Battle Realms was about as impressive as a barrel of retarded monkeys trying to program A.I. for Honda Robotics Corp. With over a dozen games in this category it takes quite a bit to stand out from the pack, and Liquid Entertainment fell short of the goal. I wonder if they even had a goal in mind? Once again, you will harvest this (rice), build that (huts), and create an army to stop the other player(s) from doing the same. Only the hardcore RTS lovers will buy into this one.

The controls were solid, and worked well for what you had to do. Even though there were a few revamps into what every Real Time Strategy has these days, it was so minor it seemed redundant. I’d say it was an attempt to make you feel as if it was something fresh and original. (Let me restate how far from the truth this is.) For example: You left click the terrain, and move the cursor over multiple units in order to select, and then right click to march them to their fate. You do the same process but when you want to attack, you will get a sword icon to pop up. Cool, huh? Perhaps a better example yet: When buildings are on fire you cannot just repair, you have to run back and fourth between the water “terrain area” and the building to put it out. Nothing was added to improve the RTS. Actually this made things even worst. Imagine being attacked by 2 players, and you’re dueling on two fronts with masses of units assaulting your huge fortress, and trying to put out fires with your “rice collectors”? Oh wait with the 40 unit cap, its more like a playground fight outside after recess. I would also like to note you are able to set your units to run or walk. With no penalty on the units creation and none on the attacking process at all. This makes me wonder, ‘why can’t you just set them to run at all times?’ As we all know RTS means ‘Really Timed Shootout’, as I have come to dub them. It’s kill quickly, or be killed quickly when playing these games online.

Where does Battle Realms begin to poke its head out, and stick its tongue at the rivals? Well that’s a good question. I was saving this for last, because it will only take a few minutes to explain. There is a certain amount of realism added, beep in mind like everything else it’s very minor. When I brought my army into the forest the birds that inhabited them flew out frantically, unfortunately the realism ends here. The one and only thing that I can truly say was a good feature to this overall boring process was the unit upgrade. Instead of just upgrading units weapons or armor like every other Real Time Strategy, you actually train units in another building to advance them in level. Such as the spearmen after training become dragon swordsmen, most units have upgrades. Another, ‘lets do something good, but not finish it” feature was the tutorial. While decent for getting a feel for the game, it was really a 3 hour, ‘bore me out of my mind processes’. I will not play Battle Realms again, even if Game2Extreme paid me too!

I do have to agree that Battle Realms is visually appealing. However, graphics and flashy interfaces can only carry a game so far. When you install this game you will see all the nice textures. Beginning to feel you are about to play one of the best graphical games as of yet. Even the load and menu screens are nice. I was getting all jittery from the potential of a graphical rival to the newer RTS’s already out there. But the graphical eye candy show ends as soon as you click, ‘new game’. The truth is beyond the menus, and some of the buildings the graphics weren’t that good. Though I must say, the player models were exceptionally good. Ha-ha, yeah right! Do you remember the ‘block hand’ effect of Sony Playstation’s Resident Evil where the character’s hands seem like one big block with a few line details added? Well it’s brought back in this title!

The units had animations for attack, and regular stance mode which was neat. But when you kill a unit they explode in a bloody mess. I can’t say this wasn’t cool, but fitting? I’d say not. I also want to point out that at the very least the icon’s used in selection were detailed. They used menu colors in the unit process buttons. This was new, I haven’t seen anyone pay this much attention to the colors and look of the unit selection buttons. But this only fuels my fire! “Lets put a lot of time into something, but only take it far enough to let you see what we could, or even should do.”

There was sound to this game? No I am just kidding! Even though the music exists, I couldn’t listen to it for more then a few moments. The music was nothing more than, ‘blah’. This is me giving the soundtrack the benefit of the doubt. I wouldn’t blame you if you were to loose your sanity listening to the, “masterpiece music” that was Battle Realms It seems to take on the tone of a somewhat Chinese like theme, and then at other times a fantasy world mix/remix.

The voice-over for units had been decent enough to pass inspection, but that yet again doesn’t say much. Each unit had roughly 3 sayings, including the traditional dieing sounds. Included are the “ARRRGGHHH”, and “WAAAGHHGHH!!”