The Settlers: Heritage of Kings is the latest sequel to a series of RTS games recently resurrected from the cold crypts of anonymity. The first few games were largely unplayed and unsuccessful, and this game sets out to fix some of the flaws that shot the originals in the foot.Personally, I was a fan of the original games. I loved the cartoony 2d graphics, with even the evil soldiers looking like something you'd win from a machine in a funfair: that is, a plush toy. The latest in the series takes this graphical style, sets fire to it and throws it out the window. What we now have is an average-looking, largely generic, extremely derivative Warcraft III ripoff in the making. The animations are fairly well done, but you never lose the feeling that you played this game about four years ago under a different name. It has, however, become a lot more fast-paced and easy to get into than the earlier games: it is now far more combat-oriented and has tech-trees and all the usual stockpiling of resources, but these are largely primitive, and there's less to discover than there was in the original Age of Empires. It is also home to some of the most awful voice acting I've ever heard, and it plays to just about every stereotype in the book. The first NPC you meet is a fat, balding, sympathetic Irish priest standing next to a grove outside his chapel, for example. It's almost as if immersion or caring about the characters was ignored in the to-do list of the game.
The movement and combat are also a major kill-joy. Although it's done it's best to keep things fast paced and exciting, it never picks up off the ground- units run along at the rough speed of a wounded turtle, and it took my best Hero Unit, along with 4 soldiers, over 30 seconds to kill a single enemy bowman at close range. This means the only speedy way of playing the game is buying as many builder type units as you can, setting them all out to constantly mine/chop trees/etc for ten minutes and then buy a horde of as many soldiers as possible, and then using them to swarm single enemies, which is about as interesting as watching already dry paint dry a little more.
Ah yes: the Hero Units. Or, Hero Unit. Your main character is, sadly, beach-blonde savior of the world cutout #2, and he's got about as much character as Courtney Love has popularity. I used my Hero Unit as little as I possibly could - I couldn't differentiate the damage output from him and any other unit, and his annoying calls as you direct him are roughly on level with shaving your own face off with a cheese grater. It also has some basic people management like housing and tax rates, but to be honest, Stronghold did all of this far better - and it's now on sale for roughly Ј5 in bargain bins everywhere.
Save yourself the effort, don't buy this game. If you liked the original Settlers games, dig them up and play them over, or move onto another alternative, but this will ruin your happy nostalgic memories of simpler times.
I'm 14 and I'm a student. I've always lived in South London, and don't plan on changing that anytime soon. I enjoy poor horror movies and good comedies. I love MMOs and FPSs mostly, but I play pretty much every genre there is.
