Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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Quick Note: Yes this is a remaster of a remaster, Microsoft really did pull that stunt. For what it’s worth, you can’t buy Age of Empires 2: HD any more and all of the DLC for that version of the game has been included in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition for free.

Oh Microsoft you cheeky swine, I’ve already bought 4 copies of Age of Empires 2 and yet here you are asking for me to buy it again. Were my purchases of the base game, the gold edition (with the expansions), the DS version and the initial HD remaster not enough for you? Evidently not, because here we are again and in spite of my better judgement I’ve gone and bought my 5th copy of this infernal game. Why did I do it? Well honestly because I waited years and then made a £4 impulse buy during the twitch event for the latest “hidden cup”. Which was fun to watch (except for the final) and so I felt like buying another version of the game for cheap wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean it has some new co-op maps, three new campaigns and uhhhh…. shiny graphics! Plus some Quality of Life (QoL) changes and some new civilizations. Oh and just under 300 CHEEVOS to gather, if you are so inclined. As it’s hard to review a remaster as opposed to the initial game, I’m just going to go through those points mentioned above one-by-one. If you haven’t played Age of Empires 2 for some reason, then just go grab when it’s on sale. Otherwise, read on!

To make things easy, let’s start off with the new campaigns which have been introduced for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. There are a grand total of three of them, with each campaign having 5 or 6 missions each. These missions are relatively varied and quite fun, although depending on your play-style they really can take a decent amount of time. Generally each campaign has sections where you have no villagers, and as such must make the most out of your modestly sized force. Alongside more traditional missions that let you play as per normal, albeit often with some restrictions. The most notable one is that in all of the campaigns, you aren’t allowed to just jump straight to the Imperial Age from mission one. Instead new tech and a larger population cap are gradually introduced over the length of each campaign. This is fine in principle, although in practice it means that you’ll often wrap up a campaign, start a new one and… oh we’re back to the Feudal Age with no villagers and a maximum population of 75. To be fair to these missions, you generally start with some units/structures already setup and often even some techs will have been researched (never had to research Loom for example). Regardless of the somewhat arbitrary limitations, the campaigns are all decently enjoyable and manage to feel varied enough that you’ll want to get through them all. Plus Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has also reworked a bunch of the earlier campaigns from previous releases, including some balancing tweaks and an increased population cap for most of those campaign missions. Although it must be said, that the inclusion of the base game campaigns, expansion pack campaigns and then the DLC campaigns from AoE2:HD really does make the campaign menu a bit overwhelming at first.

Fortunately even if the campaign selection screen can be a bit overwhelming, the actual game isn’t. As mentioned before we now have SHINY NEW GRAPHICS (wow!!!), but honestly they are pretty shiny. Not only do we have new 4K resolution options, but there’s been a bunch of work done to make everything look more visually impressive even at 1080p. New building destruction animations, better zoom control functionality, new objects and effects for some buildings/units and the like are all included. As for the UI, it’s also been improved with the ability to see all faction traits alongside a real-time tracker which shows global production/research and also how many villagers are on each resource. There are also some relatively small gameplay tweaks like automatically re-seeding farms, the ability to rotate gates manually alongside a substantial improvement to the AI. Finally the soundtrack has been remastered, and some of the campaigns from Age of Empires 2: HD now have voice acting. Sure you don’t need much voice-acting, but it’s a nice little bonus and brings everything up to the same standard. Finally there are some more granular options in the menus, that let experienced players further control how the game operates. It’s basically a pretty extensive under-the-hood upgrade to the game, and it all adds up to make Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition the best way to play the game.

As for the multiplayer mode, aside from a new server hosting infrastructure and cross-play between Steam/Microsoft Store versions of the game, there’s some new content here too. First of all, there are now a batch of co-op scenario maps based on historic battles – just like those in Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition. While these don’t add a huge amount of content, it’s a nice addition and hopefully more are added in the future. There are also 4 new civilizations in the base game (Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Cumans and the Tartars) which can be played in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. These new civilizations are a nice bonus and all have decent cavalry units, as would be expected for their history. The multiplayer mode also received a new game mode in the form of Empire Wars. This mode is quite similar to a normal game, but players now start in the Feudal Age and have a selection of pre-built units and buildings including around 27 villagers. It’s therefore a nice way to skip the initial Dark Ages slog and go straight to combat, although obviously this can be a headache for newer players or civilizations who benefit from a stronger economy in the very early game.

And that’s about “all” that’s been changed for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. I guess it goes without saying that as it’s the new version of Age of Empires 2, there are also a bunch of new DLC updates that have added a bunch of extra civilizations/campaigns. But I don’t own them, so I can only judge the remaster on it’s own merits. Which honestly is enough for me to give it a recommendation. The gameplay changes to the campaigns are modest but appreciated. The new soundtrack is genuinely great and makes the game feel much more enjoyable to play. The new graphics likewise look great, and the myriad small tweaks do a solid job of making the game feel more modern. The new campaigns are fun, and generally this is just a great little remaster. If you have an older version of the game, there’s plenty of new content here to enjoy. If you’ve never played it, then be sure to give it a go!

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Super Mario 64 is one of the most famous games ever made and a memorable part of my childhood, albeit one that didn’t get resolve until the year 2024. I was on the fence about whether to even bother writing up a short review of this one, considering how exceedingly famous it is and consequentially how pathetically low my search engine result ranking for this game will be. Then again I have no readers, and nothing better to do so here we are. It turns out Super Mario 64 is a great game and still holds up pretty well (basic visuals not withstanding I suppose), with the exception of the camera. Everything else from level design, to the difficulty, to the soundtrack and even the controls has been done well. I’m actually surprised I never got the ending to be honest, considering the fact that getting the credits to play only took me… maybe a dozen hours?

Oh well, weird lapses in judgement aside I can safely reiterate that Super Mario 64 remains a great game with just the right amount of challenge across it’s 15 courses. The initial four are pretty easy and outside of some tricky parts where you need to shoot yourself out of a cannon with precision, there really isn’t too much challenge here. Once you start unlocking the latter stages however, things get a bit more challenging as the game loves to enforce some surprisingly precise platforming onto the player. One thing I should’ve mentioned earlier is that each of the game’s 15 courses contains 7 stars (no, not 6). When you enter a stage, you select which of these stars you are aiming for. These stars sometimes involve changing the level slightly, but generally there are 7 objectives within the stage. With two of these objectives always being “gather the 8 red coins” (that are scattered around) and gather 100 normal coins, however it pleases you. The remaining 5 stars will generally be hidden around the level, sometimes in the possession of bosses or requiring some environmental chicanery to unlock. To spice things up, Super Mario 64 locks segments of the overworld (Peach’s castle) behind minimum star requirements and locked doors. To unlock these doors, you’ll need to collect enough stars and then defeat Bowser. Each time you face off against the loathsome lizard is largely the same, although he gets new attacks with each encounter. For the standard 70-star ending, you’ll need to beat him 3 times across 3 separate levels. There are also 3 types of cap that can be obtained, each of which acts as a temporary power-up and requires you to activate a switch in one of the game’s many bonus levels. You’ve got a flight cap, a metal cap and an invisible cap which let you fly, walk in water (instead of swimming) and go through certain walls/objects respectively.

While these power-ups are cool, the main reason they work is that the game is able to successfully juggle some light puzzle elements with solid platforming and a mix of enemies and different objectives. Most of the time, these objectives aren’t too difficult. Yet the high quality OST track, balanced challenge and way that each stage successfully has it’s own theme makes the whole game a pleasant experience to play. These themes range from a water world centred around a ship that may or may not have sunk (depending on the star), to rainbow rides in the sky through to simple grassland courses and a desert level with an explorable pyramid. As for progression, the fact that you only need to gather a certain amount of stars, while having multiple courses unlocked at a time is a great idea. For the simple reason that it’s very hard to get stuck in Super Mario 64, with the range of stages available letting you focus on the ones that you actually want to do. Even the frustrating camera angles aren’t able to hold Super Mario 64 back, and the fact that you have essentially unlimited continues (at least if memory serves – the game isn’t particularly challenging) means it’s hard to stay mad at Super Mario 64. If you’re really struggling with a certain level’s obstinate platforming requirements, then you can always just jog on to another stage and come back to that one later. Plus as mentioned there are multiple hidden stages, and “free” stars given by talking to one of the various instances of Toad stuck in the walls. As such progression is nearly inevitable, yet the game is able to keep players playing due to the variety in objectives and solid control scheme which makes exploring the levels (and castle) quite fun.

To give some examples, one world (or course) can only be accessed by repeatedly “killing” a certain enemy, while others are hidden behind seemingly normal walls or are only revealed in a mirror. Some stages require you to stare at the ceiling, or enter an inconspicuous hole in a wall. Generally speaking the castle, while quite small in reality does a great job of making the whole experience feel like a unified whole. As for the stages, the modest changes that occur between each star do a great job of making them feel larger and more varied than they actually are. Plus having to track down secret stages to unlock the power-ups which are required for certain stars is a prudent move, as it forces the player to engage with exploring the castle even if they aren’t so inclined. Even smaller touches such as having the camera be controlled by a floating NPC (that you can occasionally see) or having Mario take a nap if you leave him alone for a little bit of time show that Super Mario 64 is a game that was made with a lot of attention to detail, in spite of the exceedingly modest polygon budget.

Which isn’t to say that the game is flawless, because that would just be silly. Every game has flaws, except maybe for Tetris. In Super Mario 64’s case, there are three that stood out to me. One that’s quite inconsequential but still bizarre is the way in which the game just resets how many lives you have every time you save and exit the game. It’s not a huge issue, but if you’ve gone out of your way to gather 1-ups and extra lives then… too bad! The game doesn’t care, and if you leave the game and come back to it then you go back to having 4 lives in reserve for some reason. Another issue that’s more of an issue is the way in which Mario can’t just turn around if he’s in motion, even if it’s a very slight motion. This isn’t a big deal, but for precision platforming it makes the game more of a pain than it has to be. If Mario is still, then moving back will cause him to turn around and move backwards. If he is dealing with the slightest bit of motion, then he will move forward in a radius and then start moving backwards. When the platforms are oh so small, this can and will cause you to fall off them (and probably die). Again a relatively small issue, but one I wanted to mention. Alongside the game’s biggest issue, which is a somewhat annoying camera. For the time the camera was fine, but by modern standards the lack of full rotation and fondness for awkward angles make platforming a chore sometimes. As mentioned, some of the platforming is exceedingly precise and with the inclusion of momentum physics and important of hitting a jump at the right angle or speed having an inconsistent camera can be a real issue. Even relatively basic areas like the boss fights against Bowser or jumping up a pyramid in the desert stage can really screw with the player, setting them back a bit. Does the camera ruin Super Mario 64? Of course not, but it’s by far my biggest gripe with the game.

But notwithstanding those modest issues, Super Mario 64 is just a great game. It’s a 3D platformer that shows everyone else how it’s done, with a solid colour palette, smart stage design (some levels even change based on how you enter them), memorable soundtrack, varied enemy roster, deft handling of an overworld that’s fun to explore and an intuitive control scheme. In conclusion then, this review is pointless but you should still give Super Mario 64 a go if you haven’t already tried it. There are plenty of small touches that truly make it something special, and even if you don’t get that far then you’ll be able to enjoy the first few stages which are all fun to play and do a good job of letting you just get on with the game. Those who can stick with Super Mario 64 will find a rewarding platforming experience, that isn’t afraid to force you to explore a level of repeat a particularly tricky jump to get the reward.

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Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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Before delving into what makes Fire Emblem 7 such an enjoyable game, I’m just going to mention two things that may be deal-breakers for the uninitiated or even those who are looking to play this game after experiencing some of the newer games in the series. Firstly much like the newer games, Fire Emblem 7 has a decent amount of RNG or Random Number Generation involved, as every attack will have a chance of missing and a chance of inflicting a critical hit. Even if a lot of enemies won’t have a chance to inflict one of these crits (which are worth x3 the normal amount of damage inflicted), the bosses and certain enemies definitely will. Plus there’s always a chance that your guy will whiff their blow, leading to you either taking more damage than expected or possibly dying. So far so XCOM, but then much like XCOM Fire Emblem 7 throws another spanner into the works by making it so that the death of any character aside from your trio of plot-critical lords is a permanent death. As such your options are either to play through the game with the spectre of perma death always looming over (almost) every single character, or you can take the slightly more cowardly route by resetting the game every single time a character dies – which of course means that you’ll need to play through the level from the very beginning. No matter how you slice it Fire Emblem 7 can be a brutal game, and while I don’t condone it I can understand why both Nintendo and Intelligent Systems decided to make the permadeath optional in later games.

With that out of the way, Fire Emblem 7 is one of my favourite games for the MIGHTY Gameboy Advance (GBA) and a fantastic game that I think anyone with some patience will be able to enjoy. It’s a Turn Based Strategy (TBS) game that borrows heavily from RolePlaying Games’s and as such can also be considered as a Strategy RPG (SRPG), with both the player and the enemy in the form of bandits, cultists and other ne’er-do-wells moving all of their units one at a time during their respective turn. For the player each character is a unique unit with some custom art, a backstory, their own inventory which can hold up to 5 items and their own skills split into 8 categories which each increase as they gain levels. For the enemy they have hordes of disposable grunts to be used at will, with many levels causing more enemies to spawn in during certain turns and often from an irritating angle which will force you to take considerable care when using your more fragile units. All units in the game are split into various classes, each of which can use a handful of the game’s weapon and spell types and due to the game’s balance each class is therefore good against certain other classes but in turn weak against others. The first piece of the puzzle is the fact that weapons and magic both fit into a triangle system, with axes beating lances, lances beating swords and swords beating axes – while arcane magic beats light magic, light magic beats dark magic and dark magic beats arcane magic. Then you’ve got the fact that different classes (and by extension characters) not only have different amounts of movement points, but these classes also tend to empathise certain skills at the expense of others. Heavily armoured knights and generals have high defence and attack for example, but have low resistance making them weak against magic and low speed which means enemies can often get two blows in. Mages on the other hand have relatively high resistance and can attack at a slight distance, but are weak against physical attacks and generally have modest amounts of health. The intersecting nature of these classes ensures that no one unit is strong against everything, so you need to use your entire squad as a team lest your favourite unit get dog-piled and ground down by the enemy.

Then just when you think you’ve got everything in hand, the game’s inventory system pops up to nag you. The trouble is, while there are myriad weapons within the game each weapon can only be used a certain number of times before it breaks. Remember how you can only hold 5 items on each character? Well that means that you’ll need to factor in your weapon and how many hits it can dish out before it breaks, lest your unit be weapon less and thus unable to hurt a fly during the middle of a large skirmish. Before you ask, no you can’t repair items for most of the game (and when you can it’s only via a rare staff that in turn can only repair 3 weapons before it breaks) meaning that you’ll probably want to carry spares around. Then as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve got classes that can carry up to 3 weapon types and you’ve got to consider how the quality of certain weapons/spells. You see not only do you have multiple weapon types, but you have multiple weapons within each type alongside some rare weapons which are effective against certain types of enemies. Generally speaking weapons go from Iron to Steel to Silver, with each type of weapon only being usable by characters with a high enough level in that weapon type. Oh and the better weapons not only cost more but can be used less before they break. So it’s entirely possible that you’ll have a character with a Steel Sword, a Steel Lance, backups for each and then a unique weapon such as the Axereaver which inverts the weapons triangle (i.e. it’s a lance that’s good against axes but weak against swords). It all gets somewhat complicated very quickly, but that’s part of the fun and it’s a good way to ensure that you’re invested in finding new loot before it’s pilfered by enemy thieves and to go out of your way to rescue villages before they’re pillaged by enemy bandits. If it’s all sounding a bit much then don’t panic, as you can store (temporarily) un-needed items with your supply convoy after a certain point in the story.

Due to all of this Fire Emblem 7 can be a complex game of cat and mouse as you manoeuvre your troops around, dodging enemy reinforcements (or funnelling them towards the right units) while you consider which weapons to use. This gives the game a nice feeling of depth and outside of the occasional piece of absolutely terrible luck, the game is well balanced and most deaths really are your fault – you MONSTER. As alluded to above there are also ways to gain new items outside of buying them from shops which appear in some levels, such as by killing enemies (who automatically drop any items they have in their inventory that are coloured green), stealing items from enemies with your thief, by visiting friendly villages before they are ransacked by enemy brigands/pirates and even by recruiting units to your side. Yes that’s right, some levels contain enemies which will “give you” a hint at the start of most missions via their dialogue with other units that reveals that they know one of the characters on your team. If you can get this unit into melee range with that named enemy, then you’ll be able to convince them to join your team and to stop aiding the bad guys. Of course this inherently involves some risk as now your unit is in melee range of that unit, which might place them in a sticky spot. And as if all that wasn’t enough, you might also be in a mission with a named friendly NPC (who appear as Green units) who has to be chatted to before they end up suiciding themselves by charging the enemy. These interactions are themselves often quite sweet and involve an abrupt change of heart on the part of the enemy, with many of these recruitable characters being powerful indeed. Or you can just kill them because you are a MONSTER.

As for the characters themselves they can all be described as charming archetypes, most of whom are suitably simple to understand for a game with modest pretensions to being a full RPG but who are still entertaining enough to justify their screen time. You’ve got nervous and naïve knights, gambling obsessed swordsmen, men of duty, men who are just in it for the sheer THRILL of adventure and much more besides. Ultimately you’ll be able to find a few characters that you enjoy, as while most of them are relatively shallow each of them feels like a D&D character and you’ll inevitably have your favourites. These characters are then able to propel a story that is likewise fairly simple, but which definitely has it’s moments and which manages to create an Arthurian feel of a world which has it’s noble lords and wicked villains, it’s power hungry despots and it’s wise sages. The whole game is brimming with charm and character, even if almost all of it is told through plain unspoken text (with a little bit of fantasy tweaking and dated verbiage) and static imagery. Of course there are a few exceedingly short cutscenes, but due to the limitations of the MIGHTY GBA the game is limited in how it presents itself. Fortunately it more than makes up for these limitations via some great artwork which is occasionally used to great effect in showcasing how the world appears through the eyes of it’s characters.

Further complimenting the occasional piece of high definition artwork (Relatively speaking, it is the GBA after all) is a great art style for units and gameplay which is simultaneously easy to read but still looks great in spite of the system’s limitations. Units may only be made out of a handful of pixels, but both the animations and art design is excellent and makes the game visually pleasing to the eye. Critical hit animations are stylish without feeling overlong, each class feels unique and I’m always surprised by how much a simple colour pallet change or slight tweak can make a character or enemy feel unique. As for the music, it’s also great in spite of the system’s limitations even if the number of tracks and their length is fairly limited. You will be hearing the same battle theme again, and again and again but fortunately each theme is handled well as is instantly recognisable. Fire Emblem 7 is therefore a great example of how much can be done with a limited amount of headroom and is an exceedingly efficient game in the way that it’s able to contain close to 40 unique levels, a full OST with around 30 tracks, almost the same amount of units and myriad weapons/spells all in one exceptionally small package.

Then when you reach the end and face off against the final boss, which is a total pain in the butt btw, the game gives you a charming ending screen which explains what each character does after the world has been saved. By that point you might think the game is over, as you’ll have encountered many characters, plenty of dialogue and wrapped up close to 30 levels. But then the game reveals that actually you’ve got an extra route revolving around Lord Hector that you can playthrough (who is otherwise portrayed as Eliwood’s stalwart pal but doesn’t have much autonomy). Oh and if that wasn’t enough then you can also replay Lyn’s route (the first 12 levels) and Eliwoods route (the other 18ish levels) in a newly unlocked Hard mode which is even more challenging. As such the game that has pretty much everything including great art direction, a solid difficulty curve, plenty of strategic head-scratching and a surprisingly good plot with charming characters reveals that it has plenty of replayability too. Oh and did I mention that there are multiple levels that only appear if you meet specific requirements, such as completing a level under a certain amount of turns, killing a fleeing enemy or by “rescuing” a hostile unit that would otherwise try and kill you? To see everything you’ll need to play through both the normal Lyn & Eliwood route, then the Lyn & Hector route and you’ll need to do both while meeting these hidden objectives. Fortunately you can always check a guide to see what’s needed, but I’ll warn you now that knowing how to unlock a hidden stage and actually unlocking it are not the same thing and some of them can be quite challenging to unlock.

In summary then Fire Emblem 7 is a game that can be challenging, complicated and occasionally unforgiving but which is nevertheless a fantastic game brimming with charm and content. There’s always a twist awaiting the player, whether it’s a new enemy type, a new plot development or a new hidden stage and while the game can occasionally be frustrating it’s almost never unfair. Every mechanic compliments each other nicely and the game excels with it’s solid gameplay, great visuals and charming cast of characters. Ultimately Fire Emblem 7 is a game that anyone can enjoy and one that I would highly recommend to anyone, although these days copies can be expensive as this was always a relatively niche series (at least until Awakening encouraged you to have babies with your waifu which caused every weeaboo in the world to become a gushing fanboy). If you see this game in the wild be sure to pick it up, and if you can’t afford it then just know that you can’t really afford to let Fire Emblem 7 pass you by either, so do what you have to (*cough* emulation *cough*) to experience it for yourself.

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