Game Overview

Developer: Liquid
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Official Battle Realms Website: http://battlerealms.ubi.com/

It’s Here!

Battle Realms has been on the radar for a while now, particularly since its closed door previews at E3 2000. You’ve probably heard a lot of writers citing similarities between Battle Realms and Warcraft 3. Guess what: A) Battle Realms came out during our lifetime, and B)You can’t compare two games if one hasn’t even come out yet. Liquid is smart for getting Battle Realms out way before War3 too – they may actually give Blizzard a run for their money. What is Battle Realms? In a nutshell, Battle Realms is an RTS game, light on the economy and heavy on the combat. It’s a mix of Ground Control with Warcraft – small squad battles with a fantasy setting.

Horseback soldiers

Troops trekking

Archers with Dragon Warriors

Macromanagement vs. Micromanagement… again

Combat in Battle realms is on a scale smaller than what you’re used to with most RTS games. This is accomplished by having no “cannon fodder” units. Every unit in the game has a place in battle, a unit it can counter, or a special ability that you can’t live without. Often you’ll find that the most basic unit is the most crucial in a battle. I like this because I never understood the need for fodder units – if no one’s going to use them, then why put them in the game? Units also last a while (unless they’re hit by the proper counter-attack). With healing abilities, resurrection, and mutation abilities, battles are complicated and long.

If you don’t like RTS games with heavy micromanagement, you probably won’t like Battle Realms. It’s impossible to have a battle with more than 30 units. In every fight you’re constantly using unit abilities, and if you don’t you’ll get your ass kicked. You need to be very quick with hotkeys to use these abilities. You also need to know the strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities of every unit in the game to win battles – resistances and attack types make a huge difference in combat. This is a homework intensive game, even on a non-competitive level. Economy management and climbing the tech tree is deemphasized in comparison to other RTS games.

Taking out a Wolf base

A Wolf tower

Rice farming

I don’t like the fact that economy management is less important than battles since it makes the game less rounded, but the deep combat system in Battle Realms makes up for it. I like that you need to plan ahead for your battles by assembling squads of specific units. But if your opponent chose the right counter units, you need to think on your feet to come out on top. You can create so many different types of squads with so many different strategies that you could literally write books on the different ways to attack and defend. Battle Realms provides a great deal of depth in terms of tactical decision making.