The camera moves from time to time, and from time to time a complementary scene is cut. The developers have taken this criticism to heart, which is why there is now much more movement in these scenes. Because the cut scenes were very static and mercilessly boring. In the preview version, this was always the time for a neat nap. Theoretically, the Persian fighting elephants are fierce opponents … if they weren’t just running in circles over and over again.Īt the beginning of every mission there is always a short introduction that continues the story. Some troops get lost and become easy prey for our army. In general, the enemy AI is not always optimal. Because suddenly the beasts move erratically in circles. However, simple houses seem to make the elephant troops much more difficult than my combined defense. If I trigger it with a click of the mouse, rocks roll down the mountain towards the enemy. Or I’ll have a couple of stone traps set up. Very practical: even in the middle of a battle, walls can be built with just a few clicks of the mouse, which make it much more difficult for the pachyderms to move forward. So a time limit ticks down mercilessly while Persian war elephants try to storm our camp from all sides again and again. After an incredibly boring introductory mission without any fights, the Spartan campaign continues in a much more exciting way. Equipping the units individually with spears, swords or shields is not entirely new either (Europa files, Alpha Centauri), but it does bring a bit of variety to the day of combat. I don’t know how many times I’ve built entire armies out of the ground with three raw materials (wood, gold, food). The game concept of Sparta differs no iota from the assembled competition. But read for yourself why it wasn’t quite enough for the upper class after all. And so a potential 6-point game actually turned into a pretty cute title, which with a little more of this and that would certainly have risen to the top ranks.
And now this: The developers actually spiced up the boring cutscenes and optimized the level of difficulty including the unit balance. I was sure that the final version would hardly differ a bit from the pre-sample. All three campaigns were already built in, the cutscenes were complete. So also in the case of Ancient Wars – Sparta.
There are preview versions that are so advanced that you could do the final test with them.