Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2842 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sold Out Software
• Released on: 2004-05-28
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP
• Dimensions: .56 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Massive armies will clash. Forests and cities will burn. Tremendous magical forces will level entire castles in the blink of an eye.

In these epic quests, four sibling monarchs are locked in a massive campaign to rule the land of Darien. Build your legions of armies, hone your magic skills and gather your resources to wage war on an epic field of battle.

The balance of power lies here in your hands.

Customer Reviews

Review from a complete novice!
I bought this title after reading a recommendation on C4 Teletext's excellent 'Gamecentral' pages. With a budget price of £4.99 I gathered I couldn't go too far wrong anyway!

With me being a complete novice in terms of PC gaming, I half expected a complicated dice roll-a-thon with odd characters and a difficult gaming interface. Instead, after a straightforward installation I was surprised to be greeted with a fantastic set of tutorial missions that serve to introduce you to the various monsters/races and their strengths/weaknesses. The control system is an absolute doddle to pick up, and within just a few minutes I was clicking away with my mouse and wreaking havoc with Dark Masons, Mage Towers, Caged Demons and Flying Drakes!

If fantasy is your thing, buy this immediately. If you enjoy real-time strategy titles, buy this immediately. If you want an immersive, atmospheric, challenging, long-lasting PC game for a couple of quid...yep, you guessed it, buy this immediately!

In summary: a fantastic game for newcomers and genre veterans alike, at a great price too!

Good, but the original's better
I bought TA: Kingdoms because I was so impressed with the quality of the original Total Annihilation: if Cavedog had made the original so well, why couldn't they do the same in a fantasy setting?
And overall they did OK. The game's as good quality and balanced as ever. But there are a few niggles that I annoy me. It took me a while to get used to the slower pace of a Kingdoms game, and the AI could be annoying sometimes: close combat units have a habit of standing still when being shot by a unit outside of their vision range.
The campaign has a good storyline - although the ending's a bit unsatisfying if you don't get the expansion - and does a good job of gradually introducing you to the units. It switches between all four factions, so you're adept with all four by the end and you see the war from each different perspective. A voiceover tells you the next advance in the storyline before each mission - why, for example, you're only controlling one Hunter and you're looking for Stone Giants in one of Zhon's missions - but sometimes the plot slows down and you're just given a "the war carried on" or "the war escalated, it was now total war etc."
The gameplay is satisfying, although I found I had to increase the game speed for it to go fast enough. The four factions are well balanced - unless you're playing as Veruna, the sea specialists, on a land map - and vary from each other quite a bit. Veruna have the best navy; Zhon specialise in guerrila tactics, with moving creatures for barracks; Taros have the Undead, slow and feeble but with a lot of powerful magic users; Aramon have expensive but strong infantry.
It's a solid game, but I'd personally prefer the original Total Annihilation any day.

Kingdoms Review
It's a good game, with a great story and truly epic feeling. Just too bad you can't choose your alliance -the game does that-
and the graphics are not as up to scratch as one would like. It will still be an enjoyable experience for most fans of strategy games, but I just got the impression it could have been better.