Noran is invaded!

The Rage is upon us again. The Beastmen flow over our borders as the flood after a storm. As our ancestors defended the land so shall we. We will stand as one and push back this ceaseless tide of evil.

People of Noran, flock to the banner of Alric, chief of the council of mages. Pay heed to the warning he brings and rise up in defense of the realm of man. Send forth emissaries to the Lords of the realm to gather their forces. Seek ye out the ageless elves and the Dryads of the forest to renew the old alliances.

Beware of the creatures that skulk through the depths of the earth, creatures of unimaginable cruelty whose goal is no less than the complete domination of the world.

We must stand together and fight to the death -- no quarter asked and none given. The survival of the world depends on the strength of our will and the steel we wield.

"Armies of Exigo" will take you to the lands of Noran and the defense of the world itself. As you progress through the story the game will alternate between cut scenes that follow the story and the missions that will advance the story.

The story begins in the council of mages with the council griping and whining about their boarder guards overreacting and trying to start an all out war with the Beastmen. Believing that there is nothing more happening than the normal border raids, Alric, the Lord of the council, steps forward and calls for action and leads the forces of Noran into battle with the Beasts from beyond the borders.

Each cut scene sets the stage for the mission that follows it, bringing to life the saga of the survival of Noran and makes each mission more meaningful by giving you a reason and motivation for the success of each mission. At the conclusion of the run of missions for the Empire Campaign you will then embark on the set of missions for the Fallen. These missions will take you to the "behind the scenes" part of the Empire missions and give you more of the back story for what is really going on. Though the Fallen units have some very cool abilities, watching them amble across the ground on their multiple legs just gives me the willies - I've never been a big fan of spiders.

"Armies of Exigo" has a lot going for it as an RTS. It has an excellent and gripping storyline that will keep you playing, if for no other reason than to find out how it ends. The game's graphics quality is amongst the best that I've seen; the detail is amazing and the amount of variation between units, buildings and the environment demonstrate that the designers have put a lot of time, skill and love into the game.

"Armies of Exigo" also has a unique feature in that the game runs on multiple planes and levels. Not only do you have to manage an army and resources on the surface of the planet, but you also have to be aware of and manage troops under the ground in the caverns deep in the earth. One never knows when an enemy will open a mineshaft or tunnel entrance behind the lines and deep within territory that you thought you controlled and was therefore safe. The adjustments that you have to make to your tactics will enhance your skills as an RTS battlefield commander and cause you to become more aware of the battlefield as a whole.

Not only do you have to deal with enemy units crawling out of the ground, but you also need to watch the sky. With the presence of aerial units, including units that can assault the ground without landing and arial troop transports, both you and the enemy have the opportunity to bypass bottlenecks and heavily defended positions and land troops in the rear areas.

Each race has a great diversity of units available to them, some of which are not immediately available, including Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Archers, Arial units and more. Each unit requires a barracks or other building/structure to create it and put it into play. Some units require specific structures to be built. For instance, for the Empire to create mages you must first build an obsidian tower. Some of the units require that you complete certain types of research and of course, to do the research you first have to build the correct buildings.

Some units have special abilities that are extremely useful or devastating to the enemy. The ability of the Dryads to "freeze" an enemy and prevent them from taking any action is a good example. If you're facing off on a troll and a number or lesser creatures, you can keep the troll from decimating your troops while they take care of the rabble, then you can focus all your force on the big scary troll.

Now then, what is it that allows you to build the buildings, do the research and create all these units you ask? Why, money and resources of course. And where does one get the money and resources from? Well there are Gold mines, Gem mines and lots of trees to be harvested.

"Wow", you ask, "all that gold and resources just sitting around? How does one go about accumulating that?" Well, that's what the peasantry is for!

Resource management is one more aspect of the game that will attract your attention as you manage the peasantry as they accumulate the resources, and when the enemy breaches your defenses you then have to send your troops in to defend them. And of course, the resources that you find initially are never enough, so you will be spending part of your time searching out other resources to mine. While you are dealing with mining, you still have to be out there defending your territory and sending out units to invade enemy territory and destroy their infrastructure.

There are a few things that I have become aware of in the game that cause me a bit of annoyance. The first is that there is effectively no incentive to do well in any of the missions other than to complete all the victory conditions. Nothing that you do in a mission carries over to the next mission. You don't have any sort of core unit that develops or advances in skill or ability that sticks with you. Each mission is an independent game in that you have to start over from scratch with nothing but a few basic units and usually no actual infrastructure. As far as combat goes, you have almost no actual control over units once they have engaged the enemy, or once they have come within sight of the enemy. They pretty much have a mind of their own and will attack the nearest unit to them. This aspect makes it a bit hard to send units on a specific mission behind enemy lines since they will have a tendency to engage the first enemy that comes into view. As mentioned previously, some units have special abilities. This is a good thing, but also a frustrating thing. Those units that have special abilities will only use them if you are in direct control of that unit. There is no function that I've found in the game that will cause those units to use their specials when on "autopilot".

Even with these minor frustrations, "Armies of Exigo" is an excellent RTS. I've had great fun playing it and there is a large amount of replay value to the game to try to complete the missions more efficiently and to experiment with various tactics to accomplish your goals. Since I'm not much into playing multiplayer RTS games I can't really comment on the multiplayer aspect. From what I've done in the single player mode, I would have to say that the missions available would be a fantastic way to familiarize yourself with the game and the various units available to each race and get you the training you need to be successful in the multiplayer version.

Overall I would highly recommend "Armies of Exigo" for anyone that likes the fantasy genre in RTS games, though I would probably not recommend it to players who are new to the RTS realm as there are a lot of very involved aspects to the game which may cause some confusion to gamers unfamiliar with the RTS style of game.