Kohan: Ahriman's Gift

The Good
First of all, Ahriman's Gift is one of the few expansion packs to also include the original game, which can save you money if you don't already have the first Kohan.

K:AG's take on the RTS genre is refreshing. Instead of controlling individual units, you build companies of between 4 and 6 units (plus an optional hero) and you move them as a group. This causes you to think more tactically and allows you to manage battles more effectively than in a Warcraft-style RTS where you have to micromange each individual unit. Microing still helps, especially with creative use of fast skirmishing troops to get behind enemy lines, but it doesn't rule the game as much as intelligent tactics and good economic development.

For those familiar with Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, the main change in K:AG is new units for each faction (Royalists, Nationalists, Council, and Ceyah) each which add new tactical options to your game. I especially liked the undead Shadow Knights with armor piercing attacks and the Royalist Horse Archers. The new support units are a mixed bag. The Maelstrom engines fill a huge tactical gap left out of K:IS -- they give you effective siege units other than engineers at the price of upkeep and speed. But many of the new mages and clerics are too specialized or require too many buildings to be useful in many games.

Online play is lots of fun although you often run into the problem of not being able to find a game because the K:AG community is small and there is not matchmaking service like there is on Battle.net.

The Bad
K:AG could have used an improvement in the graphics. The game looks almost exactly the same as its predecessor and it still can't run at very high resolutions (over 1024x768) which would help for those 256x256 8-player games.

Another problem is that with one exception, all Kohan hero units cost the same amount, even though some (such as Vulgari, Yss'Tok, and others) are much better than the other Kohan. Timegate needed to either let people choose their starting Kohan before the game or change the costs of the good Kohan to reflect their usefullness. I also wished that multiplayer games could be set up so that each team or player can start with customized technologies on a random map. That would eliminate the problem of bad luck in technology looted from lairs. Timegate should look at Warcraft 3 as an example and make Kohan 2 just as versatile (although I could do without Kohan Monopoly).

The Bottom Line
Kohan: Ahriman's Gift is a worthy successor to the great RTS Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns that adds enough new units to greatly enhance gameplay, but unfortunately fails to expand the configurability of multiplayer games or improve on the graphics.