Heroes of Annihilated Empires

Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs are such standard fare for all high fantasy games that “inspired by Tolkien” is assumed. But when does inspiration become plagiarism? Is it when the opening movie looks like outtakes from Helm’s Deep? Or when the undead fortress has a glowing red eye on its spire? Maybe when the tree person starts talking very, very slowly?
If you can forget that everything in Heroes of Annihilated Empires reminds you of something else, you may find some things to celebrate. GSC, maker of the Cossacks series, has always prided itself on delivering epic battles, so you get thousands of fantasy archetypes whaling on each other with spells and whatever sharp things they can find. There isn’t a lot of strategy in the skirmish game; it’s mostly keeping an infinite assembly line of soldiers heading to the front. But there is a certain skill in knowing when you have enough to push your empire just a little farther.
The only real effort to imbue the game with strategic thinking is apparent in the role-playing mechanic. You get a hero unit who can gain abilities as he or she wins experience and can loot neutral sites for spells or items. The developers make a big fuss about how you can play the game just as an RPG, but this isn’t quite true. A solo hero can do a lot of damage but is no match for hundreds of enemies swarming over the horizon. The “outproduce or die” reality of the game means that you’d be a fool to spend those precious early minutes leveling up your hero. Your first step should always be to summon workers, which entails neutralizing your hero for 30 minutes.
Most RTS games would be over in those 30 minutes, but not this one. A single one-on-one game can take well over an hour. There isn’t a lot of map variety to keep everything fresh, but simple and attractive artwork keeps the four races distinct. Some of the units are too similar to be easily distinguished, but, for the most part, this is a fascinating-looking game world.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires could also be the first RTS to put the “camp” back in “campaign.” The story is so bad it’s good, helped along by some of the corniest fantasy voice acting you’ll ever hear. Plus, if you click through conversations, the voice-over continues anyway. The campaign opens with a low-quality movie, while all the other cutscenes are comic strips of middling quality. Some early campaign missions are cruel in their difficulty, but they rarely require you to solve a puzzle or guess the right path.
Despite the general aura of “been there, done that,” Heroes of Annihilated Empires is better than its name suggests. It could be GSC’s best game since the original Cossacks, largely on the strength on interesting art direction and the sleight of hand involved in the RPG/RTS trade-off. Heroes fails to deliver on some major promises, and games take too long, but for a certain audience, it’s worth a serious look. 

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #195