Myth: The Fallen Lords

The Good
Wow, what an awesome way to tell a story. I never imagined that a real-time strategy game could be so involving or have so much depth. Myth is a real-time strategy game where you control fantasy troops against an overwhelming undead army.

Among the unit types available are archers, dwarven grenadiers, armored warriors, and unarmored berserkers. You'll fight against hordes of undead zombies, skeletons, and worse. The Myth engine takes terrain into effect so archers positioned in the hills have a significant advantage. Also weather affects battles as well. Wind interferes with arrows and rain douses fire attacks.

Myth is not forgiving when it comes to strategy. Formations are very important as are basic tactics such as drawing out the enemy and leading them into an ambush. A tutorial will help you get started but I recommend replaying the early levels until you have a feel for the game. Be warned, it starts off hard and only gets harder. Some levels are near impossible. Luckily Myth has several different difficulty levels.

Graphically Myth looks good. You have control over the 3D camera and you can zoom in and out. Characters looked pretty good (and died graphically), but terrain could have looked better. Myth sounds even better. Dwarves complain about being ordered about and the undead moan. Ambient sounds and weapons sound great too.

Mission briefings are delivered by one of the finest voice acting efforts I've heard. And the look of the mission briefings showing personal journals and movements on the map are terrific.

Finally, to some extent, it pays to keep your forces alive. As they make more kills and survive more missions the warriors become more proficient, archers hit more often, swordfighters do more damage, etc.

The Bad
While it pays to keep your forces alive from mission to mission, in some missions you start with raw recruits so there isn't a feeling of completing the game with the original troops and you end up losing highly experienced warriors.

I mentioned that this game was hard and it really is. Some levels seemed to be more puzzle oriented than combat. This wouldn't be terrible, but it's nice to have several options in beating a level.

Finally, the camera scheme and controls are a little hard to get used to. I had trouble selecting individual units and long-range pathfinding was poor.

The Bottom Line
This is a really great game for people who like real-time strategy without resource management. You are given enough troops to complete a mission and it's up to you to use them to their fullest potential. Myth can be both exceedingly difficult and exceedingly rewarding.