Category: PC

Gothic [1] – Intro and the Old Camp

April 8, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

For those not familiar, the basic plot of Gothic goes like this:

There’s a prison under a magical barrier with prisoners pretty much free to govern over themselves while in there, but unable to ever get out alive and with an arrangement to mine some special ore in exchange for stuff from the outside. The player is a fresh prisoner, just sent into the prison. Before he got sent inside, he was slipped a letter for the leader of the Fire Mages within the prison and that’s it. No name, not much further plot.

I didn’t get a chance to fix my Windows 8 issue here yet, so you get a crappy screenshot.

I actually like games with an anonymous protagonist, so this works for me, especially if there’s a prophecy to be fulfilled or something like that, the way it is with the Elder Scrolls series.

Meeting Diego

There’s a lot of characters in Gothic and, so I probably won’t remember most of them, but I managed to remember Diego. Diego is a denizen of the Old Camp and his job is to greet fresh prisoners. He basically introduces me to the prison and the inner politics.

The deal is, the prisoners split into three camps. The Old Camp still does the mining and gets most of the sought after outside stuff in exchange for the ore. They are probably the best equipped in there, but they aren’t really interested in changing the status quo. The New Camp has separated from the Old Camp and they’re actively trying to find a way to escape from the prison.

Sorry, still not fixed.

The Swamp Cultists are religious freaks. They found some entity they consider a god and they believe this thing will give them a way out of the prison and also grant them powers or something. I’m not completely sure yet, but I think I’ll either go with the Old or the New Camp when I finally join a faction. Religious freaks really aren’t my cup of tea.

Diego is part of the Old Camp, so his description was obviously biased. He told me who I need to talk to when I get there, pointed me in the direction of some discarded gear and sent me on my way.

I did some exploring around the landing area and found a pickaxe. This is not a very good weapon, even for the first one, but I don’t have a choice, really. From what I understand, the way weapons work in Gothic is that they have a strength requirement, and the more you surpass that requirement, the faster you can swing that weapon, up to a certain point. I might be completely wrong here, but if that’s true, then it’s probably in my best interest to pick a faster weapon instead of always going for the strongest one.

I fixed my issue here, so I could finally enjoy the nice view.

With the pickaxe, I did some more exploring and climbed a nearby cliff. On the top, I found two juvenile scavengers, a couple of mole rats and a goblin. The rats and the scavengers are beginner monsters, so they were easy to kill. The goblins, however, I remember from one of my earlier attempts at this game, so I was pretty scared when I attacked it. Somehow, I managed to kill it with a bit of health remaining, though, so I could freely enjoy the great view from the top of the cliff.

I went back down to the other side of the canyon, picked up a rusty sword, which is a weaker, but a faster weapon, and killed the last mole rat there. On the way to the Old Camp, I also killed a couple of meat bugs and got their meat for later.

First Time at the Old Camp

The Old Camp is arranged into several (two or three, I’m not sure) levels, with only the outer level accessible to me right now. I explored it in a circular fashion, talked to everyone and got all the quests I could.

The Barrier looks great in the night sky. It provides a lot of atmosphere.

One of the people there wanted to buy an ornamental sword from a merchant, but the merchant wouldn’t sell it to him, so I played mediator. Several guards wanted protection money from me, so I picked one and gave him the 10 ore he wanted. I think I need to pay all three to be protected everywhere, though.

There was an arena there to, as well as several people from the Cultist and the New Camp, trading and looking for recruits. The head guy at the arena wanted me to win a match in exchange for his good word with Diego. Several other people also wanted favors in exchange for their recommendation. Getting enough recommendations would make me an official member of the Old Camp, but even though I’m still not sure which side I’ll pick, I’ll do most of the quests anyway, for the experience and the rewards.

Frying scavenger meat over a fire. More atmosphere!

I found a frying pan over a fire and fried all of the meat I picked up from the scavengers and rats I killed. I remember this being very impressive back when Gothic was first released and it still holds its own now. I mean, sure, there’s alchemy in other games, but there’s an actual animation of frying the meat in this one. It’s a nice touch.

With all the exploration and quest solving, I finally got my fist level, so I traded most of my good away for ore and then gave the ore to some New Camp hunters outside, in exchange for them to teach me how to scavenge dead monster parts. I can now extract claws and skin animals. I still have two more to learn, so as soon as I get the money, I’ll come back.

It took me several attempts to clear these guys without dying, bit it made it all the more satisfying.

I also explored the area outside the Old Camp and climbed some cliffs. In one of the caves, I found a dead guard and reported it to another guard inside the camp. This secured me another recommendation. In another cave, on top of a cliff, I found basically a hermit. He used to live at the Old Camp, but then just decided to get away from it all.

I also spent far too much time trying to get down from that cliff. The controls in Gothic really have room for improvement. I kept taking from steps and falling to my death on my way down. I need to say something outright, though. Unlike many, I’m fine with the way Gothic handles combat. I’m OK with those controls. I just think the movement and jumping needs work.

The character screen looks simple, but there’s a lot of complexity hidden in there.

I actually spent a couple of hours doing all of this, so I decided to take a break at this point. There’s a lot to explore in the world of Gothic and I’m looking forward to it. It’s a great game that just happens to be rough around the edges.

Gothic [0] – Making the Game Work on Windows 8

April 3, 2013 by Nikola·15 Comments

Surprise, surprise, GOG.com made me buy another game. This time, it was Gothic. Last time I played it, I just discovered the possibilities the internet offered me, and so I managed to download a RIP of this game on a 56k dial-up connection. It weighed about 100 MB, so it took me about two nights (and a big Internet bill) to download it. It hindsight, this probably wasn’t very smart, but that’s why we have hindsight.

