Gameplay, Single and Multiplayer

Battle Realms handles tactics and resources a lot differently than other RTS games. Peasants are the backbone of this game. As peasants are generated from the peasant hut, you can send them to collect resources, or train them for war in your training yards. This also means that you won't be needing money to advance through the game. It's simply harvesting rice, collecting water, generating more peasants and training some more. There’s a very low cap on the number of units or the population you’re allowed to have in comparison to other RTS games. Most single player missions are limited to 30-40 units, and this is also the default on multiplayer games. The rate of peasant growth is out of your hands too – when you have little they generate quickly, but if you have more than two-thirds of your population limit they generate very slowly. Building more peasant huts may increase the growth rate, but it looks the same to me.

A strong sense of strategy and tactics is absolutely essential to success in Battle Realms. Especially given the low unit caps, the tired old tactic of amassing a huge army of one type of unit won't work well (Ed - There go the Starcraft rush tactics out of the window). Every unit has strengths and weaknesses that are important to learn and exploit. For example, the Samurai can handle most damage fairly well, but is quite vulnerable to explosions. So a smaller army of Cannoneers could easily take on an army of Samurai. Sounds simple enough, huh?

horsemen on the move

attack!

taming a wild horse

last line of defense

wrecking crew

kenji and his bandwagon

The strategic element of Battle Realms is where it really shines, especially in the unit creation department. Unit Alchemy is a fantastic way to force players to make strategic decisions about unit choice.You also need to be careful with how many peasants you have gathering resources. Too many and you can’t have an army, too few and you won’t be able to build one.
Decisions like that are a constant concern in Battle Realms. Unit Alchemy doesn't end the decision process with the creation of the strongest unit, however. Each clan can build a special structure used to sacrifice four units to create an extremely powerful effect or unit.

The AI in Battle Realms is good. In some other RTS games units had a problem where if one unit in a group was being attacked, the others wouldn’t help him. In this game the opposite happens, if a unit is being attacked all of the units around him will help. Sounds good, but there’s a catch. Your units will actually chase after any unit that attacked them, sometimes right into traps. It’s actually difficult to hold your troops back from running across the map to settle a score. There are commands to stop your units from doing this, but it’s still hard to keep them in one place (Ed - That kind of reminds me of Warcraft I where you can kill off a whole line of enemy knights by shooting one with an arrow).

close-up: kenji's band

Orb's awakening

Zymeth's last stand

The objective in the vast majority of levels is to simply raze the enemy clans to the ground. Simplistic objectives like that are enhanced through subtle level design and interesting twists such as environmental effects. In some levels for example, boulders are strategically placed so that a player can send a unit to dislodge the giant rock and send it rolling down on the enemy below. Combat therefore requires a firm mastery of the intricacies of Battle Gear, unit management, and special abilities. The absence of unit formations requires the player to carefully group units together based on function. Thankfully, the RTS standby of pressing Ctrl + A number to group units is available. Battles can get pretty messy and are immensely aided by a thorough knowledge of hotkeys, which is also needed to fire off special abilities (Battle Gear) at the right time.

Gameplay continued...