As the opening screens showed, they looked a bit dark and you couldn't have a clean read. It might be a good idea to lighten up the spash screens
The background demo had some sort of glitchy start where you could see black in the lower half and white in the upper one (or was it the other way?) but then the Rohan fort animation started to play nicely. Maybe it was a bit too close to the ground and the pixels on the textures looked so big I had a glimpse of my old shogun total war days...
The first thing I wanted to try is the revamped CaH stuff. The new backgrounds are pretty cool! The cart moving behind the dwarf, the darkness of the mage's tower, it was a good addition. The warg's background looks pretty bad though, once more huge pixels and low-poly rocks on my screen :s
I would have loved to see new powers, but the two new classes with their mix of already existing abilities was enough for me to create two new heroes to play with at least.
Back to the main menu, clicky on Skirmish.
Let's check out the new maps! I selected the first 1 on 1 RC map that came up on the list, Ruined Lands. I put Brutal in control of beasts and I picked Ridder Clan for myself. For some reason, I wasn't able to select my new CaHs (which was sad because I think they matched these factions pretty well). Oh well, the CaHs will have to wait for now.
A small loading time and... wow, this map looks bad
. Only one texture over the entire map, with a couple more for the roundish mountains in it. It must have taken its creator like 10 minutes to build it (no offense ), and I could have built it in like 3.Anyway, enough of the map, as we were here to test the mod itself!
In the middle of my screen was this round, camoflaged shire-like house... my fortress!
After peeking on the hero wheel I noticed a cat, a wolf, some old heroes I knew (CoG? Faramir? Bard?) and apparently some members of the Ridder Clan. I was sure gonna recruit them all to see what these guys are up to
Another thing came to attention. There was this curious looking camera button in my heroes tab. Clicky. Ooh, camera controls! After messing around a bit I could confortably control the camera pitch to my desire. Easy to use and in the right place (I like it a lot more than RJ's camera system).
Time to start laying down some farms before the enemy brutal overwhelms me. The green domes with these colorful, yet plain texturing had a pretty small area of effect (reminded me of RJ). I don't really like to spam the map with so many resource buildings on my screen, I wish these areas would be as big as in the default game. You should really take care of their ground decal, they are a white square with green grass, eugh! :(
Now with a couple economy buildings set up, it's time to build my Ridder Clan army. Let's build... Dúnedain. Wow, this building is bigger than anything I've seen before! It looks awesome at least (EA takes all the credit though). While we wait for our first Dúnedain, let's get some fast units and build the Den. Ouch, it looks like a blue... thing
By the time my first Wolf came out, my enemy was atacking me with wargs. Most of the horde looked like regular wargs, except these two super strange ones that looked completely purple, as if their texture was missing. I guess they are just "special"
Ouch... in such a small map, with oversized buildings and a space spammed with farms (refered to from now on as "greenish mills") I had no more room to build on... EJECT! Exit to the skirmish menu, let's try a different map. Let's try Elven Plains.
After loading, I took a quick look at the map. In "Elven Plains" there's just a lot of single-textured... plains. I dunno what I was expecting
But even plains have stuff in them, you should really work on your maps looks and playability more :s
After giving the first orders to reconstruct my base from the previous run, I felt curious about what new powers the Ridder Clan would bring.
A cat's eye? A wizard council? A RC GOD??? I need to check these out!
Picked the eye of blacky (which turned out to be a green version of Eye of Sauron as I had expected) and then I would get the rest like I caught all 150 pokémon back when I had a gameboy. Then they added 100 more, and like 500 more afterwards. So frustrating.
Anyway my base was looking good, the spam of greenish mills was giving me a nice economy boost, and I was almost ready to get Blacky out when a small horde of spiderlings attacked my "house" (which I couldn't really find an use for, by the way). Oops! Forgot about getting troops... good thing my round, shire-like fortress thing can shoot arrows out of nowhere, and killed them all (I bet not even them saw it coming).
Soon after the spideys were dead, another of those supernatural purple warg hordes came to attack my mills. Blacky we need you!!!! And fast as a lightning, blacky was recruited to save the day... not. After hearing half of blacky's just recruited voice, "meow", Game.dat caused an error and had to close. Yikes, that really sucks :(
Upon restarting the game, I decided to play on one of Masterbadeend's maps, Morthrond. Now we're talking
While the textures were not superb, nor was the map beautified with many props, it was above the standard we use to see in online games' custom maps. All it missed was a nice minimap to guide a n00b like myself through the mountains.
Again economy spam to rush some heroes. I wouldn't risk crashing the game getting blacky out, or the wolf either, so I waited till I could get Ridder Blauw (ol' faramir?) out. Good thing the enemy's purple wargs got glitched and took longer to destroy my mills.
Blauw was finally out, and heck he had the same abilities and look as Faramir! XD. Ahhh but now he can heal and took lessons from Glorfindel's Wind Rider ability so he should be fine at higher levels
A few shots of his bow ended the life of an incoming horde of scorpions. For some strange reason, they sounded a lot like Gorkil, the goblin King when they died. Funny.