This is what I got when I started the game. Unacceptable!

In any case, pretty much everything was ripped from the game, including voices, videos and higher level textures. Even with that in mind, I had a lot of fun with the game. I never completed it, though, so I decided to get it the proper way this time. The problem? Windows 8 has issues with Gothic.

Gothic Full Screen Problem on Windows 8 and How to Fix It

For some reason, on my Windows 8 machine (might also be on Windows 7), the game refuses to stay in full screen. Instead, it keeps resetting to a 640×480 windowed resolution. Even worse, the windowed mode doesn’t work properly so the game keeps crashing.

Thanks to pcgamingwiki.com (which is an amazing site), I managed to fix this issue. I actually had to download the Application Compatibility Toolkit and install a fix in order to get around this full screen/ window issue. These days, the fix has been updated, so all you need to do is to download and run the batch (.bat) file from the wiki.

Gothic should now work correctly in full screen. If you have Gothic 2, an added bonus is that the sequel should now be fixed as well.

Now for me, while the full screen mode was now working, the game still refused to remember the resolution settings, so I had to fix that to.

How to Force Any Resolution in Gothic on Startup

This part is simpler. What you need to do is to create a shortcut to Gothic.exe and put it in any place you like. Once you have it, right click it and go to Properties. You should have something like [code]X:\InstallPath\Gothic\system\Gothic.exe[/code] in the target field. Turn it into [code]X:\InstallPath\Gothic\system\Gothic.exe –zRes:1920,1080,32[/code] to make the game run in 1920×1080 resolution at 32-bit color. Of course, you can put any other resolution in there. Most of the standard resolutions should work.

You need to add something to the “Target” field, not “Start in”.

There’s also a possibility that your install path has spaces in it. In that case, your path will probably look something like

[code]”X:\Install Path\Gothic\system\Gothic.exe”[/code] What you do in this case is to add the extra stuff at the very end of the string, so it looks like [code]”X:\Install Path\Gothic\system\Gothic.exe” –zRes:1920,1080,32[/code] If you put it inside, it won’t work.

Links

Warlords Battlecry 3 [4] – Gorgon Locked and Buried [COMPLETED]

March 31, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

It didn’t take long for me to go back to Warlords Battlecry 3 after waking up this morning, especially considering how the Daylight Saving switch messed up my sleep pattern. The game dragged me in and doesn’t intend to let me go until one of us is done fur. Luckily, It turns out the game would fall sooner than I would.

Humans and Dwarves

Last night, I got to the human lands with not much to do. This morning, I ended up in the area of Enmouth, where I had to fight four battles on the same map, against Barbarians, the Undead, Wood Elves and Knights, all in defense of the Empire. The fifth battle was again on the same map but against all four enemies at once. The fights stopped being challenging by now, though, since my hero could easily clear the entire map on his own. I still stuck to my old strategy of using him almost exclusively, while building up to fire priests at my home base, but slowly, the Fire Priests were getting used less and less often.

I’ve spent a lot of time here and I don’t think it was worth it.

Beating the five battles provided me with an alliance with the Empire, but that was about it, so it didn’t feel worth it. I moved on and got to the dwarven lands, where my intention was to somehow make them like me again. For some reason, I made them and the Dark Elves my enemy. I can understand the Dark Elves, but I don’t remember fighting Dwarves that often. The problem was, I couldn’t find any missions, regular or repeatable, which would help me with that goal.

The Heart of Zhur

I wandered onto an Undead island, where I got one more artifact during a chain of three missions. The Heart of Zhur now makes my hero completely immune to poison. After that, I moved on further south to the Orc lands, where I mostly fought goblins, but not before going through White Mountains, where I got one more artifact – The Gryphon Eggs. This give 30 Exp to every Gryphon I train, so they’re basically worthless.

Cureall Stone

I then finally got to the area with a mix of Plague, Orc and Dark Elf presence, where I got the Cureall Stone with my first Archmage hero. I did the same here and suddenly, I was only two actual artifacts (and two fortress keys) short of a full set of bonuses. One of the artifacts was found soon after, at Khaz-Barak. This place, according to the in-game description, used to belong to the Dwarves, so I was hoping the replayable missions here would help me get back on their good side, but even after several repetitions, it just wasn’t happening. I did get the Mythril Vein, though, which gives 10 extra armor to my hero.

Champion of Bartonia

I had one more look at my list of bonuses and realized the last one was called “Champion of Bartonia”. Bartonia was an in-game location, part of the human areas, but for some reason, I skipped it. I went back and realized that one of the replayable missions wasn’t actually replayable. I played through the chain of arena battles and soon, the final bonus and the champion title was mine. The final duel was a bit difficult, since like me, the enemy hero had an item that has a chance to heal the user, but eventually, my superior stats won. “Champion of Bartonia” also increases my attack speed by 50%, just like the Winds of the Desert do, so now I was attacking at an insane rate.

Arena duels take place on this map.

This thing basically made me invincible. I’m now attacking several times per second, with a chance to heal myself or do 500 extra damage to an enemy with every hit. Basically, almost nothing in the game can do enough damage to me fast enough to kill me.

The Second Fortress Key

I was close to the area of the Plague Horseman, so I took the chance to get one more fortress key. Just as it was with Bane, I had to fight with the Plague as my ally against Demons and a bunch of neutral floating skull enemies. This was easy to do, and again, just like with Bane, I got the key and a chance to ally myself with the Plague. I refused, because i would lose even more favor with the Dwarves. In hindsight, I should have accepted, since I didn’t get on the Dwarves’ good side before the game was over.

The Third Fortress Key

Now I was missing just one more key, so I took the long trip to the plains of Famine, where one more horseman was besieged by Gorgon’s forces. The game is certainly predictable, so again, I fought with an ally (the Swarm) against Demons and floating skulls and got the final key. I forgot to ask for the alliance this time, instead just rushing to the Wastes to get to the final two battles. By this point, other than my assassination chance and a high attack speed, I also had a high running speed, thanks to investing into the Running ability for the past few levels, so clearing missions was even faster.

I caught them all! Not all of them are extra useful, but some are quite nice.

The Final Two Missions

The first of the final two missions was basically a repetition of my first “Search the Wastes” mission. It took place on the same map, with the same enemies and again, when I got to the fortress gate, I nearly lost my hero. I finally realized why to. Apparently, there are two types of those floating skull enemies. The first use melee attacks, and they’re harmless. The second type uses ranged electrical attacks and hits for 50 points of damage. These are the guys that can easily kill me if I’m not careful.

Warlords Battlecry 3 - Gorgon's Fortress

You don’t really see Gorgon, just it’s fortress.

This brings us to the second of the two final levels. Again, it was the same map, but this time, I started out at the fortress and had to survive for 20 minutes against waves of those ranged skull enemies. Suffice to say, I would not have survived for long just defending. Instead, I rushed towards the two small tower bases on the map and destroyed both of them. This triggered the victory screen and that was it – game won!

The End

I got one of those “comic book” cut scenes, the game told me the main objective was completed and that was it. Admittedly it’s a bit underwhelming, but I can now proudly claim I’ve completed one of the games I played far too much of as a kid, but for some reason, never completed it back then.

Congratulations, I won!?

The thing is, this game isn’t really about completing the story. It’s about trying new hero builds and getting more and more powerful. There’s definitely still a huge chunk of the game I could explore. I’m just not sure I’m going to actually do it, since sadly, I have other games I also want to play. That’s the “problem” with gaming today – too many great games, too little time.

Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll try out that mode I’ve stumbled into – the Fifth Horseman. Maybe I’ll go back to one of the previous games in the installment, or maybe even turn towards the turn based games of the series. You see, the world of Etheria is primarily tied to Warlords, a turn based strategy RPG. The Walords Battlecry series is actually a spin off. There’s one more, more recent spin off to – Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. The entire series is actually quite fun, but most games, just like Warlords Battlecry 3, suffer from lack of polish.

Warlords Battlecry 3 [3] – Gorgon and the Three Keys

March 30, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Dux, the Ssrathi Assassin

Another weekend is here, which means I’ve spent another day on and off Warlords Battlecry 3. Switching my hero to an assassin was definitely the right move and the game is a lot of fun for me now, especially since I can complete missions a lot faster, so I can advance the game a bit every time I can squeeze in another fifteen minutes or so.

I don’t think I’ll ever max out some of those titles and ranks.

Dux is now level 29 and I think I won’t put any more points into Assassination. I have a 30% chance to outright kill my target with every swing and I swing about twice per second. Odds are, if I tackle an enemy here, they will be dead five seconds within the encounter at worst. Now, I need raw damage, so I can start taking down buildings just as fast.

Well, after doing some research, I found out Assassination doesn’t actually outright kill anything. Instead it adds 500 extra damage to an attack, so I guess I might have some trouble at higher levels. Still, I’d prefer to keep my hero more interesting and not just invest into a single ability.

Etheria Wikia – Warlords Battlecry 3 – Assassin

Since I don’t have many useful abilities other than Assassination, I decided to now focus on Wealth, which increases my gold income by 15 per minute for each point invested, as well as Running, which increases speed by 1 with each point invested.

The Retinue

I haven’t been paying as much attention to my retinue as I did last week, mostly because all I need my generals for now is mine conversion, since my low Charisma gives me a horrible command radius. For those unfamiliar with the game, this probably needs explanation.

How to Get Resources in Warlords Battlecry?

There are several ways to earn income in Warlords Battlecry. You can learn a skill which increases your income with one of the four resources. You can build unites which provide income in a resource. The primary way to do it, though is to convert neutral or enemy mines on the map. You do this by standing next to a mine and using the “Convert” command. This command converts any building within range, including enemy bases and unit training facilities. It doesn’t convert towers, walls, quest buildings or shops.

You can see the command radius and a couple of converted mines here.

What is the Command Radius in Warlords Battlecry?

The conversion range is tiny for most units able to use the command. For the hero, the range is bigger and it’s determined by the command radius. The command radius is a stat represented by a circle around your hero. Friendly units within that circle gain a morale, speed and combat bonus and the hero’s conversion command works on buildings within that radius. Items and the Charisma attribute are what increases this radius. The speed of conversion, on the other hand, is affected by Dexterity.

My Basic Strategy in Warlords Battlecry 3

In any case, my hero’s Charisma is low, so my radius is terrible. Because of this, I usually take a general or two into battle with me, to help me convert mines faster. Once I convert a couple of mines for each resource, I start hunting down enemy heroes. If I think I need protection, I command my generals to guard my hero, so they follow him, but I don’t control them as a group, to make use of my hero’s fast walking speed. You see, when you control a group of units in Warlords Battlecry, they move at the speed of the slowest unit.

Once I hunt down enemy heroes, I either take down their bases myself or I build up a large group of Fire Priests and use them to destroy everything. This works on most levels.

The Campaign

Last time, I failed hard at the Wastes, looking for Gorgon, the fifth horseman. This time, I wasn’t a complete idiot, so I cleared the mission and found Gorgon’s iron fortress. The game then sent me back to Khazdul, where I head to fight some Dark Dwarves to gain audience with their Runelord. He finally told me what I needed to do. I need to find the three keys of Gorgon’s fortress, defeat Gorgon and lock it inside the fortress. Then, the Runelord will use a spell to bury the fortress underneath the wastes. I wasn’t told where the keys are, but at least now I sort of know what’s going on in the game’s story.

Whenever I get to an important part of the story, I get stuff like this.

After that, I did some business with the High Elves and allied myself with them in the area of Lunarion and Ehlariel. They have a problem with the Dark Elves, so allying myself with one side meant going to war with the other.

The Garb of Tyatis

Next up was the island where the Dark and the Wood Elves lived. There are three areas here where I can find pieces of an item set – The Garb of Tyatis. One of them meant fighting and angering the Wood Elves, so I skipped that one, mostly because I got that item already from a random Dark Elf ambush. Another piece had me fight the Dark Elves again, so I was fine with that. What I wasn’t fine with was that the item was meant for magic users, so it was useless for me. Since the third piece of the set was guarded by Knights, I decided to just drop it, since I probably won’t be using the set anyway.

More Barbarians and the First Fortress Key

I got through the islands of the central sea, so I decided to circle back North to see if I missed something. I got ambushed by Barbarians along the way, but I didn’t find much, especially at the Plains of Ar which turned out to be completely empty. At Ylarie, I helped the High Elves defend against Orcs and got another artifact as a reward – a Frostwyrm Pelt. This gives me an extra 15 frost resistance.

My artifact collection is getting bigger.

Next up, I got to the Lands of Death, where I helped Lord Bane defend against a siege by Gorgon’s forces. The reward for this battle was the first of the three fortress keys, as well as a chance to ally myself with Bane. I didn’t accept this, though, since I was told the Knights wouldn’t like it and I’m trying to be the good guy here, sort of.

After getting the key, I went back to the Barbarian area, around the Plains of Ar. At the Gap of Ar, over the course of two missions in which I fought the Minotaur, I recovered two of the five fingers of the Hand of Sartek. I then found two more at the Plains of War and the last one upon returning to the Plains of Ar. This gave me one more artifact – the Hand of Sartek, which gives my hero 8 extra Combat.

The Humans and the Dwarves

The last thing I did was to go the Knight lands, but I didn’t find much there yet. I did get into an extremely annoying mission – Troll Hunting. This one takes place on a map full of “neutral” trolls and, pause for effect, sheep. The joke of this game is that trolls, which usually hurl boulders at you, can pick up sheep and hurl them instead. Basically, on a map with sheep, they can get limited, but extremely powerful ammo. I’m not sure if sheep bypass armor or something, but Dux was getting hit hard on this map, so I had to take it extremely slowly. Since the goal of the map was to kill all 40 “neutral” trolls, it took me a while to get through.

Trolls also ambushed me after the mission. On a bridge!

After that, I scouted through several areas of the human and dwarven lands, but found almost no missions, other than replayable ones. As for the Dwarves, they hate me now, so I’ll have to find a way to get back on their good side, if that’s even possible. The irony is, the Dark Dwarves actually kind of like me. Well, not really irony, just fact.

Anyone Else Playing This Game?

I’ve done some googling to see if anyone else is blogging about this game. I always thought it had a lot of fans, but this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I mean, sure, there are wikis and old fan sites, but not many people are actively creating new content. I found a review and a mod which I intend to check out, but that’s about it.

Oh, by the way, the CRPG addict is actually playing a game I know off, so I strongly recommend visiting him.

The CRPG Addict – Knights of Legend

Babel Rising [2] – I Didn’t Like It [COMPLETED]

March 27, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

I invested two more hours into this and today, I managed to complete Babel Rising. First, let’s get one thing out of the way…

How Many Levels Are There in Babel Rising?

Fifteen. There are fifteen levels in this game. Considering the amount of actual content it has, that’s about ten to many. All you ever really need are one level for each of the four elements and one level where you can freely pick two out of those four and use them. Maybe one or two levels added to that, and that’s about it. Everything else in Babel Rising is just padding and completely unnecessary.

Finally! Now just leave me alone!

Other than the fifteen campaign levels, there are three more survival levels with two degrees of difficulty per level.

Does Babel Rising Get Any Better?

It doesn’t. All the way to the final level, you are limited in which two powers you can pick and nothing new is ever really added to the game. At one point, siege towers are introduced which approach the central tower and spawn workers and priests, which start at already higher levels. At one other point, special sequences are introduced where the camera switches to the nearby sea and you use fireballs to destroy approaching ships. None of these two things add anything to the game.

The final level. At this point, the objective really pissed me off.

The only thing that really changes is that the level objectives take longer and become more annoying to achieve. That’s it.

How Long Does it Take to Complete Babel Rising?

Steam says “3 Hours Played”. As soon as the game was over, I took a quick look at the menus to make sure I’m not missing anything and then I left it. I’ll tag it as completed in steam, uninstall it and try to forget about it.

I’m sorry, but Babel Rising is not at all a good game and even the developer approaching me in the comments won’t change my opinion. Babel Rising is uninteresting and unfun. There’s nothing saving it. There’s a DLC for it, called “Sky’s the Limit”, but from the description, it just seems it adds more padding and nothing substantial.

Oh look, another completely irrelevant and empty addition.

So why did I complete it? Because it didn’t take long, it was pretty to look at and I just had an itch to get it over with. I’m weird like that. I’m sure some of you can name a game that did the same to you. I’d be interested to hear about it, so feel free to mention it in the comments. The silence is sort of starting to bug me 😀

So yeah. I’ve completed the game, but It didn’t give me enough to write about, so you get this. I’m sorry.

Babel Rising [1] – I (Don’t) Like It

March 26, 2013 by Nikola·2 Comments

A while ago, UbiSoft had some sort of special deal on their site where you could get a certain amount off of most of their games. This meant that you could actually get Babel Rising for free and it included a Steam key. This was nice of them, and I truly appreciate the gesture. They have a bad reputation on the PC and it seems like they’re trying to restore it.

One thing is for sure – Babel Rising is a pretty game.

That being said, I don’t really like Babel Rising. I tried to like it. Since it seems like a relatively short game, I might even try to complete it. I just don’t enjoy it. It seems like an interesting idea, but it needs more than what it is right now.

Babel Rising is sort of like a tower defense game, except you don’t build any towers. Instead, there’s a bunch of villagers trying to build the Tower of Babel (or one of the two other structures you can unlock) and you, being an angry god, use your powers to punish them and prevent their success.

Sounds pretty cool! I bet there’s a lot of powers you can use!

Not really. As far as I can tell, there are four elements with three powers each, Two of those are used regularly, while the third is a chargeable ultimate attack you can use a couple of times per level.

But I bet those powers get upgraded!

Wrong again. Well, to be fair, I might be the one that’s wrong, since I’ve been playing for only a couple of levels. Still, in those couple of levels, there were no upgrades at all. I got to try out all four of the elements and I got to pick two out of four to carry with me into battle, though on the levels I played through, I didn’t really get a proper choice, since I could only pick two specific elements on each level.

Earth and Fire are the first two powers you unlock. By level 5, you unlock all four.

What about the multitude of funny looking enemies?

I’ve seen a total of three enemy types in the first five levels. There are regular villagers or builders, who just climb up the tower and build it further. Then there are priests. These create a protective shield around them which blocks a single element, so you have to use another one to break through. Finally, there are cursed jar carriers. They climb up the tower for a while, carrying a jar, eventually drop it and a while later, the jar disappears. If you hurt them or the jar, you get punished by having one of your six powers blocked for a certain amount of time.

That “Restart” button makes me think I missed something.

So what’s good about it?

The game is very pretty and nicely designed. It would probably work great on a tablet and it’s obviously made for that. It’s just not deep or engaging. As I said, the idea itself is great, the incorporation of physics into the mechanics works amazingly well, and overall, it’s nicely polished. I’m sure a lot of people would like it. I just need more from my tower defense game. From what I’ve seen, this is just an exercise in clicking.

So no more Babel Rising?

That being said, Babel Rising just might be short enough for me to complete it. I got through 5 levels in about an hour. I know there are at least five more, though there might be more than that. I tried some light googling, but I couldn’t find out exactly how many levels are there in Babel Rising. If I do get through it, I’ll be sure to write this information down, since I’m sure there are other people wondering about it to.

I managed to win a few levels with my ultimate powers still doing their thing.

I know there can’t a lot more than ten levels, since with the five I’ve unlocked, I got 3 out of 12 achievements and unlocked two out of three Survival levels, as well as an extra difficulty in Survival Mode. I also got to try out all four of the elements.

There might be just 10 levels in total, or at most 15. I’ll try to find out, but I can’t make any promises.

Warlords Battlecry 3 [2] – A Restart, An Assassin

March 24, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

I Restarted the Campaign

So yeah. My High Elven Archmage was absolutely not fun to play. There’s no point to having access to more than one or two magic schools, really and I kept losing him in battles because he was squishier than an Ancient Wisp. Being forced to babysit something that’s supposed to be your most powerful unit makes Warlords Battlecry 3 not very fun. Because of this, I decided to restart the campaign with a different hero. I took the easy way out. I made an assassin and picked the Ssrathi as his race.

Meet Dux, the Ssrathi Assassin

Assassins get extremely powerful once you get their Assassination skill high enough. Assassination, you ask? Well, this skill starts out with giving each of your auto-attacks a 4% chance to outright kill the target and it increases by 1% with each skill point invested. After about 15 to 20 points invested here and with a fast attack speed, you can basically take out whole armies. Of course, you’ll still have issues with buildings, but we have Strength and Crushing or Fire damage for that, not to mention the excellent Ssrathi Fire Priests.

Seeing screens like this one makes me happy for some reason.

Ssrathi Fire Priests

The Fire Priests are the sole reason I picked the Ssrathi. You see, I suck at strategy games. I can do some nice micro management, but I always neglect my economy and macro, so I end up losing to most human opponents. I can deal with AI, for the most part, but it still makes it sort of a stressful experience. Well, with the Ssrathi, macro is easy. You build the home base and a couple of Worker Sects, followed by a rush to tier 2 and tier 3 soon after. Then you just train Fire Priests and upgrade their range once you reach level 3. These things, combined with some retinue generals and my assassin hero are basically unstoppable. They’re cheap, outrange towers and do fire damage. They also have a healing spell to help them.

Warlords Battlecry 3 - Fire Priest Formation

Formations in this game are mostly useless, but there are exceptions.

