Old Dominions I. reviews....!

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..and another user review:


Introduction
I had never heard of this game before, a multiplayer RPG I was told, vast lands, control armys, use magic, sounds good? So is this the game to beat Baldurs Gate II, or was it more along the lines of Shogun:Total War. I was looking on the website while waiting for the game to wind its way onto my PC and I saw that it was neither really, it reminded me of WarlordsIII which was a turn based strategy game around about 3-4 years ago, Warlords was a good game if you liked turn based games, but it was tainted by the computer cheating. Dominions could build on this and make epic battles, the turn based style would mean that you can use cunning strategys and watch the battle unfold. Oh how wrong was I.


Graphics (1/10)
In the old days of computing there was a game called Angband (similar to Moria), this game was an RPG but as it was old it didn't have graphics, it used the character set, so a capital Red 'A' was a dragon or so (Angband nerds, please dont mail me saying the its really a giant ant or so). Later Versions of Angband redefined the characterset, but basically it was poor. Take a guess what the graphics in Dominions looks like. They're very poor, blocky and uninteresting, limited in colour. Infact my mousepointer has better graphics than this game. The landscapes are repeated, which is fairenough, but they're repeated every five pixels, so its basically just green. Imagine Zelda, on the gameboy except at a lower resolution. All of the Gods look the same just different colours. The menus are the best thing this has to offer, but even these are animated badly and jerk as they move.


Audio (1/10)
I didn't experience much in the way of sound from this game, there is a beep everytime you do something but even that single sample has some crackles to it. There are various other beeps and thats about it. Essentially all you're doing is clicking menus and options so maybe I'm being silly expecting for more. But even when its game over it could play me a tune to wake me up. I want to hear the battles, hear the screams, I want the sound to draw me into the game not crackle when I click, and that is only occasionally.

Gameplay (1/10)
Well this is what counts really, a game of this style could live without graphics and sound if the gameplay cut the ice. I had an old turn based strategy game on my old Amiga that just had a tank a plane and a boat and I used to play that for hours, but this... I even considered just getting rid of it, forget the review its not worth it, but it was either this or work. The game is full of menus, and they're badly designed for instance when choosing your castle you have a screen with various castles on it, but then what do you do? There is no 'Back' button no 'Ok' button, where do I click? For those wondering, you right click near the bottom of the screen... I played a while and then I did something which I'm still not sure what and it came up 'Game Over' with the only option being to Quit. But the Quit didn't put me back to the mainmenu, it just threw me out of the game (maybe this is a good thing!). So I go back in and start a game just to be presented by the game over screen and the Quit option just popped up, silly me, I had to go and create a new God and then create a new world before playing a game.

Concluding Thoughts (1/20)
The game has a small footprint on your harddisk and it's easy to see why, there are no graphics or sound! This game is truely aweful, I'm sure there is more to it than I saw, when you get powerful armies (rather than my collection of peasants) and you have some mystical magic there may be some enjoyment, but I saw none of this.
I want to be drawn into the battles, I want the fights to remind me of fights in Braveheart or Gladiator, not Horrace Goes Skiing.
I couldn't recommend this to anyone, not even my pet cat.


Total Score 4/50