In times of scarcity of information about emerging projects, it was a shame to miss something really interesting. There were only a few units on the Internet, and it was quite problematic (and expensive for many) to read about all future projects in a magazine. But one day I was lucky, and during another trip to the store for a new game, I happened to come across, if not a hit, then a landmark project – for sure. It was Battle Realms!

As a strategy game in an oriental setting and with many interesting innovations and game mechanics for the genre, it never became a significant figure in the industry (in large part due to its release shortly before the release of Warcraft 3). If you thought “Oh my God, another clone of popular zero strategies”, then I hasten to inform you that it is completely wrong! Battle Realms is not a parody of Warcraft, Starcraft, Dune 2 or Red Alert, but tries to go its own way! It was cool in 2001, and given that the genre of strategy games is not developing much these days, it’s still interesting today. In addition, its official remaster was recently released, which allows you to try this original project yourself.

Today, I’ll try to briefly explain what makes Battle Realms so special and arouse your curiosity and nostalgia. I hope I can convince you to play it. And to make it as convenient as possible for you, I will post an assembly with a ready-to-run game.

Although Ed Del Castillo is not the most popular figure in the gaming industry, he is clearly one who was able to make a rather large contribution to its development. Having worked on the series Ultima and Sid Meier’s Gettysburg!and also being the producer of the original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, he wanted to create something of his own, for which he created the company Liquid EntertainmentThe first game of which was the real-time strategy Battle Realms.

Its game world is a kind of medieval Japan in a fantasy environment: rice fields, small wooden buildings and a suitable set of weapons. Even the opposing clans, both with their names and their units, seem to have come off the pages of historical treatises, as well as myths and legends of the eastern country. There are 4 sides to the conflict: the Dragon, the Serpent, the Wolf, and the Lotus. Each has special features and a unique external style. In fact, before us are bright guys with a traditionalist way of life; their dark opposites; rude savage warriors; mysterious guys who practice dark magic.

The first thing that catches your eye at the start of any game party is that there are only two resources necessary for development: water and rice. Gamers who are used to a much larger nomenclature with minerals may initially feel that this mechanic is clearly underdeveloped and will harm the gameplay depth. But it is not so! Their feature is that they are interconnected and are used not only for the construction of new buildings or the production of units, but also for other purposes. And if the sources of water are endless, then the rice grows slowly and it is desirable to water it (well, or wait for the rain). But the main expenses will fall, of course, on the formation of your army and its improvement, which is very unusual and interesting in the game, because the way of creation is far from typical!

Any game begins with the fact that you are given a couple of workers, whom you immediately let to build the future city, as well as the production of rice and water necessary for this. The idea is that the initial combat unit – the peasant – can be sent along different paths of development. For example, send him to a dojo where he will learn the basics of fighting and become a spearman, and then – you can test him in battle, but it is better to continue his training. And if a spearman unlearned at the shooting range turns into a dragon warrior, then after upgrading his skills in the alchemist’s hut, he will become a kabuka warrior. Both units differ not only in passive abilities, but also in combat capabilities, as well as active skills! By experimenting with the training of your soldiers, you will receive different combat units with a specific role on the battlefield (melee warriors, medics, mages, marksmen). You can increase their efficiency if you tame wild horses that graze in random places on the map and bring them to the stables. So any fighter will fight on horseback, which will greatly increase the speed of movement, as well as reduce the cost of stamina. But even this is not all the possibilities of upgrading an army, because by sending units to additional combat courses, you will be able to teach them new skills that they will need in battle!

By the way, unlike the same Warcraft 3, the developers decided not to introduce such an additional parameter in the game for soldiers as mana. On the other hand, running, fighting and using skills consumes stamina, which is why you need to constantly monitor it if you don’t want to lose the ability to cast spells or run away from overwhelming enemy forces. On the one hand, this slightly reduces the dynamics of the rink, but on the other hand, it adds balance to them.

When creating Battle Realms, the developers were clearly inspired by Asian popular culture, especially martial arts movies. This is reflected in game battles, when each soldier does not just do the same animation every time, but at least sometimes alternates them, which makes any battle turn into a beautiful battle filled with acrobatics =)

The game differs from its counterparts in genre and in details: yes, ordinary units can damage buildings with their melee weapons, but, as in reality, it is not as effective. All houses are made of wood, so they are most afraid of fire! Therefore, when storming enemy settlements, a unit capable of arson will be very useful to you (and believe me, there are quite a few of them, it’s just that sometimes you need to upgrade the appropriate skill). By the way, it is interesting not only that fire causes increased damage to buildings, but also that one of your resources (water) is able to extinguish a building engulfed in flames. However, it is necessary that a well be built in advance, from which your villagers can scoop up liquid with buckets (yes, unlike other games, here your units do not carry water in their pockets))) And such attention to detail is everywhere!

