The following games are a series of games I've posted (via three other posts) to replace the lack of a game giveaway this Sunday (21st Feb 2010). The games are Strategy games and may require DOSBox to run. You can try them via windows first, but if they do work, they are likely to have sound problems in Windows if you're not using DOSBox.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms III: Dragon of Destiny: (1.9Mb)
It's China, late second century. The collapse of the Han dynasty has created chaos of unforeseen complexity, and China is now divided into many small states. There is an ambitious warlord, Cao Cao, who wants to reunite China, but he is not alone ... Well, what did you expect? I mean, who wouldn’t want all of China for himself? Anyone?
In the beginning of the game you choose whether you want historical or random conditions, and the time period. After that, the game begins.
As a ruler, you have a lot of freedom. You can improve cities, draft troops, build weapons, search for useful people ... Simply put, you have a lot of things you can do. Naturally, most of these things are done by someone else, so you have to choose the right people to do the right things. Advisors are important too, as they can make decisions in state matters much easier.
A small detail I like in particular is diplomacy. When you send someone to negotiate, you can see how the whole negotiation process goes on - it’s like a short dialogue. I know ... nothing too fabulous, but I always enjoy such details in a game.
People are an important part of the game. One can never have enough skilled officials. You can reward them (i.e. - by giving them an item which will increase their strength) to increase their loyalty, change their positions (make a military officer a civil officer, etc.) or fire them. Speaking of people, you must (just like every good ruler) care even about ordinary people. You simply must buy their favour by brib- erm ... giving gifts (giving out food for free), or else they may decide you’re not quite the ruler they’d like to work for and rebel. Also, you may hire soldiers instead of drafting them.
The military is also important, and I’d say it’s quite accurate. Even a small, well-trained elite force can successfully defend your city against a large army consisting of untrained peasants. You can arm your soldiers with crossbows, give them horses, etc.
Also, another plus for this game is the interesting battle system which more or less repeats itself in most of KOEI's games. It’s hard to describe, but it’s rather simple to understand.
The good thing is that while the game is realistic, it isn’t all that complicated, which is where I think its greatness lies. I can think of only one downside, and that is the AI, which can be a little dumb ... but is more or less OK.
So, how good is the game?
It's excellent! A real classic, very well-balanced and very replayable. I give it 4 out of 5.
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/320/Romance+of+The+Three+Kingdoms+III+-+Dragon+of+Destiny.html
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Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (<1Mb)
Anyone familiar with KOEI will reckognize the company as the developer of the brilliant computer series Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which later gave birth to the Kessen series for the Playstation. This is the second game in the series, and is just packed with action.
The game is based on the rivalry between Liu Bei and Cao Cao, two leading figures in Ancient China. But... As usual with KOEI games, you don't have to play one of these, and are free to choose between 12 different leaders. Each one of these has a different starting position and generals. And if you have some friends around the game supports up to 12 players in multiplayer-mode.
The music is as usual very pleasing to the ear, and the same is the graphic... only to the eyes. The object of the game is to conquer the whole of China, and with 11 rivals this is not an easy task. A good tip would be to start making alliances right away. And if you go to war, use several generals, and divide your army into seperate groups. Romance of the Three Kingdoms II uses a very nice attack feature called simultaneously attack, which means that several troops can attack at once. And each unit can attack once with the support of the other troops, so if you have an enemy surrounded with four troops, you get a whoopin total of 16 attacks (4x4). You also have access to magic, which can really turn the tides of the battle if used correctly.
All in all this is an excellent strategy game, with excellent battle-controls and a really magnificent political system. With options like bad propaganda, bribing, assassinations, alliances, and of course duels between the leaders. If a leader refuses to fight man to man, he will be considered a coward, and some of his men will flee. The game is just perfect, and a must have.
The game supports multiplayer up to 12 players.
