Hegemonia: Legions of Iron Preview

The accomplished Hungarian developer Digital Reality, known for their strategies Imperium Galactica 1 & 2, are now working on a promising new 3D RTS entitled Hegemonia: Legions of Iron. After the game's successful debut at the E3 2002, Hegemonia: Legions of Iron has shown considerable improvement in the press preview version (which was kindly supplied by Dreamcather Interactive). Just by gazing at the screenshots provided, one might assume this is just another Homeworld clone. Frankly, the principle of gameplay is similar and all mission assignments are carried out in deep space, but that's about it. Anyhow, Hegemonia has many unique aspects that significantly enhance the sci-fi 3D RTS genre.

Welcome to the interior of your mining base.

All is calm all here in Earth's orbit.

Our story begins some time in the year 2104, when mankind prospered and mastered the skills of space travel and planet colonization. After decades of relative peace and harmony, the so-called Organization of Colonists and the World Government have begun to squabble over various regions throughout the Solar System. Soon, an all-out war broke out between the two most powerful human societies - Martian forces and forces on Earth. For some time it's been known that Mars greatly exceeded Earth's technology. This means that Mars has the upper hand when it comes to highly advanced military equipment, vessels, and diverse civilian production systems. Although Earth lags behind in technical achievements, its forces greatly outnumber Mars humans and other outer-colony forces. Whichever one of these you choose, your ultimate goal is to overcome all opposing forces in the known Universe and gain control over crucial space recourse zones.

Apart from Earth and Mars humans, players will be able to select two additional races. For the present, the developers have only revealed the name of one of these - the peculiar Solons. Apparently, their appearance, units, and culture remain unknown. The one thing we know for sure is that they were humans once and after exploring the far regions of the Universe they discovered ancient relics which have somehow twisted their human form. In our press demo we got to try out a few scenarios within Mars and Earth campaigns. Both campaigns have offered us a number of slightly linear missions, which weren't that difficult to complete. Clearly, several gameplay aspects need tweaking. Nonetheless, we decided not to be too judgmental on that one.

Anyhow, the demo presented a wide variety of interesting tasks and sudden plot twists. Throughout the game, the player quickly gets used to the straightforward interface, which was designed for simple unit control and resource manipulation. While browsing through his empire, the player can also easily access the technology tree where he can advance his military and civilian production systems. Through it all, many other concerns will boggle your mind; population growth, remaining recourses, and such. Fortunately, the main interface will feature all of the necessary readouts and the appropriate buttons and icons with which you can commence production or adjust the population status.

One of the coolest things about the gameplay is that almost every detail on screen can have a significant part in battle, from dense asteroid fields to ship remnants. Even planets can be assailed at any time. Such aspects add a special epic feel to the game and overshadow the slight linearity of the missions. Also, the game has several RPG-like facets that include hero characters and unit experience. Hero characters represent high-ranking influential personnel, whose roll is to increase productivity and boost population moral. You simply assign your hero to a particular planet and presto - just watch your production and technology thrive. Taking care of your corvettes and fighters during combat is the best way you can advance their experience. Your crafts will usually level up after they've annihilated a considerable amount of enemy fighters or destroyed a major enemy structure.

Hegemonia: Legions of Iron treated us to some stunning 3D visuals. What's most praiseworthy is the original design of the ships, frigates, and various structures (like head-quarters, mining bases, etc.). Also, thanks to the excellent light effects each craft appears genuine (as genuine as a futuristic spacecraft can appear really - ed). Every in-game model is packed with textures and polys. A particularly striking detail is the appearance of planets, which are all fully-rendered and look amazingly realistic. For example, Earth features visible atmosphere layers and you can even notice tiny night lights throughout hemispheres that aren't reached by the Sun. Very nice. In addition, since you'll mostly be blowing up spaceships, you can expect to observe some impressive explosions. Each craft or structure will explode in a unique manner, displaying first-rate particle effects.

Of course we mustn't leave out the high-quality sound effects, beautiful epic soundtrack, and well-acted voiceovers. Sadly, the audio background in some sections is a little buggish (bear in mind though that this is a preview build and not a final product). Also, we found the camera a bit confusing; basically, it has a few glitches that may cumber unit movement, which definitely obstructs the flow of gameplay and takes some getting use to (again, it's fairly possible that these issues will be dealt with before the final product hits the shelves).

That's all for now kids. You're gonna be happy to know that the final version will also have heaps of cool features such as 200 different inventions for you to research, 4 unique races, expanded gameplay with the use of wormholes, and greatly enhanced effects. Sounds good, don't it?