Game Info:

Category : Strategy
Publisher : Strategy First
Developer : Slitherine Strategies
Release : 03/18/2003
MSRP (US): $19.99
ESRB: Teen

Official Site

Minimum Requirements:

System: 300 MHz or faster
OS: Windows 98/ME/2K/XP
RAM: 64MB RAM
Video: 16 MB RAM DirectX®/Direct3D compatible video accelerator card
Hard Drive Space: 300 MB
DirectX: DirectX 8.0

Background/Summary:

4000 years ago in the Cradle of Civilization, mighty Empires fought for water, resources and the arable land in the Fertile Crescent. Play as the Egyptians, the Babylonians, screaming Nubian warriors, or the Assyrians. Develop your country by producing commodities and selling them to your neighbors. Raise glorious armies and wage wars of conquest.

A few years back Slitherine was making a game called T-Tex, a First-Person Shooter for the Game Boy Color. The problem was that it couldn't get a publisher. The game would have required the maximum amount of space a Game Boy Color cartridge could be produced at, as well as battery save. That would mean the most expensive kind of cart to develop. While virtually all the publishers who played the game loved it (especially its multiplayer) they weren't willing to risk publishing such an expensive game, unless it carried a license to give some assurance that it would sell well. The game was never released. Slitherine could have tried making a First-Person Shooter for the Game Boy Advance, which probably would have been very impressive given what they pulled off on the Game Boy Color, or they could take a different route, like turn-based strategies on the PC. They decided to take a different route.

They probably should have gone for the Game Boy Advance.

Chariots of War is a single player turn-based strategy game by Slitherine Strategies. There is no story, aside from having you control an ancient civilization from 4000 years ago. The only thing to qualify as a story is a bit of background given before you start one of the game's campaigns. After that it's nothing but gameplay. A game which has no story had better have good gameplay to make up for it (entirely doable, of course,) so let's see how this game fares in that department.

Gameplay:

The game involves you building and managing cities and fighting battles. That's the basic premise of most similar games, but the thing is that there isn't much else to this game. Sure there are a few other features, like a trade system, but they don't play near as large a role as they could. The gameplay is mostly geared towards raising armies for fighting battles, with just about nothing else to do. It's just raising armies and fighting until you win or lose, without much variety. There are different unit types, but there's rarely a noticeable difference, and you may become too bored to continue before you get to anything remotely interesting.

The battles themselves had a lot of promise, but failed in many areas. Unlike other turn-based games where a battle would simply have its outcome decided once one army is moved onto another, this game lets you position your armies on a battlefield, give them some orders, and watch the resulting battle. The problem is that this limited control makes almost no difference in the outcome of a battle. Any attempt to surround the opposing army won't do much good simply because the battle field is tiny. It also really doesn't matter how you arrange your army because you usually can't see much of the opposing army before the battle, and thus it's random how effective your arrangement will be. This system had lots of promise and potential to be great, but it is so limited that the game may as well have just gone for the normal approach of picking a winning army and giving nothing more than a dialog box to say who won.

There are a few other aspects to the game, but they're so insignificant they don't need much coverage. There's a bit of a diplomacy system, for instance, but given as there's no way to become allies with a different civilization (at least, not that I know of,) it can't be used for much except revealing what's at a different town. It may not even be worth the effort of sending diplomats out. Just focus on building your endless wave of armies.

Graphics/Sound:

The graphics are a bit mixed. The overworld is beautiful, the towns are pretty good, and the battles are pretty painful to look at. The world map looks very nice, very much like an actual map. It has a very illustrated feel, rather than a tiled map that is in many other 2D games. The towns aren't as good, but they aren't awful to look at. The different buildings blend well onto the town, making the towns look very natural and real. The battles, on the other hand, are rather poor. The battle fields look ok, and the individual units look reasonable... in screenshots. When playing the actual game many units look like they're sliding along the ground, rather than walking. There is only one type of sprite per unit, which is standard in these games, however this game does nothing to even try to give the units an individual feel. You'll often see armies going into battle with completely synchronized walking animations. The graphics have high points, but have some major weaknesses that keep them from being anywhere near spectacular.

The sound is perhaps even more mixed. Much of the music is quite good. I actually left the game on the title screen for awhile just to listen to the music it played. I really don't have any complaints about the music at all. The sound, on the other hand, was pretty awful. You'll have heard essentially all the sound effects in the game by the end of the first battle. There's probably just one sound effect for every sound effect except dying. Some of them seem to be of fairly low quality, with a bit of fuzz playing during the sound effect (the sword clash sound stands out with this.) There was also one death sound effect which I will probably never be able to forget, just because it stood out so much and played so often.

Wrap-Up:

I wanted this game to be good. I really did. T-Tex looked to be such a good game, and I know the company is capable of far more than what they churned out with Chariots of War. This game was just so bland and generic that it bored me quickly. I'm certainly not bored by the genre, I've spent hours on the likes of Alpha Centauri. I just literally had to force myself to play every second of this game. The game does have its strong points to keep it from being absolutely intolerable, like its overworld graphics and music, but it simply wasn't fun for me. I really can't honestly recommend this game to many people. Die-hard fans of the genre may enjoy it, but it's lacking in so many areas that even they may be bored of it. Multiplayer would have helped, at least then you could make alliances over a chat system, but it's sadly missing. Slitherine is capable of great games, but this isn't one of them.

Donald"CyberGeek" Hays - July 2004