Ridder Groen comes to aid his fellow archer, and heck he's just another copy of Faramir with his toggle weapon, wounding arrow and train soldiers!
After beating a couple more easy waves of spiders and wargs, Ridder Mage was ready for battle and I was about to recruit these strange Wildmen of Dunland from the Inn I had just captured (which for some reason had the image of a hobbit in their recruit button).
"Team up shiriffs!" was the last thing I heard before my game.dat crashed again. It's getting annoying.
Restart again and try another map, "Bridges of Fresoan". Again the same single-textured oversized plain. Not that I expected any better by now...
Same greenish thing spam and hero rush as before. No "Hobbits of Dunland" this time.
While the enemy computer is busy suiciding it's harrassers against the oversized trolls on the bridges, I bring Ridder Mage to try out this curious looking ability, Elemental strike. It's like 4 fireballs of different colors in one (though the explosion is the same of a classic fireball). I was hoping to see a cooler FX with water, lightning, fire and stones...
As the useless Ridder Zwart kills himself fighting the trolls (WIP hero I guess), I start saving up gold for the Ridder Geel hero.
Then once more, for an unknown reason, game.dat crash.
I guess that's it for these two factions, it's just unplayable.
Let's restart the game one more time to see what's been of the classic factions.
Same map, me vs 3 hard comps. Me = Elves, them = Rohan, Mordor and Harad.
Game crash on startup.
5th restart. I remove CaHs. No good.
6th restart. I replace harad with Dwarves. Now the map loads fine.
Nothing new really. Same old buildings, heroes and troops. Just the smaller radius on the farms and the resulting mallorn spam.
Quit and restart on Cair Andros (RC) using Rohan, vs. Isengard Brutal.
Cool new fortress. I started off building the archery range (must rush archers in this map). My two pathetic Yeomen hordes couldn't stand against the first wave of uruks that attacked my base. Funny since I remember seeing "Strong against infantry" in their description. Totally useless, so I sell my archery range and get a barracks.
Great, now I have some useless anti-pikemen cheap unit and the spearmen which are so few it's almost impossible to get them to survive till they can face the enemy cavalry. Sold my barracks. Ok let's hope the heroes Hama and Gamling can do their thing... nope, they take 3 hits just to kill an enemy infantry unit, and got pwnd quickly without any useful abilities.
The rohan cavalry will be my only hope! While more overpowered and visually indistinctible from common infantry, the slightly bigger Berserkers start to destroy my farms at an amazing rate. Eomer is doing his share hunting down harrassers, then i decide to rush Rohirrim Royal guards but... they're greyed out. Even though the unit's description says nothing about a need to upgrade, I guess should upgrade the stables one or two levels before i can get them, and I do.
Got my first royal guard out. Wow, these guys are tough and totally worth my stables expenses. With their fast mount I run over the enemy crossbowmen and unmount in time to deal with their pikemen as well. Peace in my base, at last! There were just these wargs on the other end, but I killed them all with my summoned elven allies (a second tier power which, for some reason, I could buy even before i got any power from tier 1).
Got 3 royal guards out, they're all types of unit in one so I'll just keep spamming these (all other rohan units seem to be a waste of resources). They can even kill incoming cavalry with their bows. The beautifully overpowered unit I was hoping for
. Sucks that for some other strange reason, I can't garrison them. Maybe because they can mount I guess.All too fun til they got their catapults out. My westfold cavalry (cavalry is usually the best weapon against ranged siege machines) didn't seem to even make a scratch to it. My level 10 royal guard fell like flies after getting hit by the several ballista shots that rained upon on them. My heroes didn't last long against the superior enemy troops and after some skirmishing, my base fell to their siege and masses.
Well, maybe I'm just a sucky player, let's try the other way around and use Isengard against Rohan, same map and positions.
After quickly building my first two furnaces, I set up my uruk pit and built a couple of scout hordes. Hell they're so overpowered. Just the two of them (200 gold in total) managed to destroy an enemy farm and 2 peasant hordes and a yeoman archer horde (total of 650 gold). Yikes! Let's start building the real troops. Second Uruk pit and a Warg Den, keep spamming uruk fighters, crossbowmen and wargs. It was incredibly easy to destroy all of their farms with my wargs since their pikemen were so useless (if present at all). The enemy kept sending their super weak units (even a hero, gamling I think) to suicide agaist my uber soldats. My guys were only getting stronger till I got 4 berserkers out to rush a fortress kill. Damn it fell so quickly.
The gameplay is just so broken there really is no balance in this mod. You guys should really get a good player to assist you in balancing (you can recruit at gamereplays.com).
Well I think that's a pretty long n00bish review. I will not write a conclusion as I hope you've read and understood my points throughout my test plays.
I hope you can get all the bugs, crashes, aesthetic and gameplay issues fixed. This mod has great potential, unlike most other mods who just add the typical Harad, Rohan, etc plus a bunch of new units nobody really needs. I hope to be able to play the new great factions one day and say it's really the best mod around.
Cheers rc mod
