Kohan 2: Kings of War Review

Another thing I should mention is the management segment, which I really enjoyed. The interface being logical and simple and the base mechanism being intelligent, I rather loved this part of the game. The things are very simple: as oppose to the original, you can now build outposts only at the designated sites (settlement spots) in the game, and with time, you can upgrade those to cities and citadels. You should take care to upgrade your cities as they then gain defensive walls, which of course helps you a lot in the defense of the city. There are a number of buildings that you can build to upgrade your city. Each one of them can be upgraded and they are now separate selectable buildings on the map. They also bring you something, like a bonus or a new unit, and serve for the research of new technologies. The thing about the resources is that you don't actually accumulate them (you only accumulate gold in this way). If you lack a resource, you can still buy units with more gold, which is great but you must take care not to spend too eagerly, as it takes time to collect gold and it is the basic resource in the game, so you won't be able to do anything without it (even research costs gold). Apart from cities, you can also build forts to provide additional protection for your cities or resources. The good side of forts is that they, just as the cities, garrison the militia, which automatically defends them when the enemy approaches, which can be of great help during the game. The bad thing about this entire mechanism is the fact that the city is captured by destroying its citadel so you don't need to waste your time on other buildings. When you capture the city, you will have to rebuild these buildings anyway because they are all sold back to their owner, which is a principle I could not easily understand. This struck me as rather strange, as I could not find any logical reason for that - the whole game seems to be designed for action and suddenly you have to rebuild the city all over again, which can slow the game down quite a bit.

The Sistine Chapel was under constructions when the forces of good struck back.

Our Silent Guard is not much of a company. Couldn't we have gotten a more talkative one?

Apart from the fact that in Kohan II you don't need to have everything inside your supply zone but only need to build a structure, one of the biggest changes to the original game is the graphics as 2D sprites are gone for good. The game is now in full 3D, with a very good overhead view and some rather impressive effects. Although you'd rather zoom out while building in the city and deploying your troops, you'll notice a great amount of detail when you zoom in. Units and monsters are rendered with a lot of detail and their animation is superb. You'll notice different animals used for riding and the way they move in battle and like it so much that you'll almost forget about the rest of the game. Each race's units differ visually as well as their buildings, so there is a lot of variety there (Harvester and Hillstrider of the Elven-like Haroun race especially caught my eye, as they look like Tolkien's Ents). Heroes also look good (there are some new ones in Kings of War), and their animation is of the highest quality. There are some nice animations in the game (water flowing, birds flying over the battlefield, gazelles running over the hill) and some spectacular ones, such as spell effects and such. I was really impressed by the look of it and found out that units were easily recognizable even if I zoomed out.

There is nothing special about the background music, but it fits well into the game and creates a very good atmosphere. The overall sound and voiceovers are of excellent quality - although the replicas are somewhat humdrum, especially the war shouts such as "For the light!" and the cold statements like "No rest for the wicked," which really made me laugh (I don't think this was supposed to be funny, though).

Speaking of banal replicas, the story is no Oscar-winning masterpiece either. It follows up the story of the original, although it takes place many years later. I won't bore you with the details; suffice it to say that originality isn't one of its strongest aspects. You can't consider this a real downside though, as it serves the purpose well and I must admit it develops in a more than satisfying manner through the game.

Although I did not like some of the principles of this game, there were others that I found really intelligent and enjoyable, so my overall impression was very positive in the end. There are 25 missions in the game, but you can replay them all if you weren't satisfied, think you could have done it better, or if you're really stubborn and want to fulfill the secondary objectives as well. Apart from the linear campaign, there is a skirmish mode where you can play missions by choosing any of the six races in the game, and one of the five factions as well - these being Royalists, Nationalists, Ceyah, Fallen, and Council (not all races get to choose all factions). Someone said that the AI was better in skirmish mode than in the campaign and I generally agree with that. The real fun begins with multiplayer (via both LAN and Internet for 2-8 players), where you can also pick any race you want and set a great number of options. There is also a game editor in Kohan II, so considering all these things, you are sure to enjoy this game for quite a while.

Kohan II: Kings of War has a lot to offer to every strategy fan despite its downsides, such as the unreliable AI, its rather linear campaign and lack of practical use of many of its units. It is still a very good and addictive game, with many improvements made - in the gameplay as well as in the most obvious factor, the graphics. I found it much more playable than the original.