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/511/Romance+of+the+Three+Kingdoms+II.html
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Heimdall 2 – Into the Hall of Worlds (2.7Mb)
don’t know where to start with this game. Everything is so well made, and all aspects of the game deserve some words of admiration.
The graphics are one of the best I have ever seen. Easy on the eyes, and full of little details. The background is exceptionally well made, creating an almost lifelike world. There is no doubt that the guys responsible for the looks really enjoyed their work and took their time to make each and every scene in the game an art-piece.
As for the sound… once again, extremely well made. Not too elaborate, and not too “invisible”. There is just the right proportion of music and sound, enhancing the realism made by the graphic people.
Next up is the playability. The game uses a combination of point-and-click control along with cursor movement. There are also some given keys for certain options in the game; Space bar for long-range attacks and Enter for use. Together these controls make Heimdall 2 an easy and fun game to play. But just because the controls are easy, doesn’t mean the game isn't challenging at times. It starts off real easy in order to teach you the basics and then gets more difficult as you progress through the game.
For those of you who are familiar with the nordic sagas, the name Heimdall should ring a bell. Heimdall is one of the gods in Valhalla. He guards the only path from Valhalla to Midgard (Realm of the mortals), the Rainbow-bridge. According to the ancient tales He is gifted with the best hearing and sight of all the gods, and so he watches over the humans and alerts the other gods if something is happening.
In Heimdall 2 he is once again on a guest to teach the half-god Loki a lesson, but this time he needs to walk around in Midgard as a mortal. Together with a Valkyrie he tries to help all the people he sees are in need, and find Loki.
One thing I love about this game is the option to choose Norse as the language, but I fear not many Abandonians understand this…
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/148/Heimdall+2+-+Into+the+Hall+of+Worlds.html
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Heimdall (3.0Mb)
In Norse mythology, Heimdall is a guardian god that protects the only bridge between Asgard (The Land of Gods) and Midgard (The Land of Humans). In the game, though, there's no mention of this and he appears only in his mortal state, as your main character. The intro, which, except the moment when you die, is accompanied by the only music from the entire game, explains most of the story. It appears that in his attempt to change the course of the war in his favor, God of Evil Loki has stolen Odin's sword, Freyja's spear and Thor's hammer. The weapons were cast down to Earth and apparently, in this Age of Ragnarok, the gods can't enter Midgard without taking the human form. Thus they sent Thor to raise a storm above a northern Viking village, "and the next morning Ingrid, a young girl found herself 9 months pregnant".
After the long and euphoric intro, you get to choose between three options: load a saved game, new game with subgames and without. If you choose so, the way you take those trial subgames will help the computer define your stats. You'll get a default character if you choose not to take them. Either way I didn't see much difference. As the young Heimdall you'll have to participate in 3 different competitions: Axe Throwing, Pig Chasing and Boat Fighting. In the first you control the axe using your mouse, pressing Left-Mouse button to throw, while in the rest of the trials you'll use O, K, Z, X as directional keys and the Spacebar to perform the needed action, either an attempt to catch the pig or a sword swing. I don't know the reason for the poor choices in the key selection, but I spent a lot of time figuring them out.
In order to successfully complete your objective of recovering the divine weapons you need a couple of friends. You have to select a party of six, including you, before exploring Heimdall's world, and depending on how well you performed in those subgames I mentioned before, you'll see a different number of character choices (up to 30). These include various professions: warriors, wizards, shipwrights, navigators, druids, thieves. Each has different stats, warriors possessing greater strength and health, while druids and wizards are good in runelore. Runelore is very important if you want to identify and use the large selection of magical scrolls you'll find. Even though you have to choose 5 more party members, 3 of them will serve only for storing inventory items, since levelling up is so slow (I finished the game with level 7). They'll be completely useless if facing stronger enemies later in the game.
