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Campaigns » Chinese Design Contest: Three emperors and two dinasties
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Chinese Design Contest: Three emperors and two dinasties
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Author |
File Description |
Andres_age |
Posted on 02/10/01 @ 12:00 AM
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
Style: |
Mix |
Number of scenarios: |
3 |
Yang Yu is a tyrannical emperor. Your mission: kill this man. Then, you´ll have to expel the Turkish troops... and finally, become emperor!!
Based on the 600 year aC, between the Sui and the Tang dinasty. |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Angel SpineMan
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 02/27/01 @ 12:00 AM
This was a very good campaign that was created in a heavily RPG format. There were moments of conquest, moments of building and moments of fixed force, but overwhelmingly, the style was role playing. There are many missions to accomplish and lots of people to talk to and interact with. Each map was very large and before the end of the scenario, you ended up seeing most of the map. It's a long journey with lots of twists and turns and it contains some very good moments but for some reason, I never felt a feeling of exhilaration like I do when playing truely great scenarios. This one just felt a little bland to me so while it's obvious the author spent much time with this and it's a quality campaign, it failed to achieve the big score.
Playability: The biggest problem here is the many boring moments throughout the campaign. At least three quarters of your game time is spent walking from one place to another on the map either searching for items or to meet someone. One scenario in particular had you find 10 horses and later, 3 relics... scattered all over a huge map, and you have to search on foot. Sorry, but that's not a whole lot of fun.
Without all the walking around, the playability could have been a 5. The variety of tasks is excellent and the dialog with other characters is interesting as well. The flow of events is good as well, it just takes too long to get from event to event.
I also didn't care for the conquest portion in the middle of the 2nd scenario. You basically have unlimited resources and must destroy an enemy city. The part on land was fine but there was a whole big enemy island that needed to be destroyed that you couldn't even tell was there without building a dock and looking for it. The island was defended by 2 bombard towers, a castle and lots of hand cannoneers... since you are only given a small place to land, the conquest was tedious and not a whole lot of fun.
There were some flashes of brilliance though... I especially liked the 2nd victory condition in the second scenairo where you have to get 15 units within range of the enemy town center and I especially liked the final victory condition in the last scenario where you need to kill a specific unit for victory. Those type of victory conditions work much better than conquest in my mind and I really liked those aspects.
Balance: This was above average but not perfect either. As I mentioned above, in the build and destroy part of the 2nd scenario, you have unlimited resources with noone attacking you... You could really be the worst player ever and eventually win. And because this is mainly a role playing game, most of the time, you weren't in danger at all other than from occassional raiding parties. The last scenario, however, was very well balanced... I was down to my last 2 troops on many occassions and managed to survive. Overall, the balance is above average, but not perfect.
Creativity: The author showed a lot of creativity in this campaign. The tasks that you must complete vary widely and the way you have to acquire troops and resouces is handled very creatively. I won't go over every little detail, but needless to say, it's obvious the author took his time with this and was able to incorporate many interesting ideas into the campaign.
Maps: Again, fantastic. Lots of details were added along with many mini-scenes of people working or travelling or whatever. Everything was done extremely well and the maps are simply amazing to look at. Great work.
Story/Instructions: These were done to a high level as well... however, this didn't achieve a 5 was for two reasons. First, there were a few obvious spelling errors throughout the game... nothing major, but enough that you notice. The second is that sometimes the player is left wondering what to do. Most of the time, the author is very clear about what needs to be done but there are enough times that I got stuck that I think some more help should've been given. Again, this is not a harsh critism, but it was enough to lower the score to a 4.
History: The history was handled very well with a bit of explanation about what really happened in history and how it related to what was happening in the game. This was also well done but not quite up to the highest standards.
Overall, if you enjoy RPG style campaigns, this is definitely worth a play. It's quite long and can be dull in places, but it's very well constructed with creative ideas and wonderful maps. Excellent work. :) |
Cherub Lobby
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 03/15/01 @ 12:00 AM
Campaign : Three Emperors and 2 Dinasties.
General Comments
Absolutely excellent quality Campaign. The misspelled title gave me serious misgivings but they were quickly allayed by the excellent campaign that followed. Superb attention to map detail was the stand out in this campaign. Except for just a couple of little faults it could have got a perfect 5.0 (in this case) I did not take off marks for the few little typos or misspelling because the author fully expressed what he needed and English is not his first tongue
Scenario 1.
The click to talk while not original was nicely executed. The map design had a terrific look and realistic feel. The designer gave every village life and purpose. The missions allocated by each town were realistic and sensible. Although rounding up the horses was quite difficult and could have been a bit less time consuming. I also had difficulty with the transport system and a hint about it would have been useful. A small error in one of the allocations of resources was frustrating. The Balance was great with each element a challenge. The playability while at times a little long winded was enthralling enough to keep me fully immersed. The ending while sudden made me laugh and only detracted a little from the overall. Playability 4, Creativity 5, Balance 5, Map 5, Story 5, History 5. = 4.83
Scenario 2.
