit from flaws in the AI scripts of units.

Despite the different toggles for their behaviours, all units are simply too eager to fight. At their default AI setting, units will only pursue a limited (but still uncomfortably long) distance before returning to approximately where they were; they will never return to the same spot.

The Aggressive AI setting is the worst; units will simply run off after enemies that had passed by, often in a piecemeal manner that will have them end up in trouble. Considering that there is no unit in the game that has the capacity to strike out on its own and harry enemies efficiently, having this AI setting is a dubious design decision.

The last AI setting has units simply standing where they are. However, units that are holding their ground will still take note of any enemies that are passing by and are guaranteed to drop into a combat stance when they do, if they are not already making use of their ranged attacks (if any). This would seem thematically correct, but such behaviour also causes them to lose any bonuses that they may gain from remaining idle.

The worst aspect of their AI, however, is to be encountered during combat.

It is apparent that Liquid Entertainment has decided that Battle Realms should be substantially more exciting than other fantasy RTS titles. To achieve this, they have given all units in this game fighting animations that are full of gusto. Unfortunately, they may have taken this a bit too far.

Units that are fighting vigorously will eventually split apart from the main group, devolving into scattered duels or small clusters of feuding combatants. This is not conducive to the use of area-effect abilities. Having units directed at single targets helps, but only a little; Battle Realms takes its full 3D status seriously, and so every in-game object has hitboxes with strict collision detection and prevention. In other words, a single target cannot be engaged by more than a few aggressors in melee combat, and a ranged army still has to form ranks, stretching its manpower and making it vulnerable to flanking.

Furthermore, armies have no sense of coherence. Every unit is very much an individual of his/her/its own volition, with no concept of rank-and-file. Having an army walk is the only way to keep it close together, but having it run ruins whatever semblance to an army that it has because different units have different running speeds and they will not run in unison.

These issues appear ingrained into the game, unfortunately, despite the updates that the game has received to somewhat address them.

The graphical aspect is not as flawed, however.

The buildings in the game are largely designed with oriental themes in mind. Flags, banners and arches adorn the Dragon and Serpent Clans' buildings, while sinister and dark purple hues accentuate every Lotus edifice. As for the Wolf Clan, they are not one for impressive stonework or magical construction, so all of their structures are crude and predominantly made from unhewn rocks.

As befitting buildings, most of them are static structures, lacking any animation. On the other hand, placing the units that they produce (or unlock for production) shows a stark contrast in the animation efforts.

Battle Realms is set in an unnamed world and an unnamed continent, but whatever the topological setting is, it is a beautiful one with actual contributions to gameplay.

Examples of well-designed terrain include forests and marshes. Forests look lush, if a bit static, and also have the in-game effect of reducing the line-of-sight of units who traverse them; units moving through forests also disturb flocks of birds, the occurrence of which will appear on players' maps as a ping alert. Marshes appropriately look filthy, and also happen to slow down any unit that brave their murky waters.

As mentioned earlier, all units have wild appearances that would only be familiar to those who know of punk anime. For other players, some of them can seem to be quite creepy, even when they are not supposed to be. Examples of such units include the Dragon Clan's Kabuki Warrior, who has oddball visual designs and animations, and most of the Lotus Clan's units, especially their disgusting Tier 2 units.

Liquid Entertainment flaunts their unit designs anyway, by using in-game graphics and models for cutscenes. The camera goes up-close in this, often highlighting blemishes like no actual facial animations for characters, lumped polygons for hands and muddled textures for certain parts of certain characters, such as the creases on Kenji's clothes.

While the game has adequate visual cues for units that are benefiting from actively triggered buffs, there are next to no visual cues for buffs brought about by innate abilities. For example, the Blade Acolyte has an idle animation that has him sharpening his blades, which will grant him increased damage from the next blow that he performs. Yet, he has no visual cues for informing on-looking players that he has this buff active; his blades seem the same before and after this animation.

Whatever alienation that the player may have from the unit designs may be dispelled upon seeing them in action though. As chaotic as their fighting can be, watching them engage in battle can be exhilarating, especially with their cries, yells and insults adding to the din.

Speaking of voice-acting, most of the lines in this game are spoken with American accents, which may be a relief to those who had been expecting stereotypical Oriental accents. On the other hand, the accents used are not exactly fitting either. Yet, for the most part, the voice-acting is decent and satisfactory.

There is some bad voice-acting to be had. An example is the poor intonation on the part of some Wolf and Lotus units, such as the Sledger and the Tier 2 Lotus units. Some bad voice-acting appears intentional, such as the Wolf Mauler's deadpan statements, which can be amusing at times.

Deficiencies in the voice-acting are somewhat compensated for with variety in the voiced-over lines. Examples are healed units mentioning thanks when healed, exclamations of severe injury that needs immediate attention and, of course, lots of grunts, groans and shouts for battles.

The sound effects are as varied as the voice-acting in this game, though much of them consist of sounds of battle, e.g. the clashing of metal on metal, metal through flesh, blunt force smashing bones and stone, etc.

The musical soundtracks are perhaps the only subset of this game's sound designs that make use of its Oriental themes. They are composed using Oriental musical instruments, such as bamboo flutes, oboes and reed pipes, taiko drums, and plucked and bowed instruments. The result is a set of inspiring soundtracks that are usually fitting for the occasion, such as the serene melodies for the starting of matches when players have to concentrate on building up their towns.

Up to eight players can join a multiplayer match, which can be very hectic at times if compared to the more measured pace of the story campaign. Nonetheless, the refreshingly exciting game designs of Battle Realms can be experienced in multiplayer, and would have benefited from better gameplay designs (if not for certain exploits and glitches that have been mentioned earlier; these have been patched, though it marred early experiences with the game's multiplayer).

If there is disappointment to be had with the game's multiplayer, it's the dearth of game modes. There are the usual team battle or free-for-all modes, but the only other significant game mode involves keeping the player's Keep standing, but which otherwise has no essential difference from the rest.

In conclusion, Battle Realms has a presentation that may not appeal to anyone who does not find over-the-top character designs to be amusing; there are also glitches/exploits that mar its refreshing game designs. However, looking past these flaws, the player would experience gameplay that is well-designed and, most importantly, geared for exciting - if chaotic - combat.