Remember WarCraft II? Nice little Tolkien-esque strategy game
with Orcs, humans, and exploding piggies? It was sorta released quite a few years
ago, sold tons of copies, launched a virtual army of (bad) real-time strategy
clones into the market, had an even more successful spin-off (StarCraft),
and has a hyped sequel coming out (appropriately named WarCraft III). Remember
the game that made Blizzard a household name (okay, so I live in a weird household)?
Well, guess what? Phantagram has virtually remade WarCraft II (sans the
quirky humor, but with a new pseudo-RPG mode) under the name Kingdom Under
Fire: A War of Heroes, and somehow they managed to make it worse.

I
had a sick feeling in my stomach about Kingdom Under Fire when I first
saw the box. Call me crazy, but the box of a commercial computer game really shouldn’t
spell the word “devastate” wrong (the box says, “Witness stunning
pyrotechnics as you devistate opposing forces”). True, you can’t judge a
book by its cover, but if you saw a novel entitled Litle Womans, wouldn’t you
want to laugh? Still, I tried to keep an open mind. Kingdom Under Fire treads
where oh so many games have trodden before. The general idea (during normal play
mode) is that you gather resources, send out scouts, build up an army, and crush,
impale, moider, slap, and just generally do bad things to your enemy. In all truth,
Kingdom Under Fire could be better compared to the expansion for WarCraft
II, Beyond the Dark Portal, rather than WarCraft II itself. See, the
focus of the game is more on heroes, super strong characters whose death spells
your losing. These heroes do make the game more interesting, more like an RPG.

And
Kingdom Under Fire becomes more like an RPG during its RPG mode. Every
few levels of tactical combat, a little RPG mode level pops up. These generally
consist of your main character walking around a dungeon or a castle, collecting
potions and equipment, and slaying baddies. It’s not a bad idea, but in execution
it fails miserably. Attacking bad guys consists of just clicking on them and/or
clicking on a button for one of three spells. New equipment just shows up in front
of your character. The battles are cluttered and confusing. It’s just not very
fun.

But wait, it gets worse! Kingdom Under Fire has no in-game
save feature! Yes, you heard (well, read, unless you read articles aloud in game
show-ish voices) right. In order to save the game, you have to complete a level.
If you charge your troops into battle and your hero is killed, you have to start
over again. Even if it’s the final charge, the Yorktown of the level, and a stray
arrow catches your hero, you have to start all over from Bunker Hill. It’s the
freakin’ 21st century here people! Even in the original WarCraft, you could
save your progress. The lack of an in-game save feature is just inexcusable in
a modern game.

All of the graphics in Kingdom Under Fire are prerendered
sprites. They’re actually quite pretty. However, since the game is 2D (like WarCraft
II) instead of 3D (like Total Annihilation), there are no varying levels
of terrain on the maps. It detracts from the reality of the game; there are more
than plains and plateau in the real world. And speaking of the maps, the level
design isn’t all that great, either. There were quite a few levels that consisted
of following one path and killing everything on the way. The voice acting in Kingdom
Under Fire varies from wonderful to so horrible it makes you want to rupture
your eardrums with a sharpened cue-tip. Main characters like Moonlight and Curian
are brilliantly acted, but unit voices sound like the programmers dragged their
family members onto a sound stage. The music may be the best thing about Kingdom
Under Fire; there’s a definite Celtic influence, and it’s quite moving.

Another
of Kingdom Under Fire’s shining points is the plot. Although it’s a little
cliched (did I write little cliched? Whoops, I meant exceedingly banal) and obviously
heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings and the WarCraft series,
it’s still gripping. The entire game is told like a story by one of the heroes,
Moonlight. Apparently, many years before the game takes place, there was an evil
lich who ruled the continent of Bersiah. Seven heroes rose to defeat him, and
one, Rick Miner, was killed and then resurrected as a really evil dude named Rick
Blood (and with a last name like Blood, how could he be anything but bad?). A
hundred years later, little Ricky organizes the Orcish armies to attack the human
kingdoms in Bersiah. Meanwhile, a young man named Curian who had been adventuring
the world returns to his home to find his village destroyed by Orcs. Hoping to
thwart the Orcish invasion, he joins with other heroes and rallies the human kingdoms,
the Elves, and the Dwarves. Obviously, you either control the Orcish hordes or
the Allied forces in an attempt to vanquish the other.

The worst thing about
Kingdom Under Fire is that it stinks with potential. The RPG mode could
have been so much more. The maps could have been more inspiring. There could have
been an in-game save feature. Alas, we will never know. Good music, graphics,
and story are nothing if a game’s no fun to play. Only try Kingdom Under Fire
if you really, really can’t wait until WarCraft III.

Final
Grade: D+

If you liked Kingdom Under Fire:
Watch: Dragonheart
(or wait for the Fellowship of the Rings movie)
Play: WarCraft
II: Tides of Darkness
Read: The Lord of the Rings trilogy
by J.R.R. Tolkien

Minimum System Requirements:Windows
98/2000/ME
Pentium II 266
64 MB RAM
Any video adapter with more than
2 MB of memory
900 MB free disk space
4x CD-ROM drive
28.8 Kbps modem
(for Internet play)