Top 50 Video Games: Number 20

#20: Warlords Battlecry 2
System: PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Released: 2002
Players: 1-6


An army of Minotaurs attacks a High Elven stronghold.


Warlords Battlecry 2 is a little known, outstanding realtime strategy game that features persistent heroes that improve as you progress from game to game. It has all of the standard features of RTS games: creating a base, harvesting resources, building and upgrading an army with which to smash the other guy. The resource gathering system is unique, and the game's biggest feature is its hero system. You create heroes which lead your army into battle; they fight, cast spells, gain experience, outfit themselves with weapons and armor, etc. The heroes help give the game added incentive to play because you are levelling up a character rather than simply finishing a game and having nothing to show for it at the end.

WBC2 is the Rodney Dangerfield of RTS games. The Macintosh computer. the Betamax VCR. The Mr Bungle if you will. It's a superior product outsold by and overlooked because of products with better name recognition, better marketing, etc. Nothing against Warcraft 3, but when it came along with its highly touted hero system everyone stood up and cheered. But I didn't cheer. I stood up and I shouted "Hey! This isn't new! Warlords Battlecry already did this - and did it better!" While WC3 offered very little variety and customization of its heroes, WBC2 had this quality in spades. There are an obscene amount of possible hero builds in the game.

WBC2 has 12 playable races - this means there are a dozen functionally different playable groups to lead into battle as well as 12 different races of hero you can have. Once you've decided on a race for your hero, you must choose a class and eventually a subclass. There are 20 such classes you can choose for your hero ranging from Paladin to Deathknight to Bard to Druid and many more. Each of these choices brings with it a selection of skills that can be boosted when gaining experience levels. My favorites were my undead ice mage Tourach and my demon pyromancer Eddie Jones. I believe the demon pyromancer is broken in the game - Eddie Jones could fight like hell (pun intended), cast showstopping spells, heal himself and replenish his mana. Every other hero I had was fairly balanced.


The most masculine race: The Fey.


Few multiplayer games have provided my friends and I with as much fun as this one. I have fond memories of playing 3-on-3, players against computers games with my ex-roommate and his brother. Of course, I also spent countless afternoons at Jimbob's house, playing Warlords with he and his father. I'll never forget how things would go when his dad's hero would die: First you see him type 'help' in the chat then you hear a loud 'GOD-Dammit!' from the living room accompanied by the sound of him slapping his knee in disgust. Then the somber in-game sound byte of "An allied hero has fallen." Classic stuff.

The persistent heroes are what really set the game apart from other realtime strategy titles. The idea that your hero would be gaining xp and becoming more powerful, even when the battle doesn't go your way, makes each game rewarding. The single player campaign is terrific. It consists of a map with 67 territories, each of which are controlled by one of the 12 races. You win when you have conquered each of the terrirtories. It takes a lot of time to complete, but there's a feeling of satisfaction (as well as a nice prize) that comes from finishing it. WBC2 is very much like its predecessor, with more races and a suped up single player campaign. Warlords Battlecry 3 still retains much of the same graphics, and more races still. It was made by a different company, and it just doesn't have the same magic for me as #2. Warlords 2 can probably be found on Ebay for 10 bucks, and no RTS fan should pass it up.