Although it was more of the same at the start. Complete missions etc this time you got resources and eventually villagers and buildings. Then you had to build up and destroy 2 formidable enemies. This was a terrific scenario. It had not one failing that I can think of. None of the missions where too tedious and walking round this magnificent map was so enthralling that I didn’t mind the time. The eventual enemies were magnificently balanced and you needed all those hard won and bought buildings to defeat them. The final battle against the Turks was really tough and a good mix of troops imperative. In short all categories 5 ! = 5.00
Scenario 3
Another magnificent looking map. The time spent on the detail alone gets a huge vote from me. The Palaces are beautiful and so neatly and realistically put together. If I had a complaint it would probably be about some confusion about how to complete missions (more hints maybe). Now this is only a minor complaint as you eventually find sign posts or some sort of clue. Sadly though this scenario ended far too quickly and I didn’t really have to do a lot in the end (maybe the author rushed the finish to get it in on time ?)Playability 3, Creativity 4, Balance 4, Map 5, Story 4, History 5. = 3.5
Overall 4.5 |
The Downward Spiral
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 04/20/01 @ 12:00 AM
Well ... unfortunately, I was disappointed with this campaign. It was extremely long and difficult, and the author threw out some torturous quests upon the player. Despite its downfalls of playability and balance, the campaign had excellent Map Design and some above average story-telling.
Playability - 3: This area disappointed my the greatest. Yes, all of the scenarios had unique objectives. But were they fun? I'm afraid not. I found the objectives (especially finding the horses in the first village of the first scenario) agonizing, tormenting, and ... painful. :P
Balance - 3: This was another area that annoyed me. The scenarios were extremely difficult. I found the last mission impossible without cheating. I know I'm a horrible AOK player, but I've never played a scenario this difficult.
Creativity - 4: Well, there was some unique quests and objectives in this scenario. Overall, the campaign was original and creative. But why, oh why, does every author always copy off of Genghis Khan's first scenario?! ;)
Map Design - 5: Nice work, man. Lots of eye candy and realistic landscaping. I especially liked the palace in the final scenario.
Story / Instructions - 4: The campaign featured beautiful intro bitmaps. There was also an abundant amount of information in the pre-game sequence. Although the author did a good job of story-telling, well ... dude, use spell check. ;-)
History - 5: I thought the campaign ace-ed this area.
In conclusion, this campaign was pretty good. But PLEASE ... tone down the difficulty and scenario lengths next time. ;-) Despite its extreme length and agonizing difficulty, I thought Andres_age did a great job on his campaign, "Three Emperors and Two Dinasties." |
Rasher (id: Angel Rasher)
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 05/17/01 @ 12:00 AM
Every once in a while comes along a campaign that really reaches out and grabs you, that seems to make it physically impossible to rest until you have beaten it, or run yourself into the ground in a futile attempt to succeed.
"Three emperors and two dinasties" does not manage to do that, sadly. However, it comes very close in some places, which is what makes this a top-quality campaign, and an overall blast to play. First, the things that I look upon favorably in this campaign:
The map design was impeccable, with varied and realistic looking terrain in all areas of each and every map. All too often you come across a scenario with great map design on the whole, but then you happen across a patch of terrain that looks just horrible, completely ruining the effect that the author has strived so hard to attain. Fortunately, the map design in "Three emperors and two dinasties" is both varied and consistent.
The victory conditions and side quests were creative and unique, and a lot of thought and planning obviously went into the path the player would have to take to achieve his ultimate goal.
The style of play was varied, relying heavily on RPG and fixed-force battles in the first and third scenarios, but the second scenario was more of a build-and-destroy style, although all three scenarios also had elements of Diplomacy, puzzles, adventure, and much more.
The written part of the scenario was precise and insightful, and there were only a couple of times that I was not sure of what I was supposed to be doing.
My favorite of the three scenarios was, in what I suspect to be a controversial pick, the third one. Yes, it was rather short. Yes, it was very short… but it managed to capture the sense of tension and excitement that very few scenarios can capture. I found that I simply could not stop playing, no matter how long I took, until I had beaten it. For me, that is the mark of an excellent scenario.
Unfortunately, as many things as I liked about this campaign, there is always a catch. Indeed, this is true in the case of "Three emperors and two dinasties" as well, as there were a number of issues that prevented me from giving it a higher score:
There was far too much aimless walking and exploring in all scenarios, but in the first specifically. There was a number of times where I would command my units to walk across the map to their destination, then proceed to go use the bathroom, get something to drink, etc, then come back to find my units not even halfway to their intended destination. As well, being forced to find a number of horses scattered across a huge map is not exactly my idea of a good time.
The written portion of the campaign, while very helpful and well written, nonetheless had a very large number of spelling and grammatical errors. Though it never gets in the way of the comprehension or direction of the scenario, it does take away a little of the immersivness
Finally, I was not a huge fan of the second scenario. I found it somewhat long and tedious, especially the requirement of gather immense amounts of resources (10,000 gold, 5,000 wood) just to be able to produce units.
In spite of any shortcomings "Three emperors and two dinasties" is a well done, beautiful campaign that manages to achieve the ultimate goal in some places; capturing the complete attention of whoever may be playing it. Unfortunately, it does not achieve this goal consistently. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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4.2 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 3.5 | Balance | 3.8 | Creativity | 4.8 | Map Design | 5.0 | Story/Instructions | 4.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 2,956 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 907.98 KB |
Added: | 02/10/01 |
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