The Campaign

I started out mostly focusing on Dexterity, with a couple of points into Strength just to make it easier to stay alive at early levels. I put most of my points into Assassination, with a couple of points into Running to increase my movement speed.

I was having a hard time figuring out what to actually write about, but once I got to the map node called Dragon’s Maze, I decided to just keep a log of all of my missions and what happened. Here goes…

Dragon’s Maze

I had three treasure hunting missions here. They were basically just regular skirmish battles against Minotaur and Barbarians, but each of the enemy bases had a couple of chests with minor treasures in them. My strategy was the usual – train fire priests, kill enemy heroes early and eventually obliterate everything. I got all the way to level 8 during these missions and started to get assassination kills on a regular basis.

Al-Diraq and Daros

I had a couple of battles where building weren’t allowed. My Naga generals are extremely helpful in these, due to their shield ability which increases the armor of nearby units. The trick is to dodge the enemy long enough for their mana to charge. This can be an issue on smaller maps, though, since the AI just loves to charge you in a straight line.

Titans are the game’s ultimate units, extremely expensive and strong. This is the Ssrathi Sun God

I started fighting the Swarm in this area, which is annoying since some of their units have poison attacks. Thanks to one of the missions here, I can hire level 6 Warlords for my retinue when I need them. I got to level 10 in this area and found two awesome items. The Ice Blade adds 25 frost damage to my auto-attacks and the Giant’s Helm provides mi with a whopping 12 extra combat.

Tongu, Kalpaxotl and New Selentia

I fought my own people in these areas – the Ssrathi. It was worth it, though. The Gifts of Couatl mission sequence gave me a bunch of nice items and I got an artifact which gave me permanent +2 to the sight range of all of my units. The items I got were strong, but sadly (or luckily) I quickly replaced them.

Northern Diraq and the Realm of Famine

I got into a couple of Swarm ambushes here, which was actually awesome because one of the enemy heroes dropped an awesome new cloak. It was an upgrade to the armor I wore in every aspect and it didn’t have the penalty to Spellcasting that the armor had.

The game tracks statistics in something like a basic achievement/ title system.

In Northern Dirax, I allied myself with the Barbarians, so I can lead them now if I want to. I also got another awesome artifact during the Desert Winds mission, called “The Winds of the Desert”. This thing gives my hero a 50% attack speed bonus, which is probably the greatest thing I can get for an assassination hero.

Twilight Woods

This was the Fey area. I had to protect them from the Dark Dwarves and the Swarm during several missions. This gave me the ability to train one of my Reaver generals to level 10 and gave me another artifact – The Dreamcrystal Shard. This artifact gives me a 25% bonus to mana regeneration, which is pretty much useless for me right now.

Warlords Battlecry 3 - Artifacts/Bonuses

This is the most artifacts I’ve ever gotten in this game.

In the final mission, I had to defeat some banshees in a trial and this got me an alliance with the Fey. I might actually use them in the future, since as a race, they might be even easier to play than the Ssrathi. Other than the alliance, I can now also trade gold for experience by talking to the Queen of the Fey and I can hire level 5 Unicorns at the Unicorn Grove.

Khazdul, Ragnar’s Pass and The Wastes

At Khazdul, I improved my relations with the Dark Dwarves after burying them into the ground during the Twilight Woods missions by helping them with an Orc slave rebellion.

In Ragnar’s Pass, I met a Frost Dragon who agreed to join me if I helped him clear the Orcs, Dark Dwarves and the Undead from his home. It took me two missions to do this and I still had to pay him 100 Crowns to get him to join. The best part? It costs a total of 26 army points to get him into the battle – NOT worth it.

Finally, at the Wastes, I went to search for Gorgon, the Fifth Horseman. This was a mission where my hero wasn’t supposed to die, so naturally, I decided to be an idiot, risk to much and have him killed. The worst part about it was that I lost my two high level generals – a Reaver and a Naga.

This was too much for me, so I decided to take a break for now. I’ll find Gorgon some other day.

Warlords Battlecry 3 [1] – Another Good Old Game

March 17, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

Another GOG.com sale

This weekend, GOG.com had another sale with a couple of great games in it. I promised myself not to succumb to the urge again, but my willpower is weak. I bought Warlords Battlecry 3.

GOG.com – Warlords Battlecry 3

I’ve owned the first two of the Warlords Battlecry games, both in German and greatly enjoyed both of them. I also played Warlords Battlecry 3, but only ever had a pirated copy. I remember greatly enjoying that one as well, especially since it was in English, but I also remember it being quite difficult. Warlords Battlecry is definitely not one of the best series I ever played, but it will always be one of my favorites. This is why, when I saw it on sale, nostalgia got me and I decided to spend the three bucks it cost.

What is Warlords Battlecry

Warlords Battlecry is an RTS with a twist. It plays sort of like the older Age of Empires games, but without as much economy. You take over mines, build buildings and train your military to destroy your enemies. The twist is that you also have a hero of your own making. He gains levels, learns spells, acquires items and transfers from game to game, including the Campaign, the skirmish battles and I believe even the multiplayer.

Large and content-rich, just like a good campaign map should be.

The campaign in Warlods Battlecry is something special to. There’s a large world map with locations you can travel to. Each location can have quests, battles, merchants, units to hire and many other things. Other than your hero, a bunch of other stuff also remains persistent in the campaign. You can find artifacts which provide a global effect to your team. You can gather retinue units, which can also gain levels, though not as complexly as your here. You can also somehow gain control of races other than your own, allowing you to take them to battle. Overall, Warlords Battlecry 3 has heaps of replayability thanks to initial hero and race selection, as well as the path you take on the campaign map.

