Warhammer: Dark Omen

The Good
Being someone who has never played anything else Warhammer, I was skeptical when I first played the demo on an old April '98 PC Games demo disc. However, what I found was far beyond me expectations, and I subsequently bought a copy of the game as soon as I could find it.

This game shines mostly because of it's battle management. No more resource gathering, no more tech trees (well, not really), and no more painful waiting-an-hour-before-you-can-attack-anyone syndrome. This game plops you straight into the battlefield, and after placing your units, fur flies almost immediately.

This game makes excellent use of varied units, and additionally, has the second largest unit catalogue I have ever seen (first being Total Annihilation+Core Contingency). Units are fun, varied, and never too expendable. In this game, every regiment counts; not only because of the difficulty resulting in their necessity, but the fact that they are just more personable then the nameless, faceless units found in most other 3D strategy games. The AI is also skilled, and quite advanced for it's time. Units will set up ambushes, combine forces, retreat when outnumbered, and dodge your projectiles. Several times I cast Flamestrike (causes selected portion of ground to catch fire) and the enemy regiment, which normally would have walked right through it, instantly turned and went around the trap. Mages are particularly fond of teleporting out of view to dodge your ordinance, then back into view to hurl their own.

The game's sound is also top-notch. Effects are visceral and enthralling, and its just plain wonderful to hear the "clink clink" sounds of swords locking in combat. Dark Omen's FMV sequences are also well done, but used disappointingly sparingly.

And most importantly, Dark Omen's story is what makes it shine the most--something rare for a real-time strategy game. The narrative/cinematic sequences are originally presented but not abstract enough to look bad. The storyline, while seemingly created from some sort of medieval game story template, is well put and is one of the best representations of the "bad guys commanding hoards of cronies to piss you off" scenario.

The Bad
But just as this game is excellent in it's own right, it also has some equally annoying flaws.

First of all, this game is hard. Extremely hard. Battles may require several retries to complete successfully. One mission, which I had been trying to beat for a month off and on, I finally beat because the enemy artillery got lucky and hit their own mage (killing him of course). Oftentimes you are replaced in restrictive scenarios, and all too often the bad guys converge on all sides to wipe out that cannon you thought was protective.

Second, while the AI in Dark Omen is excellent, it can often be equally as stupid, and just as unpredictable. The main problem is that your artillery doesn't lead their shots, making it nearly impossible to hit moving regiments unless you target each shot. Many units will also just stand their ground until they die when they are being bombarded with artillery, arrows or spells, while others will dodge your cannonballs.

Thirdly, you dont get enough gold to completely reinforce your army at the end of a mission. The result of this is a slowly degenerating army, resulting in missions being subsequently harder unless you can lose no more than 5% of your units in a battle.

The Bottom Line
This game is fun, but extremely hard. However, I still recommend this to any Warhammer fan, and anyone who isn't. The amount of hours spent in stress are repaid equally in fun factor. A definite good buy.