After this, the world of Heimdall will be open for your explorations. There are actually three worlds that need to be "vandalised": Midgard, Utgard (The Land of Giants) and Asgard. One for each godly weapon. Doesn't seem too logical to me, though, since they previously said that all the weapons were thrown on Earth (Midgard). You'll travel from island to island until you reach the one with the weapon. When debarking you should have three party members selected in the inventory page (the helmet image). You can choose which have the privilege of breathing some fresh air by clicking on the items button (in the same inventory screen).
After setting foot on the island you'll be transported from the map screen to a series of dungeons with some primitive rectangular rooms. Not what you'd normally call a detailed world (you can admire some torches, trees, statues and chests along the way), but the variety didn't leave me bored, plus, there are some special environments later in the game. Ignoring the lack of detail, the graphical style is really nice and deserves admiration. Basically your expeditions will become complete Loot Festivals, collecting all the stuff left by the dead enemies and stored in chests. You'll find some isolated NPCs (mostly "give me something and I'll give you something else in return"-type) and adventure-like puzzles, but those won't change the game into a deep RPG experience, especially when you don't know your secondary objectives or the stuff you need in order to accomplish the main quest. At the beginning you'll randomly visit the islands without knowing all the possible actions and the fact that some items you find on one island should be used on another in order to get a second item which is needed further in your quest. Some puzzles have indeed some hints written in the form of scrolls, but don't ask me which type of key you need to open a certain door. I'm totally clueless if there's actually a particular element you could use to identify them.
The other serious problems you'll encounter is staying alive and managing your inventory. But if you use the same characters on every island and drink all the potions you find (those increase certain stats with 5 points) killing your enemies will seem easy. I can't say the same about the ridiculous fighting system. Instead of dealing with them by point-and-clicking, every time you enter a fight a new screen appears, with several options like Attack, Defend, Run and Spell. However, the real problem is that you need to choose really fast a weapon and after that click on the Attack button, before your enemy makes a move. If you don't have fast reflexes you'll die often. You can use various methods to restore the life of your party, from food to extra heal and energy spells. In fact this is the kind of items I used to exclusively store in the inventory of the 3 members remaining on the ship. If one of your characters died, you can use a ressurection spell, which you can find in all the shops that are scattered on certain islands. It will be problematic, though, if you lose the one that has the most runelore and strength, because you need a specific amount of runelore to use the spell and the lack of strength makes you weak against future opponents.
The limited inventory space means discarding useless items. It's hard to do this in Heimdall because you have no idea which scrolls or things you'll need later in the game. You'll have to rely especially on your intuition and avoid throwing rare stuff, or else you'll have to revisit the same island where you previously found it.
For this type of games I like ambient music and interesting NPCs to keep me interested. Unfortunately, Heimdall lacks both and ends up being a generic RPG that forces you on a long trip of looting. On the other hand, considering the year of release, the lack of music is understandable, but the really primitive sound samples used for various actions like footsteps and sword swings is not. It makes no real difference if you play in silent mode (except the intro). There's no story progression except returning the lost weapons. Heimdall brings something new by combining genres and crossing the boundaries between them, but in the end it feels more like an introductory part to the sequel.
Installation:
You can save your game only when you're in the Main Map Screen, in the inventory page. Also there is only one saving slot.
When running the setup you can choose between keyboard- and mouse-based control. I think it's designed for the latter, the pointer being used in both cases. Keyboard control uses the arrow keys, SPACE and ENTER. The mouse-based control uses the mouse buttons and the arrow keys. In both cases to switch between characters you need to press F1, F2 and F3.
In mouse-based control, while you can move your character using the mouse, I'd suggest the arrow keys instead. The mouse should be used when fighting and managing your inventory.
Escape to exit the game and P to pause.
Run Heimdall.exe. It works in XP (without sound), VDMSound and DOSBox.
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/25726/Heimdall.html
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Pacific General (30.6Mb)
Pacific General is the fifth game in the line of 5 Star General games created by Strategic Simulations, Inc. The game takes the best of the first four, Panzer General, Allied General, Fantasy General, and Star General, and combines them excellently.
As its name implies, Pacific General is about the fight for the Pacific between the U. S. and the Japanese during World War 2, both on land and out at sea. You take control over the naval and land forces of the respective nations as you play through the campaigns or the various scenarios, which consist of key battles and a couple of what-if scenarios.
Interface:
If you have never played a 5 Star General series game, the interface is easy to figure out. Point-and-click, a little experimenting, and some common sense are all you need to figure out what the various buttons do. Any beginner can play this game, while veterans will still love it.
The key interface difference between Pacific General and Panzer General is that a unit's strength number changes color when the unit has finished its turn, which is a much better system than a flashing white pixel showing which units haven't been used yet. Also, the ability to move, deselect, reselect, and finish your move and/or attack has been added. Along the top of the screen you will see the words "Prestige X" and "Turn X (XX)." Hover your mouse cursor over these words to reveal drop-down game menus. The control interface is no different from Panzer General's interface, with a couple of exceptions: a Repair Ship button, the Weather Forecast in the corner, and a little warning if moving a plane to the hex your mouse cursor is hovering over will result in your plane not having enough fuel to get back to an airfield or carrier. If you have ever played Panzer General, Allied General, or even Star General, you can successfully work the interface with no problems, but you may have some minor difficulties if you have only played Fantasy General.
Selecting a unit, then left-clicking on it again while selected will open up a unit menu for getting into a carrier's flight deck, submerge submarines, get replacements, etc.
Pacific General has background music during the game. The music is a short list of 1940's American instrumentals and classical Japanese music. The graphics are slightly improved over Panzer General, and the combat animations don't exist.
Pacific General has multiplayer capability. This includes your typical Hotseat mode with both players at the same computer, network mode, and a play-by-E-Mail method.
Gameplay Notes
The most important change is that units can be deselected after moving/attacking and still be able to move/attack later during the same turn. If a unit doesn't use all its movement points when moved, it can be selected later during the same turn to finish using those movement points; it can also attack and then move, or move and then attack even after being de-selected and re-selected. This was first used in Star General and was a significant improvement over the other games in the 5 Star General series.
There are a few key differences between Pacific General and its predecessor Panzer General, mostly because of the new naval units. The gameplay itself remains the same as in Panzer General: move units and attack the enemy while trying to capture a select few cities and airfields. The naval scenarios are slightly different. Instead of capturing locations, you are asked to destroy a certain number of various ship types: carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc.
Some other changes:
You have TWO core army groups. The first is made up of ships and carrier-based airplanes, while the second is made up of infantry, tanks, land-based planes, artillery, etc. just like in Panzer General.
There are now two different kinds of airfields: paved airfields, which work the same as airfields in Panzer General, and new dirt airfields, which cannot replace losses. New planes cannot be placed at dirt airfields, but dirt airfields still refuel and rearm planes as normal. Also worth noting is the two different airplane types: land-based and carrier-based; this is important because only carrier-based planes can land on, or be placed at, aircraft carriers, while land-based planes can only use airfields. Carrier-based planes also count as land-based planes, so they can use airfields as well.
Aircraft carriers work differently from airfields. The plane has to end its move in the hex with the aircraft carrier and is moved into the carrier's hangar, which is where planes have to be in order to be refueled, rearmed, and receive replacements. The exception to this is for any fighter planes assigned as Combat Air Patrol protecting the carrier, which are automatically refueled and rearmed each turn, but must still land to get replacements. Each carrier has a limited number of slots for planes in its hangar, so you will need more than one carrier. If you lose a carrier, all planes in the carrier's hangar are lost as well.
Ships can receive damage during a battle. The damage taken can do any number of things, from making the ship unable to move or fight, to the ship being unable to see, to the ship being on fire which causes more losses each turn, to the carrier's hangar being unusable, etc. Buying replacements does remove the damage, as you are receiving undamaged ships, but you can also use the Repair Ship button, which removes damage for free and sometimes replaces a couple of losses for free at the cost of the ship's turn. There will be a red symbol next to the ship's strength number to show that a ship has been damaged.
There is also a new plane category, the torpedo bomber, which can attack ships from an adjacent hex instead of entering the ship's hex to attack.
For everyone who always hates to see the Rugged Defense result, even that has been modified. Rugged Defense almost never appears. Instead, there are a few new combat effects: Tenacious Defense, which is a weaker form of Rugged Defense; Tenacious Attack, which makes the attacker more powerful; and Banzai, which makes both units take more losses than normal. Yes, it is possible to have all those happen at once.
As is typical in SSI games, the AI is exceptional, and tougher than in the previous games. Protect your carriers at all costs, as the AI will do everything it can to locate and destroy them.
There is one mission that is only playable at the end of the American campaign; you have to get only decisive victories throughout the entire campaign to get this mission. There is also a mission that is only playable as a scenario and is not in either the Japanese or American campaigns.
Conclusion
Aside from gameplay changes, Pacific General is Panzer General with naval forces. Anyone can learn to play Pacific General within an hour or two at most through experimentation.
If you are a fan of Panzer General, or you wish to control a navy as opposed to an army, consider Pacific General as your choice. Once you get over the low learning curve, you will enjoy this gem from the 5 Star General series. The only fault with Pacific General is that the campaign is shorter than Panzer General, and there are fewer scenarios to play. Instead of having special missions available for doing well during the campaign, you get the option to buy new versions of ships, planes, and land forces earlier than normal.
This is a rip of the full game, the music and some animations have been removed. The game runs in Windows XP and Vista, it has to be extracted to a folder without any spaces in it's name, however. (e.g. C:\GAMES\PACIFIC\)
I recommend that the first time you play Pacific General, you play the scenario "Midway" with both sides human-controlled, instead of the tutorial. Midway is an all-naval scenario so that you can learn the new features and control of ships and carrier-based planes in order to avoid any possible problems/mistakes during your first couple of naval missions in the campaign game.
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/25212/Pacific+General.html
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Panzer General:
Panzer General, the first of SSI's General games, was a truly fantastic game when it came out in 1994. It combined hard-core strategy games with lighter, but unrealistic ones, creating a mix of them which was perfect for both veterans and beginners. The game became light, but realistic with a graphical interface which was good enough for the casual gamer.
The irony is that it brought almost nothing really new to the world of round played strategies, but it was so well made and became so famous, that if someone mentions the genre, most people will answer Panzer General.
As the name says, it is set in WWII, and lets you command huge battles as a general. When you start, you will have the option to either play campaigns or individual missions. I would strongly recommend you to play though the campaign mode of the game, which is better than playing solo scenarios. This way you will have to fight your way through different maps, where the goal will be to conquer strategic locations (cities, airfields or other important objects) in a fixed amount of rounds. There are 3 types of outcome for each mission: 2 types of victories, major (if finished in fewer rounds) and minor, (these are also present in the individual missions, but have little importance there) and the defeat. If you win a mission with major victory, you will jump over some hard missions, get an easier mission or get one you would not otherwise, since the mission tree is quite complex. Even if you are defeated, you can play on, but it will be harder and harder to turn the war. The other nice aspect of the campaign is, that you can carry some of your units with you to the next mission, which enables you to create the optimal battle group.
The sounds and music are quite good and the graphics are a bit functional compared to the other games of the genre. The backgrounds are hand drawn and the units are animated. The user interface is similar to the ones in later parts of the series, and is efficient and easy to use.
So, if you like strategy games, but are a bit afraid of those hard-core looking ones, try it and you will be overwhelmed by this easy to play but very complex and very realistic game. But be warned, the game will take a long time to beat.
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/258/Panzer+General.html
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