It might not have been a great buy back in the day, but for 3 bucks, it’s well worth your time and money now. There are negatives, though. It’s an old game, using the old RTS control system. It can be clunky and annoying at times, since it doesn’t have the polish of modern control systems like the one in Starcraft II. It’s difficult to micromanage units, so a lot of the times, you just end up clashing your units against the enemy’s. In spite of those things, the game is great.

The Early Campaign

In the two days since I bought it, I played the game for a couple of hours. I decided not to go with any guides or anything like that. Instead, I’ll play how I like it and if it turns out being less than effective, I can always restart the game. I picked a High Elf Archmage as my hero. I started out with investing points mostly into Alchemy, with a few into Summoning. During the early campaign levels, I got him to level 16.

I love menus with lots of numbers in them.

At first, I used the Create Item spell to quickly fill all of my slots with items. Now that I have more mana, I usually spend it on creating golems, for early rushes against enemy buildings. Other than that, I invested a bit into charisma for a bigger command radius, as well as a couple of points into strength, just so I can stay alive long enough to run away from battles.

High Elves are sort of a rounded race, with a moderate emphasis on spellcasting. They need a bit more crystal in the early game, as well as some extra iron in the later game to build their most powerful units. I worked a bit on expanding my retinue to, but most of the time, my retinue units die before getting strong enough. My most successful unit until now was a lich I got from a quest.

I also have to confess I failed miserably on my first two attempts of the first level of the game. I forgot how squishy a spellcaster hero can be, so I lost him to random enemy units a couple of times. He still gains some experience after the battle, though, so most of the time, you can still finish the level. The exception are the levels where one of the conditions is that your hero must not die, such as the first level of the game.

It took three attempts to get through the first level. I got rusty.

My usual strategy is to turtle and build up my defenses until I can start training the tougher units. I also constantly create wisps (the High Elven worker unit) and merge them into ancient wisps who provide an extra income of crystals just by being in the game. During the turtling phase, I keep an eye out for straggling enemy heroes trying to convert mines. If I can, I ambush and kill them which severely cripples the AI.

Once I can build proper flying units and constantly train knights, I start gathering up larger groups of units and attacking the enemy bases, focusing on towers first and then on the other buildings. It usually takes a few assaults to completely destroy the enemy, but that’s just a matter of time. If I ever get to a point where my income is large enough to use my special healing ability (costs 400 crystals per use), then one solid assault is more than enough to clear the whole map.

More to Come

I’m not sure how often I’ll play this one, but I can promise I definitely will be playing more of Warlords Battlecry 3 very soon. It’s sad there aren’t any games like this one today. The closest thing to it is Starcraft II, but that one is designed in a way that almost completely removes the replayability of the campaign. Don’t get me wrong, it seems fun, but it just isn’t the same.

Soul Reaver [7] – Oracle Caves and Kain [COMPLETED]

March 13, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

I know the title of this posting is a major spoiler so I’ll get right to it. I’ve completed Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Bear with me, though. I’d still like to write about it.

I had to use my new ability to turn the sun dial and open the passage.

I didn’t really feel like exploring anymore, so I went right for the next area after killing Dumah. I remembered there was a fork in the path next to the last portal I activated, so I went back there and took it.

Oracle Caves

I ended up in an extremely long and pretty linear area. Based on what the Elder God told me, it was supposed to be cold, so I guess the initial cavernous part of the region was supposed to be covered with snow or ice, but it’s really hard to figure it out on graphics alone. In any case, it was colorful, so I liked the region.

The walls might be ice or snow, but I’m not sure.

I basically had from room through room, connected with extremely long hallways and with a relatively straightforward puzzle in each one. One of them involved pushing blocks to open a door, another involved leavers or using force projectile to push blocks, etc.

The slightly annoying part was fighting a lot of those Morlock enemies. The developers apparently have a sick sense of humor, because they absolutely love placing them in blind spots, so they’d hit me, causing me to lose the Soul Reaver and face them without a weapon. What I ended up doing was just to ignore most of them and run past them.

Eventually, I got to a part that was even more linear. I just walked through a large hallway, interrupted by flashbacks of the past story events. Eventually, those flashbacks turned into premonitions, or hallucinations, Raizel was unsure about that. Finally, I got to the last room of the game, where I had to face Kain again.

The Second Battle with Kain

The second battle with Kain worked basically in the same way as the first one, except it was much harder, or easier, depending on how you look at it. Again, I had to hit him three times before he would hit me and teleport away.

The method to beat Kain is the same as the first battle, but it’s harder this time.

The part that was easier was that a single hit didn’t send me to the spectral realm this time. Instead, I could get through two or even three hits. The harder part was that he started out much further away from me, and with each hit, the distance increased. By the third hit, I wasn’t able to do it in time.

It took me about fifteen minutes of trying before I finally got to him in time and hit him for the last time. To be fair, I did spend a big part of those fifteen minutes trying to figure out the underlying mechanic and somehow trick the game my predicting where he would appear next. Eventually, I gave up on that and just got lucky enough to be facing the side of the room where he appeared.

To Be Continued

This might be a major spoiler, though I personally don’t think so. The game ends with a cliffhanger. I’m not saying the story isn’t complete, I’m saying the game literally shows you a black screen with “To Be Continued” written on it.

