Highland Warriors Review

How many of you can recall the famous scenes from the "Braveheart", where a middle-aged Aussie by the name of William Wallace (Mel Gibson) rides back and forth on his steed and shouts to a company of Brave Scottish warriors (extras): "They may take our lives, but they'll never take OUR FREEDOM"? Who remembers the unforgettable scenes in which the brave Scottish clansmen turn their backs to the English troops and lift their skirts up (err, kilts that is) in an act of defiance against the iron grip of King Edward I Longshanks? Come to think of it, I bet that sight would make plenty of inmates happy at the Texas State Penitentiary, but I digress...

If his guy did any more push-ups, his eyes would probably pop out.

We seem to be witnessing some sort of debate here laddies, but it's all in English and hard to make out.

It seems as though you we were not the only one impressed with these vintage Hollywood scenes; the German development team, Soft Enterprises, took their fascination a step (or a few steps) further by developing a full-blown 3D RTS that covers the history of Scotland, from the unification of the clans to the final fight for independence against the English oppressors. Highland Warriors starts out in the mythical time of the first nations' foundation in Scotland and progresses from the English occupation by King Edward I through the onset of the Scottish resistance initiated by William Wallace and Co. all of the way until Robert the Bruce's great victory at Bannockburn, a final victory that achieved the much longed-for freedom of Scotland. The game, however, does not only cover the noble struggle of William Wallace (shown in Braveheart). It also depicts the events that took place before William united the clans in the fight against the English and the events after his execution by the very same English. These events span over several centuries and add some druid mysticism to the story that makes the world of Highland Warriors more interesting and appealing to gamers. Highland Warriors is a quite massive project, and, thus, the developers set before themselves an ambitious goal to try and bring to life the romantic, turbulent legends and history of the birth of Scotland. For that reason alone, the team at Soft Enterprises deserves this reviewer's recognition.

The most noteworthy aspects of this game are an epic storyline and a relatively authentic portrayal of the units, lands and buildings of the time. The massive scope of the project also implies that there is plenty of play time to be found for those of you who are captivated by the game's subject. Halfway through the first campaign, I was already beginning to immerse myself in the rich environment, which represents a subtle blend of history and mythology, is a rather captivating storyline that made me stay with the game a bit longer than I expected. Unraveling the story, being intrigued by the mythical druid rituals, and learning something about Scottish history are probably Highland Warriors' strongest facets. If you like epic tales, this 3D RTS game might do the trick for you. The in-game cut scenes are excellently directed and the narration is very professional, adding a specific cinematic value and a dramatic effect to the plot. Besides the larger-than-life storyline, there are some nice and innovative gameplay moments, such as the addition of castles, sieges, and military outposts, all of which were very common for that time.

But alas, this valiant effort by the German development team was hindered (if not severely crippled) by the team's relative inexperience in the field of strategy gaming, as well as rushed designed decisions, unpolished code, and very poor unit sounds, including some annoyances that will make you scream in agony and desperation far more authentically than the wounded and slain Scotts and English in Highland Warriors.

The most basic mistake that the developers made are the very core components of every strategy game: proper gameplay flow and difficulty (note that I have finished the game on the normal level of difficulty). Finishing missions in Highland Warriors essentially comes down to piling up five different resources (food, gold, ore, stone and wood), and subsequently piling up your units, eventually razing the enemy camp. The computer doesn't find it fit to truly challenge you at any moment (besides sending a few warriors here and there), and will give you all the time in the world to build a massive army that becomes damn-near invincible in the field of battle (apart from maybe one or two tricky sieges in the later stages of the game).

Robert the Bruce himself. I thought he had a beard... Oh well.

Units in place, Sire!

Seriously, once your army is assembled, you'll encounter little or no resistance from the enemy troops, which essentially kills any sense of accomplishment a player might have after successfully finishing a mission. Most of the mission will, therefore, come down to tracking the enemy encampments on the map, and burning them to the ground. Given, not all missions come down to simply building your army and dealing away with your opponents with ease, but to be honest, most of them do.

Besides this rather glaring gameplay drawback, there are numerous other nagging details that will ruin the gameplay experience for many strategy gamers, one of them being unit balancing issues; the rangers (archers), for one, are much too powerful against melee troops. The units exhibit path finding problems and lag during movement, much like when you're playing in multiplayer with a really high ping, and the units make quantum leaps from one position to the next [I hate 56k -ed]. Also, units are oftentimes quite oblivious to your orders and have particular problems when trying to move in formations. One hero unit, for instance, will break away from the formation, and then the entire group won't move, waiting for the hero to get back in the formation before they would do whatever it is you ordered them to do. The combat interface is rather clunky as well; it won't show specific group numbers of the grouped units, which makes it very hard to successfully command your troops in battle. Regardless, this won't be a huge problem, as the other side won't put up much of a fight to being with.

Visually, Highland Warriors is a mixed bag of blessings. On the plus side, the environments are nice and detailed, and the engine features a fully rotatable 3D camera. The units, however, aren't the prettiest I've ever seen (although they're quite detailed for a strategy game), and if you crank up the details to the max, the game becomes a resource hog, bringing the frame rate considerably down, even on high-end PC's. Then again, there is always the option to turn on SE's proprietary LoD (level of detail) system. Ideally, the LoD system should render fewer polies when you zoom out and render the units in full detail when you zoom in. However, this system doesn't work so well in practice, as it lags 1-2 seconds behind the camera. Finally, I wasn't impressed with the unit animation, which looks rather stiff.

The musical soundtrack, on the contrary, is quite catchy and well done, though the unit sounds are NOT (and I mean NOT). I guess that the idea here was to make the game even more authentic by using what I think is the genuine language of the time. Unfortunately, instead of sounding fun and interesting, this intelligible speech will most likely make you homicidal, as the units keep repeating the same annoying sounds over, and over ... and over again. These unit sounds are so irritating they have become a running joke around the office; our associate editor, VADAR, goes from cubicle to cubicle talking like an axe man for no other reason than to annoy other editors who call his cough the worst thing since the outbreak of the Ebola virus in 1993. I'm afraid the same goes for the pathetic screams and shouts during combat, which only strengthen our belief that great unit sounds are an essential ingredient of every good strategy game.

In summary, I must say that my review sounds harsher than I wanted it to, but I tried to form the most objective opinion about Highland Warriors that I could. Those of you who are captivated by the game's subject might find the captivating story rewarding enough, and there are plenty of missions to play as well as plenty of exciting events to reveal. Unfortunately, many will simply be put off by the game's clumsy design and lack of more polish. Highland Warriors just isn't what one considers fun, challenging and addictive RTS gameplay.