Sign in to follow this  
Rob Zacny

Episode 455: Classic Year in Review: 2003

Recommended Posts

Three Moves Ahead 455:

Three Moves Ahead 455


Classic Year in Review: 2003
From the dizzying highs of the Frozen Throne to the baffling lows of Master of Orion III, 2003 was a darn good year for games. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time became a hallmark for many gamers, and Rise of Nations came onto the scene to become the "other" kind of RTS. Korsun Pocket (recipient of its own 3MA episode) showed us what amazing AI could look like, and Knights of the Old Republic grew T.J. into the person he is today. Rob, Rowan, and T.J. hop into the Wayback Machine to go to 2003, when invading Iraq seemed like a cool idea. In and out war, Morty, 20 minutes tops.

Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, Civilization III: Conquests, Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion, Rise of Nations, Homeworld 2, Korsun Pocket, Combat Mission: Africa Corps, Simcity 4, Master of Orion 3, Galactic Civilizations, Victoria, Disagaea, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, Onimusha Tactics, Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Academy, Freelancer, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Deus Ex: Invisible War

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Weighty nostalgic episode is always welcome. Especially when it's a secret Rise of Nations episode.

 

I think Rise of Nations commercial problem was Empire Earth. People who wanted Age of Empires 2 gimmicks bought that cool looking 3d thing. And then they probably realized it looks better on paper than in reality. RoN looked like a poor man's Empire Earth. It's not fully 3d, it's smaller in scope. I bet people at the time thought it's a less ambitious AoE2 clone. And Rise of Legends was too weird. Still RoN is great. I come back to it all the time. Recently it's all about duels against AI for me and they're beautiful. 4 players FFA on tougher is manageable for me but 1v1 on tougher is always some sort of interesting lesson.

 

Great work with that Vikings music, oh sound wizard!

 

Edit: Rowan said that Shadowmagic had come out between Age of Wonders 1 & 2. In reality, it's an expansion on 2. It isn't that big and it's main thing is the third layer of the map. In AoW and Heroes you typically have underground layer, Shadowmagic added Shadow parallel dimension or something layer. For many years fans considered it a definitive AoW experience, some still think so even after excellent AoW3.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Rise of Nations was on a demo disk from CGW, of which my father had a subscription and the two of us got WAY into RoN separately but at the same time when he bought it based off of the demo. I rebought it on steam last year and that game still bangs.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I bought Master of Orion 3 in a shop, I don´t remember exactly when, the game came to Brazil, so I suspect maybe one year later at least or less (back there, some games might take a while to get here, if they get or manage to find someone do distribute them) but clearly wasn´t some simultaneous launch how you have today, since I remember reading reviews about the game before I bought it.

Aside from over ambition, Master of Orion 3 was also hurt by bad design ideas - specially, they drop almost all of the classic factions of the game in favor of "more realistic" ones, which might appear as a nice idea, but the result and execution was bad - first they literally killed (or reduced the role) of some of the classic factions in a literal side note in the manual, second, the so "more realistic" factions, while had some nice ideas, felt very flat, I mean you had thing like "living rock in space" or "creatures which exist inside gas giants" which look great, but how they play? aside from some minor bonus and the ability to colonize this or that kind of planet, they play EXACTLY like everyone else!

 

The result was you having really strange stuff such as the same "creatures which exist inside gas giant" researching guns, recruiting troops or building ships (the manual kind made some vague explanation for this, but still...) or the "living rocks in space" going in strike or revolt or maybe boarding a ship or building a shop.... ect... so the over exotic faction design (after all they where meant to be very alien), which would require almost unique rules to better represent, clashed with the universal rules of the game, making if feel more bland.  While someone might say lot of space 4X fall in this in a way or another, it was rather funny for MOO3 due the high claims it made, also later games had better faction design (Endless Space) or faction design creations tool (Stellaris) which alleviate the problem.

 

This along with the tons of literal spreed sheets in the game didn´t help thing at all.

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Homeworld Emergence is the re-released expansion for HW1, previously called Cataclysm, but Cataclysm no longer because of World of Warcraft.  Though I don't understand why they need to re-name it when HW: Cataclysm came first.

It's on GOG. Not sure about other stores.

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As requested I would like to log my interest for the Three Kingdoms Episode, I need all the hours I spent in Dynasty Tactics 2 explained away and to hear someone rant about how Koei ruined the Dynasty Warriors series with Dynasty Warriors 5.

 

And before you claim this it off topic...if you play enough Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 you come to realise that they <can> be played as strategy games, I had great fun carefully managing the moral of my own and enemy units along with activating special events at just the right time to beat the different stages without killing any generals or sub-generals myself. Why you <would> indulge such madness is perhaps a greater question!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

(I love these shows, by the way.)

 

Daaaamn, Disgaea is from 2003. I remember it being the first time I witnessed a game whose humor was meta, as in, responding to gaming tropes, lampshading, 'mid level sub boss' characters, etc. Felt VERY fresh back then. Couldn't imagine it now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Great episode, I absolutely loved the viking music bit!

 

Three Kingdoms! I don't remember anymore if Romance of the Three Kingdoms II was the first Koei game I played, or if it was Nobunaga's Ambition. Despite being more interested in/prejudiced in favour of Japan, I was surprised to find I enjoyed RTK much much more. Ever since then I've been one of the Three Kingdoms listeners.

 

Also, I always have trouble comprehending the timescale of Chinese history. Three Kingdoms is contemporaneous with the crisis of the third century!

 

2003 was an odd year for strategy for me. I never played Rise of Nations, and I was quite fed up with RTSes, with them never being my favourite genre anyways. So I played a lot of questionable games. I played a lot of Ufo Aftermath. I've always been an apologist for the ALTAR UFO games, probably because Fish Fillets and Original War were quite impressive. I also played a fair bit of Railroad Tycoon 3, however poor a copy it is. Victoria ruined one set of exams for me. Although I suppose I actually played a lot of Hearts of Iron in 2003, and might have gotten Victoria only for Christmas.

 

The game I hoped would have gotten a mention is Ghost Master. It's a quirky tactics game, where you manage a set of ghosts with the purpose of haunting a house. It consists of a campaign of roughly dozen levels, each being house you must hunt and either make the residents go insane or flee in terror. You buy/level up your ghosts between missions, and select a team of ghosts for each mission. In many ways it's a typical tactics game. You have to come up with efficient ways of scaring the residents, some of which have resistances/weaknesses. There is humour, which I found mostly harmless. I always thought it was a really clever game, and a quite unique one as well. The interface has not aged well, but I do recommend at least checking out some lets play.

 

Also, Dominions 2 was released in 2003. I did not discover it until a couple of years later, but had I discovered it then it probably would have ruled the year.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I bought Korsun Pocket recently after hearing the 3MA episode, but haven't got round to playing it yet.

 

I don't think you've ever done an episode on the best AIs in strategy games? Off the top of my head the ones I've heard the most glowing reviews for are Korsun, GalCiv I&II plus of course the Chessmaster series.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this