This is where the game ends. I’m not gonna tell you who the other guy is.

Now that I think of it, Defiance has Raziel chasing Kain to, so it’s quite possible the story stretches all the way to that game, which means it doesn’t end during the two games in-between.

In any case, Soul Reaver is completed. I think Soul Reaver 2 is next, or possibly Blood Omen 2. I need to check. Alternatively, I could also try the first game in the series – Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. I never did play through that one.

Is Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Any Good?

Yes, yes it is. In fact, it’s an excellent game. It has graphics which haven’t aged to badly, fun and engaging mechanics, amazing music, sounds, atmosphere and voice acting and an extremely intriguing story.

The downside? Well, I guess the camera could use some work. Heck, it could use a lot of work. The thing is, this was a 90s game. Back then, the camera in most third person games needed a lot of work. It was a new concept. I can forgive a slightly annoying camera if everything else is great.

You should play Soul Reaver. You really should.

Soul Reaver [6] – Exploration, The Ash Village, a Bug and Dumah

March 11, 2013 by Nikola·0 Comments

As promised, the first thing I did when I booted up The Soul Reaver again was to go exploring. Last time, I got the final Sun Glyph and I can now reliably say that I can cast it three times before I’m finally out of mana. This time, I got an upgrade that’s even more awesome than the Sun Glyph.

The Fire Reaver

I went back to the Drowning Abbey. The first location I visited there was the huge cave lake with a stranded ship. I used my new swimming ability to get to a plateau on one side of it which, after a lot of swimming finally lead me to a mana upgrade.

After that, I moved on to the room where the annoying platforming section starts. This time, I could swim instead of switching to the spectral realm, so I was able to destroy the stained glass door in the middle of the large room. This opened another set of passages infested with the swimming enemies. Once I finally got to the end of it (without dying, even), I entered a room with a large brazier.

I finally got the Fire Reaver, and I almost missed it!

Using my Soul Reaver on the brazier turned it onto the Fire Reaver. This version of the sword burns enemies and turns my force projectiles into fire projectiles, enabling me to outright kill enemies at a distance, after a few hits. I lose the upgrade every time I enter water, but now that I have it, I can get it back at any larger fire source in the game, meaning all of those bonfires and braziers I used to kill enemies are now even more useful.

The Fire Glyph

After getting the Fire Reaver, I continued my exploration and eventually got to the early rooms of the Malchia clan area. I remembered there was a sunken passage there which apparently lead to a dead end in the spectral realm. Now that I could swim and look around, it turned out there was actually a way to get through it, which lead me to a large area decorated with fire emblems.

I got the Fire Glyph to. Just one more Glyph left.

There was a puzzle there which I had to solve. It involved turning a crank to open a door, switching to the spectral realm to get through that door and then opening up a bunch of shortcuts which allowed me to get to an area with an altar without leaving the physical realm. Once I got to that point, I set my Soul Reaver on fire and used it to activate the altar, which unlocked the Fire Glyph. This meant I only have one more glyph left.

I explored some more, but I didn’t find anything of note, so I finally went to the next area – The Ash Village.

The Ash Village

To get to the Ash Village, I first had to go back to the Lake of the Dead, the large whirlpool at the beginning of the game. From there, I could now take the last available route by jumping out of the water and climbing the ledge. The route soon took me to the entrance of the Ash Village, where I immediately found and unlocked the portal.

The Ash Village, or the Ruined City, looked like a hub at first.

The Ash Village looked huge, with a lot of twisting passages and puzzles which involved pushing blocks and switches to open up new routes, allowing me to more freely navigate through the area. Close to the end of it, I had a huge scare which took me back to the early days of the blog, when I encountered a game breaking bug in Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

I Can’t Push the Lever in Ash Village!

Well, I can now!

I climbed to the top of a large room, where I was supposed to flick a lever. The problem was, no matter what I did, Raziel wouldn’t touch the lever, just swinging his sword instead. I couldn’t damage myself in any way and the method of getting there meant I always had full health one I was on the lever platform.

I had to reload my game to finally push the lever – a nasty bug.

I googled for a bit and other people had the same problem, but most of them ended up fixing theirs at random. Luckily, the same happened to me. I saved and quit the game, and then immediately reloaded. I walked back to the room, which didn’t take long thanks to all the shortcuts I unlocked and I was finally able to flick the lever by standing with my back towards the wall.

This was pretty much the final puzzle I needed to solve, before I could fight the boss.

How to Kill Dumah

My brother, Dumah – a powerful warrior, in life. He would have burned with shame, to have me find him here like a stuck pig.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/82801683″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

You don’t really kill Dumah, just like you don’t really kill Rahab. Instead, once I got the three spears out of his body, I started running away from him, all the while making sure he stays on me and keeps following. I lead him through the entire area and into the huge room with the gas valve I previously triggered to blast open the door.

I had to revive Dumah in order to kill him and get his soul.

Once I got him into the room, I activated the valves again and basically incinerated him. Killing him gave me my next ability, which sort of tells me the developers were running out of ideas at this point.

Dumah’s ability allows me to create some sort of energy by running in circles around objects and enemies. This energy then allows me to trigger and move objects I can’t otherwise and hurt enemies, I guess. I’m not really sure about the enemies’ part, since I didn’t get the chance (or the desire) to try it out that way.

What I did was to go to a nearby courtyard with a statue and switch it around to clear out three surrounding rooms. Two of them just contained enemies, but one actually had another health upgrades. However, I need three more before my health goes up, so I won’t be getting any benefit from that for a while yet.