Do you remember how in the same Age of Empires 2 (released in the same year) or Red Alert 2, your units instantly enter houses? In Battle Realms, this issue was approached more carefully, as you can see below. For some, this may be a trifle, but it is such trifles that make up the whole charm of the project!

After the launch of Battle Realms, you will have access to game modes that have become classic for the genre: a campaign and a battle mode based on player-defined conditions on various maps. And even here, even without special know-how, they tried to do something interesting that could set BR apart from other RTS – the non-linearity of what happens during the campaign. Already in the first mission, you have a choice of who to attack: the thugs who attacked the village, or the villagers themselves. Your future faction will depend on it. But the game is not limited to this, because between missions you determine on the world map which location to attack next (and what the next task will be).

If you do not want to go through the plot, but you are interested in fighting computer opponents on specially prepared maps, then I can say that everything is as usual here, with one small exception. In all similar strategies in the Skirmish mode, you are free to choose only the difficulty of the AI ​​and its faction/race, but in Battle Realms we went further: in addition to the above-described qualities of the artificial intelligence, you can also set a model of its behavior in the game (how often it attacks or uses decoy tactics ) by one unit to come from the rear with the main army, or maybe the computer will play only from defense, how actively it explores the map, whether it uses horses, etc.). And if you want to customize its behavior, you can edit the .ini extension files in the “Aiprofiles” folder, thanks to which an actual hand-made bot will appear, and you can train your tactical skills on it!

Speaking of computer intelligence, one cannot help but note that it was very cool for its time and, importantly, has not lost its relevance today, because even in 2024 it can give a head start to many strategies where bots behave rather stupidly . The AI ​​often ambushes or rushes your base, interacts cool with villagers (hiding theirs when you attack and targeting yours if attacking alone), regularly enters from different flanks, takes high ground with arrows (to deal more casualties) while the infantry distracts you in close combat. All in all, he behaves like a really good player! I may not be a big RTS expert, but it seems to me that Battle Realms has one of the best computer opponents! If you like this genre, you will have a lot of fun with this confrontation!

Good news for fans of the project, or those who would like to try it out these days without any tambourine dancing or compatibility issues, is the news that Ed Del Castillo launched a 2019 remake of his brainchild, which is still in development . It’s very strange to say this, but here is a game from 2001 that is in early access. Yes, you did not hear! The thing is that the original project, which was released more than two decades ago (then received the Winter of the Wolf add-on), did not become an icon of the genre, and its history was similar to Nox, about which I recently wrote a large article. Both of these games, being interesting and atypical representatives of the genre, were released at the wrong time. And if Nox clashed with Diablo II, then Battle Realms was “lucky” to be released a little earlier than Warcraft III, which completely took away all the attention of strategy lovers. It is symbolic that these projects, which went for experiments and tried to bring something new, fell under the rink of games from Blizzard Entertainment, which is why they never managed to gain a foothold in the segment. All this led to the fact that, unexpectedly even for fans, a remaster was released in 2019, which tries to fix all the mistakes of the original game and allows you to run it in high quality on modern systems. So what’s new in the updated project, which was named Battle Realms: Zen Edition?

☯ New rendering

☯ Support for two monitors and updated screen resolutions

☯ Multiplayer online game

☯ Huge number of improvements and bug fixes

☯ Includes the original game and the Winter of the Wolf expansion

With all of the above in mind, and considering that the project is still in development and refinement, this remaster is the best way to play Battle Realms in 2024. Well, for those who want to do it right here and now, in the Telegram channel “Old-fashioned Gamer” I posted a fully installed assembly of the game, which you can simply download and play right away! Why not touch a wonderful old-fashioned project?

In conclusion, I would like to say that Battle Realms is good not only for its time, but also for today, and with the remaster it plays really cool and nice. The game has its own idea and is very different from the titans of those years in the name of C&C, Age of Empires, Warcraft. You can already respect her! Try it, even if the game does not evoke any nostalgic feelings, there is a good chance that it will captivate you with its gameplay and give you many hours of pleasant pastime, because the authors did not for nothing try to diversify the classic strategy with various (sometimes barely noticeable) details. And let it not become a huge commercial hit, and we never saw a sequel, but the developers managed to create something really cool and unusual, which has not lost its value even after two decades!

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