X
- T
- cdv Software
- T
- cdv Software
- T
- cdv Software
- T
- cdv Software
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
Released On: Nov 16, 2006
65
7.8
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
All Platforms
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 23 Critic Reviews
65
22% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
74% Mixed
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 23 Critic Reviews
65
22% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
74% Mixed
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
A fine hybrid title that tells a captivating tale, complemented by a stellar cinematic presentation and gameplay that is challenging and rewarding, not to mention compulsively addictive in an old school dungeon-crawler kind of way.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires is a full package that does have its short comings such as not being able to skip over some of the atrociously slow voice acting but over all is a pretty interesting mixture of the elements that make RPG and RTS games fun to play.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 43 User Ratings
7.8
72% Positive
31 Ratings
31 Ratings
14% Mixed
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
14% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 43 User Ratings
7.8
72% Positive
31 Ratings
31 Ratings
14% Mixed
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
14% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
Best RPG+RTS.
Have you ever wondered: where did the legends and tales originate, their characters - elves, gnomes, dragons, wizards and all those we are accustomed to think of solely as the fruits of human imagination. After all, there is no smoke without fire, and if something is written or said, it is indirect, but still related to real events. Even the most outspoken lie or skillful invention is based on real events and only distorts them ...
Report
PC
I have really been enjoying this game so far and feel that it deserves a much better score than what has been given. I have had no issues playing the game and it has a nice atmosphere that it's hard to get tired of. The singleplayer works well and focuses on the quest of an elven ranger to save his people from the undead. The story is advanced through in-game dialogue as well as comic cut scenes and tell a good story. The gameplay is very centered around the hero who can cast some very powerful spells and can dish out insane damage, probably a bit to the detriment of the game as there is not much strategy involved when the hero outranges towers and does more dps than the rest of the army together, but there is something about the game that makes it hard to stop playing, and it is a joy to advance through the campaign. Warmly recommended.
Report
PC
Like a good pie, but with crap pastry on top. This is a game weighed down by an army of faults, but it's still periodically entertaining. [Jan 2007, p.64]
Heroes fails to deliver on some promises, and games take too long, but for a certain audience, it's worth a serious look. [Mar 2007, p.62]
It's a shame that a game that gets the mix of genres so right is hampered by such a great number of issues that all result in holding it back from realising its true potential.
A forgettable experience all the way through. While we really like Elhant's attitude, it's the only thing that stands out as unique in this game.
Almost engaging. Despite dripping with cliché, the world is a fun one to visit. It would be much easier to stomach the numerous design flaws had they delivered on their promise in the storyline.
A very honest attempt at an RPG-RTS fusion that does actually work, but is cluttered with tons of little low production problems that really hinder it.
General presentation/voice acting is really awkward in many ways. Hero of the first campaign(only one I've played) is quite the dou*he and his voice always sounding like he's faking being pissed off in front of the mic really reinforces the impression that he's trying to sound wierd or out of the picture. Since his character is about being an arrogant and stupid person who resolves everything by frontal assaults, it really aggravates things.
The story is given through comics-style drawings and it turns out to be quite good most of the time, gives a nice identity to everything, but the sub-par voice acting and the fact that this VA is literally everywhere brings the experience down a lot. BTW, when you skip a textbox during the game, the recording keeps playing. It only skips the next textbox if you skip two or more, and if the last textbox is one long text, prepare to hear it talk till the end because there's no way around it...which again harms the presentation.
Music is fine IMHO. So are most of the sound effects which all do a fine job.
Visuals however are not: I once held a 250 elf army in my screen, and from eye count I can tell you that they didn't look like more than 100. This is because units clogg up like they take no room on the battlefield, something which gets absolutely ridiculous when your frontline of 70 men is botched up in one zone, one or two area-effect spells come by, and your 70-men frontline is reduced to 10. Just like that. It's very hard to tell what you're looking at and details, while nicely drawn, really can't give you a feel with how many units you're having or how many are against you. This is pretty terrible as you can never estimate if you'll win or lose a battle just by checking numbers and you have to constantly check your losses and their losses to see how the battle's turning out. Sprites are also small which doesn't help.
Lastly, the gameplay, while fun and decidedly having lots of potential, feels rushed and unpolished. Many times you'll find yourself not doing anything but waiting for your army to get to a position because the level design is a bit like a maze and you'll go to the edge of a corridor, and have to turn all the way back and that takes a full minute of backtracking an area you cleansed of enemies.
You have many moments where the fast-paced, very micromanaged battles are followed by long bits of nothing. Battles are constantly, almost universally, micromanaged, every group of units has to be repositioned at all times for all sorts of reasons and you just can't strategise or be away from the frontline for more than 3 seconds, almost as bad as Starcraft II. A good example of how poor the AI is is that if you send out units against an enemy army, say all your units, your archers will immediately kill the one unit you clicked on and the rest of the army will stop dead in its tracks as if to say "job's done, waiting for next orders" without even going to the area where the rest of the entire army of the enemy is. Friendly units with an area of attack will attack the closest enemy and not the big mass of enemies they should attack. There's a sequence where you have about 80 Ghouls that attack you, but if you bypass them and attack by the rear, they will sit tight and let you kill them one by one until you get into that one zone where all the remaining Ghouls come at you together. During one boss battle of your Hero vs the Undead Hero, you can either spam health potions and go with your sword which does 9 damage, or use your bow which does 1, but allows you to shoot through the buildings while his spell attack doesn't go through...
The RPG-RTS mix of using a Hero unit with RPG elements that influences the RTS a lot is very well done but by no means sufficient to counter the numerous little nitpicks I have with numerous backtrackings, waiting, micromanaging, and the like.
Although the RTS system alone is quite satisfactory it doesn't exactly shine because of many little things like how units will always aim at the closest unit and not the most interesting one, you can't make unit groups(can only double click to get all the types of one unit in your hand), at least I didn't find the way, and while the spells, powers, options, types of attack and such, are all nice and pleasant, they're not covering the lack of polish and the poor interface.
There's more and more little nitpicks, but ultimately this is a game with a good basic system that could've used a lot more polishing and work on its units, interface and presentation, and a different level design because all this backtracking is just crap.
Report
PC
Ants simulator, mess edition.
The fact that, for the campaign, I had to play an elf, the unwanted plague of fantasy cliché races, is far from being the worst aspect of HoAE. Even with his ridiculous voice acting and dialogues.
What is really, really bad is that everything is so tiny that I have no clue what any unit looks like, what it's doing, which side it's on, etc. I'm basically watching swarms of colored pixels clashing under the constant swirling sound of a toilet flush (the horrible music being turned off as usual.) I get that games think they are cool because they don't offer a pause (they do it so that we don't see the flaws while pretending it's for the challenge,) but what this one truly needs is a bloody zoom key, since we don't have 40 inches magnifying glasses to mount in front of our monitors.
Do I even need to mention the terrible micro-unit micro-management ? I Guess when a creature is only 4 pixels high, there's no room for putting a brain inside it.
Report
PC
Summary Creating the Heroes of Annihilated Empires, far from making a game, we build a bridge to the world of imagination living deep inside in each of us. A world that has become an arena for six great races that are ready to engage in the conflict, never seen by these lands before. While leading heroes and mighty armies to victory, bringing yo...
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Nov 16, 2006
Developer:
- GSC Game World
Publisher: cdv Software
Genres:
