What's Good	What's Bad	3.5 out of 5.0
Lush graphics Beautiful animations Robust control and tracking of game units Coherent storyline Expandable with new downloadable units (available soon)	Brutal system requirements for RTS game Mediocre AI Little new in gameplay

If you listen closely, you can hear sighs of contentment echoing across the land. Fantasy strategists and closet necromancers have been clamoring for a successor to Warcraft II for many moons now and it seems that one has finally appeared. Total Annihilation: Kingdoms is the first in a long line of upcoming real time strategy (RTS) games that should keep the armchair generals satiated for the next few seasons. The question I am sure many people are asking themselves is, "Should I bother? I can't afford the time (or money) to buy them all." Well, let's take a look...

The storyline is as good a vehicle for a fantasy based RTS as I can think of. The sons and daughters of a powerful Mage King are granted lands to rule and entrusted with magical items to aid them. These items are aligned with specific elements, namely Earth, Air, Water and Fire and grant virtual immortality to the possessor. On the night of the coronations the Mage King disappears, taking with him the most powerful of the magical items. Conflict and intolerance develop in the ensuing centuries. The Monarchs and their realms become increasingly divided in religion and lifestyle and the enmity erupts into outright war 1,527 years after the disappearance of the Mage King. The game follows this conflict in a unique way. Instead of playing the role of one Monarch to the conclusion of the war, it jumps the player back and forth from character to character. I really like this approach because it allows me to view the war from many perspectives. I imagine the reasoning behind this shifting of gameplay will become apparent with the conclusion of the 'adventure' mode of Kingdoms. Enough with the background story, let us shift our attention to the game proper.

First, and foremost in my opinion, the graphics are beautiful. The animations even more so. Believe me, I expect good gameplay as much as the next person, but I hate looking at a poorly rendered world. I'll gladly pay a performance price for better eye candy and Kingdoms delivers. Each unit is lovingly crafted and some of the animations are brilliant. I lost a group of archers because I was mesmerized watching the cannoneers loading and firing at the oncoming hordes. And don't even get me started on the majesty of the dragons...

Okay, I've asked for (and received) luscious graphics and elegant animations. What's it going to cost me? The box recommends a Pentium 233 and 32 megs of RAM. Most people know not to trust the optimism stated in the 'Minimum System Requirements' so it should not come as much surprise that what they recommend is inadequate. In fact, the only thing keeping me from giving it a four stars are the brutal system requirements. My Pentium II 300 with 128 megs and a Voodoo II SLI rig bogged down slightly when the fighting got intense. I could understand this if I was running a first person shooter with thousands of polygons being rendered in real time, but it is not something I expected in a RTS game. I turned off some of the shading and it seemed to alleviate most of the slowdown. Kingdoms also makes use of a 3D card, albeit in a limited fashion. Hardware acceleration enables a cool, pulsing fog to cover the lands as well as some trick lighting effects. The effects add to the overall impression of grandeur, but would not affect the gameplay if you choose to run software only.

Alright, the game is gorgeous. How does it play? Very well, actually. Kingdoms has taken all the years of RTS games since Warcraft II and rolled all the tweaks into a more powerful control system. The control commands are very robust and extensive. I've been playing for about a week now and I know that I've still got a lot of exploring to do with more efficient management of my troops. You can select troops by type (builders, melee, naval, ballistic, factory, with weapons, fly, etc.) and create squads and formations. Loading and unloading ships has been simplified as well. Select a ship, click Load, and draw a bounding box around the units you want to Load. Tracking units is also easy. Select a unit and hit T. The screen will scroll to follow the selected unit or squad. Want to know what your builder units are doing? Select one, hit Control-Z (select all like units), hit T to cycle among all of them. Hate the position newly created units form up? Click on the 'factory' building, click Move, click on point A, hold shift, click Patrol, click on point B. The newly created units will now proceed to the new position and patrol from point A to point B. I'm discovering new uses and command combinations for the control system every time I play. The key combinations can be changed, but in a more roundabout fashion than is usual. There is a file called Keys.TDF in the Kingdoms folder that contains all the key layouts. All changes to the default key commands are done here. The remapping is fairly straightforward but I am not sure why they opted to remove in-game key changes, simplicity perhaps.

The units are fairly straightforward RTS types. A Monarch serves as the linchpin of your army. He or she can create main structures and place Lodestones which accumulate mana, the energy needed to create buildings, summon creatures, and cast magic. This is slightly different from most RTS games in that mana is infinite. No more running out of resources and trudging the troops out to find more. If you can claim, and defend, a mana site you will not need to expand your sphere of influence. Just make sure you have enough mana to be effective. Summoning units and structures can take a goodly amount of mana; too little is just as bad as not having any. I like the idea of defending a place of power rather than collecting wood and gold. It just fits the nature of a fantasy game better. The other units run the gamut from lowly foot soldier type to the patron "deities" of the Monarchs. The latter are supposed to appear very rarely, usually to rally a decimated force. One should not have to deal with a rampaging "deity" very often -- it unbalances the game. Speaking of which, Cavedog is going to continue the practice of releasing new units for download that it started with the original Total Annihilation. This has proved to be a good method of correcting imbalances in the game as well as a cool way to introduce new gameplay.

The only complaint I have with the game is the artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, it is the same complaint that most RTS players have. The computer doesn't often make inspired decisions. The Kingdoms AI is at least as good as anything else out there, but I was expecting more. Walls are the bane of all computer AI's and it isn't much different with Kingdoms. The computer also tends to use the 'rush' technique more often than not. Hordes of creatures will start to stream into your base area in the hopes of overwhelming the defenses. The easiest way to deal with this is to set up a killing ground with the strategic placement of walls and Mage Towers (or equivalent). Add some archers and the destruction will be wanton. Extremely fun to watch, but not very challenging. Maybe some military AI and heuristics programmer out there will drop some quality AI code at the local game developer in a pure act of selfless selfishness. Please?

Another minor gripe is the lack of compelling new features. Kingdoms is at least as good as the reigning champ, Starcraft, but Cavedog has not introduced anything that we have not seen already. Instead of three races of combatants, we have four. Instead of technology, organic, and psionic based combat we have Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire based magics used in combat. Even so, I have been having a blast with this 'limited' setup and 'been there, done that' gameplay. If it isn't broke, don't fix it...

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms is a strong title that will have no trouble competing with the new real time strategy games on the horizon. Beautiful graphics, a flexible control system, new units for download, and an effective way of involving the gamer in all sides of a conflict combine to make this an interesting and fun game. And last, but not least, you get to blow things up with a dragon. Who can resist that?