Hi Everyone,
It's time for another campaign review, let's look back to where it all began all these years ago, to what may have been the first experience with this franchise to many of us. Yes, the demo version - Reign of the Hittites - my all time favourite very much for nostalgic reasons.
As always, this review will focus on the changes to the map, objectives, starting positions and the background stories rather than actual playthroughs unless these are drastically different too. Naturally this will contain some spoilers, so... you have been warned.
The first two missions have been removed completely, which is quite understandable seeing as they were basically tutorials, which only leaves us with 3 missions in this campaign:
1. Opening Moves - Nostalgia overload as this is the very first map I ever played all these years ago (yes, for whatever reason I skipped the first two and picked the third one). The mission now focuses on the early days of the Hittite Empire and its establishment in Anatolia, as opposed to the conquest of Mitanni as depicted in the original game. The opponents have been renamed appropriately to Hurrians and Hattians.
The map layout is the same, however there are some tweaks, most notably the large forested isthmus connecting you to the red player has been deforested so you no longer have a safe bubble to grow in. There are also some new shallows further to the northwest which adds another connection to the eastern part of the map. On top of this there are extra resources scattered across the map including some gold at your starting position, as you may remember gold was very scarce in the original.
Speaking of which, just as in the original you start in stone age with two priests, a granary and storage pit and have to venture north to convert yellow player's villagers and establish a base. The yellow player will now be somewhat harder to defeat as his starting position is more spread out, including some buildings in the red player's half of the map. Red starts in tool age and will likely advance to bronze age quite early on but they start without any troops so you don't need to worry about getting rushed. Just as in the original - you are limited to the bronze age.
Overall I appreciate the small tweaks as it makes the mission more challenging and faster paced. The addition of gold also makes going with units other than chariots viable. And on the personal level, I am glad that they didn't redo this mission completely but kept the essence of it relatively untouched.
2. Raid on Babylon (Fall of the Mitanni) - Well this one is by now quite infamous and possibly the most hated scenario of the new campaigns. It has been completely redone to the point that the only thing it has in common with the original is having to capture and bring back the artifact to the marked area.
As it says on the tin in this mission you will be fighting against Babylon which means that the war against Mitanni was removed completely. This mission also seems to be the prequel to the Vengeance/Lost mission of the Babylonian campaign, so perhaps that was the reason for this choice.
The map seems to vaguely resemble Levant and Mesopotamia (the tip of Cyprus was the giveaway for me here) with you starting in the north corner of the map coming down from Anatolia.
This is one of the most challenging missions of all campaigns due to starting at a severe disadvantage. With a handful of bronze age units, few buildings and a tool age start you must be ready to take on the world... or at least Babylon and her allies.
You will be facing four enemies, all with built up bases and some military, the most dangerous of which is the red player (Babylon) who starts in the iron age with quite a large army and a bunch of priests with 150hp called Pharaohs (although I think they now get fewer of them compared with the initial release). Yellow and brown start in bronze age with well built up bases in the southwestern part of the map and orange starts in tool age, directly to the south of your starting position and with a couple more towns to the east.
There are a few gaia villagers to the south of your starting position that you will need in order to build up your base and some gaia cavalry scattered around the east of the map. The cavalry will not be of much use however, seeing as red player has iron age upgrades and gaia units are always unupgraded. This is also the reason why your starting units are effectively useless after engaging the orange player. On a sidenote, unlike the other two scenarios in this campaign, you can advance to the iron age in this one.
Since the changes to make the AI less aggressive, this scenario may be possible to complete without cheesing or fleeing to the island in the west, though I haven't tried it since that update. I was able to complete it before by building up in the mountains in the northeast and walling off all except one tile to lure enemy units in to be killed by archers... so... a bit cheesy.
All in all the map has an enormous amount of detail, especially when compared with the original which is always very welcome. On the gameplay front I still think this is a positive change as we do need some missions that players will get stuck on and be forced to think outside the box to some extent, though obviously not every mission can be like that or it would be just plain frustrating. As it stands this is a serious contender for the most difficult mission, the other being the Spartacus scenario in my opinion (the only mission that I could not complete on hard/hardest without cheats, pre update, but we'll get to that review eventually).
3. The Battle of Kadesh - The culmination point, the grand finale, the peak of the Hittie civilisation. This map has been redone to reflect the actual camp locations in battle (as believed by the historians). In practuce, this means that you have swapped your starting positions with the red player (Re Division). The yellow player (Ramesses) is still across the water to the west, which now resembles a river, rather than a sea. The objective is now to capture and bring back two enemy artifacts, instead of completely destroying the enemy.
You start with in the bronze age (rather than tool age) with a well developed and walled base as well as a sizeable army and a scythed chariot hero unit (Muwatalli). By comparison, the red player now starts at a severe disadvantage and it's quite possible to take him out of the game with a single attack with your starting units, whereas of course in the original the early game was very much about survival. Yellow also starts with a walled base, now in bronze age instead of tool age. It is also worth mentioning that almost the entire river is shallow which reduces the importance of water control.
Other than that, it's quite straightforward. Positive changes on the cosmetic front for sure and a much faster paced mission, however also much easier than the original. What I would change is to make it essential for the hero, and your king to survive just to add in a bit of anxiety. Then again, I suppose a more easy going scenario may be a welcome change for those that have only just successfully raided Babylon. ;)
Conclusion
The changes here are definitely positive. Really, my only nitpick is that the campaign is so short! The conflict with the Mitanni and other nations could have been included for an extra couple of scenarios. I understand that the Fall of the Mitanni mission was replaced due to the map being almost identical to Citadel/Acropolis in the Greek campaign and Battle of Kadesh being quite similar to Lord of the Euphrates in the Babylonian campaign, I always felt. I guess it was also the question of time constraints and limited resources to include new missions, but hey, a man can dream.
SCORE: 8/10
Feel free to discuss and agree or disagree. Any feedback on what you would like to see more focus on in future reviews is welcome.
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